EU not suspending N. Ireland Brexit terms for vaccine exports

BRUSSELS – The European Union yesterday said it has not triggered a mechanism to control vaccine exports to Northern Ireland included in the Brexit agreement with the United Kingdom, after London voiced “grave concerns” over the threatened move.

“In the process of the finalisation of this measure, the commission will ensure that the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol is unaffected,” said the EU commissioner in a statement.

“The commission is not triggering the safeguard clause,” it added, which would have allowed the bloc to impose controls on exports from the EU to Northern Ireland.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday told EU chief Ursula von der Leyen of his “grave concerns” after Brussels partially suspended terms of the Brexit deal as part of a vaccine export control scheme.

Johnson spoke to the EU head on the phone, and “expressed his grave concerns about the potential impact that the steps the EU has taken today on vaccine exports could have”, said his Downing Street office.

The bloc’s export control scheme includes a provision to partially suspend terms of the Brexit deal that allows goods to flow across the Irish border.

British Minister Michael Gove called European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic to “express the UK’s concern over a lack of notification from the EU about its actions”, said a spokesman from the prime minister’s office. 

The UK is “carefully considering its next steps”, he said.

The Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit deal allows goods to flow between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland without the need for customs checks at the border.

But, there is a provision under Article 16 of the protocol for either party to unilaterally suspend the terms for specific goods if the agreement leads “to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist”.

Brussels yesterday invoked the article as part of a scheme to monitor, and in some cases, bar exports of vaccines produced in EU plants, amid a row with British-Swedish drugs giant AstraZeneca over supply of its Covid-19 jab. – AFP, January 30, 2021