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DUBLIN – European Union leaders are encouraged by their early talks with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to break the deadlock over a post-Brexit trade arrangement for Northern Ireland, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Irish lawmakers on Thursday.
Addressing a rare joint session of Ireland’s two-chamber parliament, von der Leyen stressed the need to protect Irish nationalist concerns over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Trade Protocol – part of the UK’s withdrawal agreement that the region’s British unionists want removed. The protocol requires EU checks for British goods when they arrive at ports in Northern Ireland, not when they cross the EU land border with the Republic of Ireland.
“One thing is absolutely clear: Brexit will not stand in the way of reconciliation in Ireland,” von der Leyen said to sustained applause.
“There can be no hard border on the island of Ireland,” she concluded.
Such sentiments will cut no ice with unionists in the north, who deplore how the protocol has made it easier for local businesses to do business with companies based in the Republic of Ireland than to import products from Britain.
However, von der Leyen said she hoped EU and UK negotiators could identify “common sense” ways to more easily apply customs and sanitary requirements to the Northern Irish ports of Belfast and Larne – and hoped Sunac would agree. Will stick to this approach. 2019.
“If both sides are sensitive to this careful balance, a viable solution is within reach. It is our duty to find it. My contacts with Prime Minister Sunak have been encouraging. I am confident that we will find a way,” she said.
Coinciding with her visit to Dublin, UK Foreign Secretary James Smart and the European Commission’s Point Man on Protocol, Maroš Šefčovič, chatted and exchanged phone calls. Unusually hot tweets Afterward Sefcovich said he saw a “clear window of opportunity” while shrewdly replying: “Thank you, Maros.”
All the leaders of Northern Ireland were invited to Leinster House, the Parliament of Dublin, to attend von der Leyen’s speech. Sinn Féin’s Irish Republicans sent a large delegation led by the former Deputy First Minister. Michelle O’Neill. Unionists, generally loath to form close ties with the South, sent none.
The Commission President did not receive an entirely friendly Dublin welcome. Some lawmakers from the hard-left fringe of Irish politics gave her a twist for EU policy on Israel. Some Sinn Féin lawmakers also wore Arab keffiyeh headdresses to the session in a show of Palestinian solidarity.
But von der Leyen hit mostly the right local notes in a speech that praised the Irish contribution to Europe – and managed to name-check a band from Galway to get a few laughs out of the protocol controversy.
“I am pleased that our negotiations with London today are marked by a new, more pragmatic spirit. Because the EU and the UK are still members of the same extended family, even if we don’t live in the same house,” she said. “I can promise you that, whenever the EU sits down with our British friends, we are great. We’ll do it with ‘an honest heart and an open mind’ to quote Irish band The Saw Doctors.”
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