Ireland challenges Brexit border plan, mulls legal recourse amid straining EU-UK relations

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP)  of Northern Ireland, of pro-British identity, are seeking legal action against the post-Brexit border plan, leader Arlene Foster said on Sunday. The party aims to challenge the Northern Ireland (NI) protocol, as the EU-UK struggles to find a trade balance with respect to the shipment of British goods to Northern Ireland. Cargoes transporting UK shipment to Northern Ireland have been imposed with severe checks as North shares a border with EU member-state Ireland, and UK abandoned the EU's economic structures on Dec. 31 after Brexit. In an official statement released Sunday, DUP Leader Arlene Foster, Deputy Leader and Peer Nigel Dodds, Westminster Leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Westminster Chief Whip Sammy Wilson said that they were joining the unionists from across the UK to challenge the Northern Ireland Protocol’s compatibility with Act of Union 1800, the Northern Ireland Act of 1998 and the Belfast Agreement.

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Violation of Belfast Agreement

The  Act of Union is the unfettered trade across the UK, which, the Northern Ireland ministers demand throughout the region under the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), or Belfast Agreement, which states that there would be no change in the policies without the consent of the majority’ whether Northern Ireland should remain in the UK or united Ireland. Ahead of the post-Brexit NI protocol debate to draft an agreed mechanism in the House of Commons, North’s First Minister said, that she was going to legally challenge the two-pronged legal and political assault on GFA. Furthermore, leaders threatened judicial review proceedings, saying that neither the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive nor the people of Northern Ireland consented to the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s agreed post-Brexit trade protocols. “They certainly did not consent to the arrangements for those checks being determined by a power over which we have no democratic say,” read the statement issued by Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). 

DUP Leader Arlene Foster, also urged the Government to trigger article 16 that would “rupture” the east-west relationship. Her remarks came ahead of a debate in Westminster, pushed by DUP’s Parliamentary e-petition that questioned the “flawed and deeply damaging” NI Protocol.“On Monday, Parliament will debate the e-petition I tabled calling for the triggering of Article 16 and unfettered trade from GB-NI. Over 140k have signed the petition with the 100k signatures threshold for a debate surpassed in just over 24hrs,” Foster said in the statement. 

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