The British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, will travel to Brussels this Thursday to meet with the Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of relations with the United Kingdom, Maros Sefcovic, in what will be the first face-to-face meeting since the changeover at the head of the British Government.
With this appointment, the parties highlight the reactivation of talks to resolve the dispute over London’s unilateral failure to comply with the provisions for the border in the Úlster negotiated in the framework of the Brexit.
Already at the beginning of the month, the President of the Community Executive, Ursula Von der Leyen, described the contacts with the British Government since the arrival of Rishi Sunak in Downing Street as «encouraging», with a view to resolving outstanding issues such as the implementation of this protocol for Northern Ireland.
«Our talks with London are now marked by a new, more pragmatic spirit,» Von der Leyen said at the time, as evidence of the reactivation of contacts in the interests of resolving tensions.
The U.K. central government and unionist parties have criticized the consequences of the Northern Ireland protocol, as they consider the limits imposed on internal trade in exchange for Northern Ireland remaining in the Common Market to be excessive.
The EU, for its part, defends that they are the same provisions that were «negotiated, agreed and ratified» also by the British when the terms of the divorce were agreed and warns that their non-compliance means violating an international Treaty. Brussels, in fact, denounced the United Kingdom before the Court of Justice of the European Union for this.
