British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday that there would be no deal with the EU on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade review, vowing to “keep fighting” for a satisfactory outcome.
Facing strong criticism from pro-British unions in Northern Ireland and hard-line Brexiteers in his own Conservative ranks, Sunak spoke tough when challenged in parliament about talks with Brussels.
“We are still in intensive discussions with the European Union to ensure that we can find an agreement to complete the tests that I have set,” the prime minister said.
“I have a good understanding of what it takes and I will continue to fight until I get it,” he said.
Sunak highlighted three priorities for the negotiations: ensuring democratic sovereignty for Northern Ireland, maintaining its status in Great Britain, and finding “practical solutions” to the problems facing the company.
Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) opposes the protocol, which keeps the province in the EU’s single market for physical goods after the rest of the UK leaves.
The party refused to re-enter the power-sharing government in Belfast.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said the protocol was not just amended but replaced “by rewriting the text of the legal agreement” with the EU.
One of the main concerns exercising the DUP and right-wing Tories is the prospect of the EU’s European Court of Justice maintaining oversight of the protocol, without input from Northern Ireland MPs.
But Sunak is also under pressure to rebalance strained relations with the EU as a way to revive Britain’s troubled economy. It has been hit hard by reduced trade since Brexit as well as the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
The prime minister said he had heard the DUP’s “loud and clear” demands before the party agreed to restore the legislative assembly in Belfast, which is set for the first time to be led by the pro-Irish party Sinn Fein.
Plugging the “democratic deficit” surrounding the protocol is “the heart of the problem that needs to be addressed” with the EU, Sunak added.