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British Minister of State Michael Gove, Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Photo:
Dominic Lipinski / dpa
Michael Gove's tone leaves nothing to be desired in terms of clarity.
The reaction to the EU Commission's mistake last Friday was "even more negative than I expected," writes the British Minister of State to EU Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič.
Throughout all parties, business and civil society in Northern Ireland there was "shock and anger" that the Commission had initially considered checking vaccine deliveries on the border with Ireland.
In his letter published on Wednesday, Gove calls on the Commission to extend the grace period for customs controls between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which expires at the end of July, to January 2023.
If the EU does not comply - by the end of this week - his country will "use all the instruments at its disposal," threatens Gove.
This makes it clear: the British government wants to use the opportunity to weaken one of its central concessions in the Brexit negotiations or to cash in on it: Northern Ireland's partial retention in the EU internal market.
Own goal of the EU Commission
The EU Commission itself gave her the chance to do so.
On Friday afternoon, the Brussels authority published a hastily drafted ordinance intended to force pharmaceutical companies in the EU to register exports of corona vaccines.
With this transparency mechanism one only wants to get an overview of how much vaccine is leaving the EU, said the Commission.
There could be no question of export bans.
That was already interpreted differently - especially since the background of the action was the surprising announcement by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca that it would deliver significantly less vaccine to the EU than contractually promised.
However, the Commission caused a storm of outrage by creating the impression in a first version of the regulation that it wanted to introduce controls on the border with Northern Ireland in order to prevent the export of vaccines.
The fact that the Commission withdrew the draft within hours and later corrected it did little to calm the situation down.
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EU Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič
Photo: Alexandros Michailidis / imago images / Hans Lucas
Avoiding a new hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland was an iron principle of the EU Commission in the Brexit negotiations for years.
The fact that she of all people would now trigger the so-called protective measures in Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol - part of the Withdrawal Agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom - has not only triggered shock waves on the Irish island.
This also caused a lot of trouble in Brussels.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen - already under pressure due to various setbacks in the procurement of vaccines - had a spokesman explain that her Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, who is responsible for foreign trade, was responsible for the breakdown.
Until now, von der Leyen only assumed personal responsibility behind closed doors.
On Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning she was involved in meetings of several groups in the European Parliament.
"I am responsible for everything that happens in the Commission," said von der Leyen, according to participants, the MPs of the Christian Democratic EPP group.
And she is "relieved" that a solution has now been found in the final version of the transparency mechanism.
"We will do what we have to do"
But the British government is apparently not satisfied with that.
Gove demands that the customs relief for supermarkets, postal parcels, pharmaceuticals, steel and meat products otherwise banned in the EU be continued until January 2023 - at least.
Gove emphasizes several times that you need "long-term solutions".
When asked what the threat of "all available instruments" meant, a British government spokeswoman referred to Boris Johnson's words at a question time in the London Parliament.
The Prime Minister had threatened there on Wednesday to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
"We'll do what we have to do to prevent a border on the Irish Sea," Johnson said.
The Northern Ireland Protocol provides for precisely such a customs border: the part of the country belonging to the United Kingdom remains partly in the EU's internal market.
This will prevent a new hard border with Ireland, which would jeopardize the still fragile peace on the island.
In return, a number of goods that come from Great Britain to Northern Ireland are checked in the Northern Irish seaports - so that Northern Ireland does not become the gateway for goods that do not meet European standards, as the EU fears.
After the breakdown on Friday, the controls were suspended until further notice due to threats of violence.
Johnson's predecessor Theresa May had categorically ruled out such a solution because she feared a step towards the separation of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom.
Johnson, however, was forced to agree to the Northern Ireland Protocol - and has since tried to abolish it, most recently with the help of a single market law that would break international law.
"The British never wanted the Northern Ireland Protocol," says an EU diplomat.
"Now they see another chance to get rid of it." And they try that with remarkable chutzpah.
Gove complained to Šefčovič that London was not consulted on the second, corrected version of the export transparency mechanism - just as if Great Britain still had a say in EU laws.
Gove also emphasizes the need to "protect the Good Friday Agreement and to strengthen trust in it."
The London Brexiteers did not care about the situation in Ireland and Northern Ireland until it jeopardized their favorite project.
And Gove in particular has so far not been noticed as a champion for the 1998 peace agreement.
In 2000, for example, he published a pamphlet entitled "The Price of Peace".
In it, Gove called the Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of violence in Ireland, a "moral stain" and a "humiliation of our army, police and parliament".
He even indirectly compared the treaty with the appeasement policy towards the Nazis in the 1930s.
Now, however, Gove apparently sees the chance to tie Northern Ireland - which appears to be on the way to unification with the Republic of Ireland in the long term - more closely to Great Britain.
It is of course questionable whether the Commission's error in vaccine export controls is sufficient.
"The Commission has done itself a disservice," says an EU diplomat, "but that is the only reason it does not have to give in to this blackmail attempt."
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