According to the White House, US President Joe Biden will urge Prime Minister Liz Truss to cooperate with the EU to defuse concerns around post-Brexit economic arrangements in Northern Ireland.
They will meet for the first time privately on Wednesday, following Ms. Truss’ trip to New York for the UN session.
Disputable UK efforts to veto the Northern Ireland Protocol have caused tensions between the two presidents.
According to Ms. Truss, she won’t let issues with the transaction “drift.”
She said the UK must address problems preventing the formation of a new administration in Northern Ireland and enable “free-flowing trade east to west as well as north to south” when speaking to reporters in New York.
Ms. Truss and Mr. Biden concurred that a negotiated settlement to the dispute between London and Brussels over the convention, which was signed when Boris Johnson was prime minister, is preferable.
Said Ms. Truss: “I’ve always been clear that I prefer a negotiated resolution to address those issues, and I will keep looking for it. But I won’t stand by and let this circumstance deteriorate.”
The basics
- The Northern Ireland Protocol, which is a component of the Brexit agreement, prevents checkpoints from being encountered by lorries traveling from Northern Ireland (in the UK) to the Irish Republic (in the EU)
- Instead, when commodities from the rest of the UK (England, Scotland, and Wales) arrive in Northern Ireland, they are examined against EU regulations.
- Due to the sensitive nature of the Irish border and the tumultuous political history of Northern Ireland, the UK and the EU adopted this solution.
Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor for the US, told reporters on Tuesday that the president would urge the UK and EU to strike an agreement to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement, the peace accord that governs Northern Ireland.
Ms. Truss declined to discuss the protocol with President Emmanuel Macron of France on Tuesday, and No. 10 did not indicate whether she would bring it up with Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission.
But Mr. Sullivan made it clear that when they met as part of Ms. Truss’s travel to address the UN General Assembly, Mr. Biden would discuss it “in some depth” with her.
The Good Friday Agreement, which is the cornerstone of peace and stability in Northern Ireland, must be safeguarded, Mr. Biden will “convey his strong stance,” according to his aide.
The post-Brexit deal known as the Northern Ireland Protocol permits unique trading arrangements between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
It prevents the need for a hard border between the UK and Ireland after Brexit by keeping Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market for goods.
But ever since it became effective at the beginning of 2021, it has caused conflict.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the second-largest party in the most recent Stormont elections, opposes the protocol and has refused to participate in a power-sharing government until its concerns are addressed. As a result, Northern Ireland currently lacks a functioning devolved administration.
Earlier this week, the UK government informed the EU that, despite continued legal action from Brussels over this stance, it will keep delaying customs checks on goods transiting from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
The EU and other critics believe that the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which the government is advancing, would violate international law by suspending certain provisions of the agreement based on which the UK left the EU.
According to the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason, the prime minister’s admission that a UK-US trade agreement was still a long way off was seen as an effort to counter concerns from the White House that her position on the protocol may jeopardize any agreement.
When Mr. Biden tweeted on Tuesday that he was “sick and tired of trickle-down economics,” which holds that lowering taxes for businesses and the affluent will assist poorer employees as money flows through the economy, it brought to light other contrasts between the two leaders.
Although it doesn’t appear that Ms. Truss was the target of the comment, it does highlight the political divide between the two leaders in advance of their meeting. The official spokesperson for the prime minister referred to the notion that Mr. Biden was making a reference to Ms. Truss in his tweet as “ludicrous.”
Mr. Biden’s post, according to Foreign Office Minister Gillian Keegan, was about the US economy rather than the UK.
She told BBC Breakfast, “I don’t think it’s a reflection on our policies because there’s no way you could call our strategy as trickle down,” adding that the government has recently put in place a “huge package” to help those in need.
In recent weeks, the prime minister has made clear his intention to lower taxes, believing that doing so will increase general economic development and prosperity.
The meeting between Mr. Biden and Ms. Truss had been slated to take place in London on Sunday when the president visited the UK for the Queen’s funeral, but it was postponed.
