Liz Truss warns EU she may have ‘no choice’ but to alter NI protocol

theguardian.com:

The UK foreign secretary has reiterated her threat to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, telling the EU’s Brexit negotiator it was a matter of “internal peace and security”.

Liz Truss warned Maroš Šefčovič in a phone call that unless the EU showed the “requisite flexibility” in talks over the trading arrangements she would have “no choice but to act”.

It was the first time the pair had spoken since it was revealed the UK was considering tabling draft legislation to override part of the special Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.

The standoff between the two is testing wider relations with the EU at a time when “bigger things” such as Finland joining Nato are happening, Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said on Thursday.

David McAllister, a German centre-right MEP who chairs the European parliament’s UK coordination group, said the EU was united against renegotiating the protocol.

“The protocol was signed and ratified by both sides. Nobody here in Brussels is interested in starting these new complicated discussions and political fights,” he said.

Truss said she had told Šefčovič the protocol was “the greatest obstacle” to forming a new Northern Ireland executive following last weeks’ elections.

Šefčovič told her there was “no room to expand the negotiating mandate or introduce new proposals to reduce the overall level of trade fiction”, according to a Foreign Office statement.

“The foreign secretary noted this with regret and said the situation in Northern Ireland is a matter of internal peace and security for the United Kingdom, and if the EU would not show the requisite flexibility to help solve those issues, then as a responsible government we would have no choice but to act,” it added.