Von der Leyen – Sunak – Photo © European Union 2023
(WINDSOR) – The EU Commission and UK Government agreed in principle Monday on a set of joint solutions, the ‘Windsor Framework’, aimed at addressing the practical challenges faced by the people of Northern Ireland.
Key solutions covered by the ‘Windsor Framework’ agreed by Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and British prime minister Rishi Sunak cover new arrangements on customs, agri-food, medicines, VAT and excise, as well as specific instruments designed to ensure that the voices of the people of Northern Ireland are better heard on specific issues particularly relevant to the communities there.
The EU executive says the new arrangements are underpinned by robust safeguards to ensure the integrity of the EU’s Single Market, to which Northern Ireland has a unique access.
“Supporting and protecting the hard-earned gains of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement was the prerequisite of our endeavour,” said Ms von der Leyen: “Today, our achievement allows us to put forward definitive solutions that work for people and businesses in Northern Ireland and that protect our Single Market. It also allows us to turn the page towards a bilateral relationship that mirrors the one of close allies standing shoulder to shoulder in times of crisis.”
The joint solutions, found within the framework of the Withdrawal Agreement, are based on the following starting points:
- A comprehensive, cross-cutting and definitive solution, addressing practical difficulties in the operation of the Protocol;
- A balance between flexibilities for the movement of goods for end use in Northern Ireland and effective safeguards guaranteeing the protection of the EU’s Single Market;
- A clear distinction between goods at risk and goods not at risk of entering the EU’s Single Market.
In the sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) area, the joint solutions ensure that the same food will be available on supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the UK. In practice, agri-food retail products for end consumption in Northern Ireland will be able to move from Great Britain with minimal certification requirements and controls. UK public health standards will apply for those agri-food retail goods for end consumption in Northern Ireland, whilst EU plant and animal health rules remain applicable for the protection of the EU Single Market. This arrangement is commensurate with a set of existing and new safeguards, including SPS inspection facilities and labelling which will be introduced gradually. When these safeguards are fully in place, identity checks will be reduced to only 5%. Physical checks will follow a risk-based and intelligence-led approach. Moreover, travelling with pets will be easy, thanks to a simple pet travel document, a microchip, and a declaration by the owner that the pet will not travel to the EU.
New arrangements in the area of customs are based on an expanded trusted trader scheme that will also be open to businesses in Great Britain. Goods moved by trusted traders and not at risk of entering the EU’s Single Market will benefit from dramatically simplified procedures and drastically simplified declarations with reduced data requirements. Substantial facilitations were found for freight and the movement of all types of parcels, i.e., business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and consumer-to-consumer, with consumer-to-consumer parcels being entirely exempt from the main customs requirements. These new solutions are made possible especially by new data-sharing arrangements allowing for risk assessments, which would constitute the principle basis for controls. Robust authorisation and monitoring of the trusted trader scheme, and increased market surveillance and enforcement by UK authorities also act as safeguards. Full customs procedures will apply to goods at risk of entering the EU’s Single Market.
A permanent solution has also been found to ensure that people in Northern Ireland have access to all medicines, including novel medicines, at the same time and under the same conditions as people in the rest of the UK. This complements the solution the EU adopted in April 2022 for the supply of generic medicines to Northern Ireland. These new arrangements are made possible by new safeguards, notably labelling, designed to ensure that the medicines do not enter the EU’s Single Market.
New flexibilities were also found for certain VAT and excise rules, accompanied by safeguards protecting the EU from fraud risks or potential distortion of competition. These arrangements include a possibility to set UK VAT rates below EU VAT minima rates for immovable goods with no risk that these goods enter the EU Single Market (e.g., a heat pump for a house). A UK SME VAT exemption scheme is now applicable to both goods and services if the UK respects the EU threshold for the size of SMEs. There is now also a possibility to tax all alcoholic beverages according to their alcoholic strength, and to set reduced duty rates to alcoholic beverages, if served for immediate consumption in hospitality venues in Northern Ireland, as long as the applied rates are not below EU minima duty rates.
With regard to governance, the Commission says ‘voices of Northern Ireland people and stakeholders will be better heard through regular engagement at each level of the Withdrawal Agreement structures’. There will be enhanced engagement with Northern Ireland stakeholders on Protocol-related matters. New thematic subgroups within the Joint Consultative Working Group will be set up. A new emergency mechanism, the Stormont Brake, will allow the UK government, at the request of 30 Members of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland, to stop the application in Northern Ireland of amended or replacing provisions of Protocol-related EU law that may have a significant and lasting impact specific to the everyday lives of communities there. This mechanism would be triggered under the most exceptional circumstances and as a matter of last resort, in a very well-defined process set out in a Unilateral Declaration by the UK.
For the EU, a key poinjt is that the Court of Justice of the European Union remains the sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law.
The joint solutions also address implementation difficulties related to tariff rate quotas (TRQs) for the most sensitive categories of steel and clarify the application of State aid rules.
The new arrangements have been carried out within the framework of the Withdrawal Agreement of which the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland is an integral part. Within these pre-established legal parameters, a number of targeted amendments to the Protocol address, in a definitive way, unforeseen circumstances or deficiencies that have emerged since the start of the Protocol.
The Commission and UK Government will now proceed, within the remit of their respective powers, with the necessary steps to translate the joint solutions into legally binding instruments and to implement these swiftly and in good faith.
As the new arrangements are not compatible with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill,the British government confirms that this is being set aside, so that it will fall at the end of the Parliamentary session. The EU executive will according also drop the legal proceedings relating to the Protocol.
