Johnson Should Accept Our Neighbour's Offer – But He Wants To ‘Keep Brexit Alive'

The proposals from the European Commission to reform the Northern Ireland protocol go further than expected.

- Andrew Grice

They are designed to be practical measures to ease the everyday problems in the province, rather than as a string of concessions to the UK.

The ideas, to be unveiled by Maros Sefcovic, the commission’s vice-president, include a green lane for goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland without many of the current customs or plant and animal checks, which should allow the free flow of medicines and food (sausages included) and a red lane for products destined for Ireland and the continent.

The measures answer many of the criticisms the UK has made about the way the EU has implemented the protocol. “We have gone to the outer limits of what member states, particularly France, will wear,” one Brussels source told me. “These proposals are a sensible basis for further discussion, not a take-it-or-leave offer.”

They are within the framework of the current agreement and do not amount to the “new protocol” demanded by David Frost, the Brexit minister. Frost should not reject the EU’s conciliatory move out of hand if he is serious about finding a compromise. But he is bound to express disappointment that the EU will not remove the European Court of Justice’s role overseeing the protocol. No surprise there: officials say this is “a matter of EU law” because Northern Ireland remains in the single market.