Opinion

EU has played only a minor role in our peace process

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Legal challenges against Brexit taken by MLAs and Raymond McCord begin at the High Court in Belfast. Left to right. Sinn Fein's John O'Dowd, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood and Nichola Mallon  
Legal challenges against Brexit taken by MLAs and Raymond McCord begin at the High Court in Belfast. Left to right. Sinn Fein's John O'Dowd, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood and Nichola Mallon   Legal challenges against Brexit taken by MLAs and Raymond McCord begin at the High Court in Belfast. Left to right. Sinn Fein's John O'Dowd, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood and Nichola Mallon  

TWO challenges to Brexit began in Belfast High Court this week.

The first, by a cross-party group of MLAs, is based on procedure - they want a vote in the Commons, a consent motion in Stormont and a consultation exercise by the Northern Ireland Office. This is rather bizarre, as there is clearly no requirement for a consent motion or a consultation exercise and a Commons vote is already the subject of a separate case in London.

The second challenge, brought by victims campaigner Raymond McCord, is more interesting and specific to this part of the world. It claims Brexit threatens the peace process.

According to McCord’s barrister: “the very basis of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement, we say, is based upon the membership of both states [UK and Ireland] to the European Union.”

This is Northern Ireland’s big Brexit question. Addressing it matters because any perception the agreement is broken risks creating its own reality. It is also something we can start answering now, without having to wait for London to make up its mind on what it wants and how to get there. The laws and treaties of the peace process are already set out in black and white. Would leaving the EU invalidate them?

There are nine mentions of the EU in the full text of the Good Friday Agreement. The case against Brexit rests on one of them. In the annex declaring the agreement to be between the British and Irish governments, they express their wish: “to develop still further the unique relationship between their peoples and the close co-operation between their countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union.”

Is this fundamental or incidental? Is EU membership just the last item on the list of cooperation, friendship and partnership or is it intrinsically bound up with everything on that list?

There are strong arguments to be made either way. What tips the balance for Brexit is that the other eight mentions of the EU in the agreement are unquestionably incidental.

Five of them refer to the British-Irish Council and the North-South Ministerial Council having to “consider” EU “issues” and “matters”, where “relevant” or “appropriate”. This can all survive Brexit, which will render EU issues either irrelevant or still appropriate.

There is a further mention of the North-South Ministerial Council having its views “taken into account and represented appropriately at relevant EU meetings.”

Again, Brexit merely changes what is relevant and appropriate.

There is one mention of the assembly having “an input” to “national policy-making, including on EU issues”, via terms to be agreed with the UK government. Not only can this survive Brexit but the terms could be changed without breaching the agreement.

Finally, there is a mention of “relevant EU programmes”, such as peace and border funding, which “may” be included in “areas for north-south cooperation and implementation”. This is the section of the agreement that sets up cross-border bodies but it is obvious from the wording that the current Special EU Programmes Body is not compulsory.

And that is it. None of these references allude to EU law or institutions, nor is there any mention of the EU in the UK law enacting the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Act 1998 - although that does contain an incidental reference to the EU’s court, the European Court of Justice.

Protections for human rights, languages and national minorities are cited throughout the agreement via European charters but these are all from the Council of Europe, a separate body to the EU.

Even the mention of the EU in the annex is just the third of five paragraphs praising the values and relationships between agreement participants.

Beyond Good Friday, there is a single mention of the EU in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, permitting all EU citizens to join the Northern Ireland civil service. This was to address a restriction against Irish citizens, so the only effect Brexit might have is to make the original intention easier.

Looked at in black and white, it is extraordinary how minor a role Brussels has had in our political settlement. It chipped in a bit more money than we would have received as an EU region regardless - peace funding has been worth about €70 million a year since 1995 - but formally at least, that is the extent of it.

London and Dublin’s real partner in peace was Washington. It would be interesting to hear its views on Brexit and the peace process.

newton@irishnews.com