Opinion

Newton Emerson: EU protocol scare tactics an ominous sign

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.

Trucks leaving Larne Port where checks are carried out as part of the Northern Ireland Protocol. PA Photo
Trucks leaving Larne Port where checks are carried out as part of the Northern Ireland Protocol. PA Photo Trucks leaving Larne Port where checks are carried out as part of the Northern Ireland Protocol. PA Photo

The EU can make trouble over the protocol bill and be dishonest and reckless in doing so.

We should not be so mesmerised by London’s misdeeds as to be blinded to dissembling from Brussels.

Two weeks ago, in an initial response to the UK’s bill to disapply the protocol, a “senior EU official” informed RTE of “large scale attempted smuggling of goods into the single market via Northern Ireland.”

“Last year there were seizures at northern ports of weapons, counterfeit smartphones, heroine, cocaine, tobacco (and) counterfeit medicines, which were potentially destined for the EU single market,” the source said.

Although the report was widely read and should have proved a bombshell allegation, nothing has been heard of it since, presumably because it was met with scepticism from trade and security experts.

Goods are seized when border checks are working. ‘Potentially destined’ appears to mean ‘not destined’. No examples of seizures or volumes of goods were identified.

If the checks were conducted as part of the protocol, then it is working despite all the things the EU is complaining about: lack of customs posts, failure to share real-time data and unilateral grace periods - including on medicine.

If the checks were intelligence-led operations against organised crime, as seizures of drugs and guns suggest, that is a parallel issue to the protocol. Such checks have always taken place and were stepped up ahead of Brexit in partnership with An Garda Síochána. Testifying on this work to a House of Lords committee in November 2020, the PSNI said there are 83 criminal gangs in Northern Ireland, with 16 engaged in cross-border smuggling.

The EU made its claim of a ‘large-scale attempted’ threat to the single market to justify restarting legal action over the grace periods. Brussels wanted to portray this as more than a tit-for-tat escalation in its dispute with London over the protocol bill, so it has engaged in highly irresponsible scare tactics. This is an ominous portent.

When the UK first requested extension of agrifood grace periods in early 2021, the EU was concerned that even a few more months without checks would establish ‘facts on the ground’ - an absence of smuggling the UK would use to suggest the checks were unnecessary.

But by July the EU had relented, accepting the UK had extended the grace periods indefinitely and that this posed no threat to the single market, certainly in the short to medium term.

The government did go on to use the absence of smuggling to claim checks were unnecessary. However, Brussels remained calm until two weeks ago, when someone decided to test out the notion that Northern Ireland had already turned into a sinister menace to the EU last year, in the midst of the grace period debate.

We are likely to hear more of this claim, despite its initial outing falling flat, as the protocol bill is essentially a facts on the ground strategy. Whether or not the bill becomes law, or the DUP restores devolution, or London and Brussels discuss a new deal, there is one constant ahead: the UK is about to spend a year or more designing and implementing its own minimal version of the sea border and claiming it works, either as leverage in negotiations or as an end point in itself.

Naturally, this will provoke the EU into claiming the opposite, by fair means or foul.

The facts-on-the-ground border, which I suppose we must call the foggy border, has an excellent chance of working for a while, even if it is operated in defiance of a hostile EU. However, the arrangement will be fundamentally accident-prone and unsustainable beyond its first major mishap.

No frontier is completely secure against tainted goods or smuggling, let alone animal diseases. Part of the purpose of checks is not so much to prevent things going wrong as to have a serious, traceable and accountable system in place because things inevitably do go wrong. Trading partners and international standards require it.

So when the first deadly English sausage turns up in France via Larne, or whatever the scandal may be, it will be no defence to say this was as rare an incident as would have occurred under any border arrangement. There will still be an almighty political crisis and tighter controls will have to be agreed.

What the RTE briefing has shown is that if such a crisis does not manifest itself in time for the EU’s negotiating convenience, Brussels is perfectly capable of just making something up.