Northern Ireland has begun to experience the tensions that the EU and British Brexit negotiators tried at all costs not to arouse for years.
The spigot, apparently, was the attempt by the European Commission - from which it quickly backed down - to invoke a security mechanism contemplated in the United Kingdom Withdrawal Agreement to control exports of vaccines from the Republic of Ireland (territory of Ireland). the EU) to the British side of the island.
The maneuver, a collateral effect of the conflict that confronted Brussels with the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca, ended up unleashing the ire of London, Dublin, and Northern Irish unionist and republican politicians.
A few days later, threatening graffiti around the ports of Belfast and Larne, in which customs workers were identified as "targets", led the autonomous Northern Irish government and the EU itself to temporarily withdraw their workers for safety.
In these two port facilities there are checkpoints to carry out the new livestock and phytosanitary inspections imposed by Brexit, which are carried out between Northern Ireland and the rest of the British territory to avoid a physical border between the two Ireland and comply with the agreements of peace that ended decades of conflict in 1998.
The Commission's blunder with the vaccine export restrictions has provided the Boris Johnson government with a golden opportunity to demand a renegotiation of the protocol on Northern Ireland, one of the most politically thorny chapters for London of the Brexit deal. .
The United Kingdom has demanded new concessions from Brussels as a way to calm the spirits in its Irish province.
Brussels interprets that the customs problems registered in recent days are not due to the protocol, but to Brexit.
And that last Friday's skid with the restrictions regulation has little or nothing to do with the tensions of the last few days in Northern Ireland.
But the British Government has written harshly to the Commission to demand a renegotiation.
And after its mistake, the community body has been forced to study London's complaints.
"I expected a firm response, but the reaction has been much more negative than expected," explained by letter Johnson's chief of staff (with ministerial rank), Michael Gove, to the vice president of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic on Tuesday.
They both chair the joint committee that oversees the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement signed in January 2020. "There has been a sense of shock and anger among all political parties, civil society and business organizations in Northern Ireland," Gove said. .
Johnson's henchman reproached the Community Executive in his text for having tried to invoke the security mechanism contemplated in article 16 of the Irish protocol without prior notice to London, as established in that annex to the Withdrawal Agreement, and demanded immediate solutions to appease spirits.
Specifically, the extension of the grace period in customs controls of certain goods, which expires on April 1, until June 2023. Gove specifically requires this extension for the line of supplies to supermarkets, for frozen meat, for services of parcels and for medicines.
The Conservative Party's tougher line has also increased the pressure on Johnson.
He never accepted the final transfer of the prime minister to carry out his Brexit agreement: keep Northern Ireland in the customs space and the internal market of the EU and transfer customs controls to the Irish Sea, to avoid that a new one could be lifted hard border between the two Irlandes that would endanger the peace reached in the Good Friday Accords.
The pro-British Northern Irish parties, the so-called unionists, felt betrayed, and have taken advantage of the Brussels setback with the vaccine conflict to raise their protests.
Johnson threatened in the House of Commons on Wednesday to invoke the controversial article that the EU threatened to use.
"We believe that it is very important that the [Ireland] Protocol does not erect unnecessary barriers - or barriers of any kind - in the Irish Sea," Johnson proclaimed.
Despite the fact that Irish and Northern Irish politicians have made an effort in recent hours to call for calm, and that the autonomous police of the British territory of the island itself have ruled out that the threatening graffiti are the work of paramilitary groups, there is a generalized conviction that a hornet's nest that had been asleep for years can stir again.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin described the latest events as "ugly and sinister".
Community Vice President Sefcovic met with Gove on Wednesday;
with Arlene Foster, Prime Minister of the Home Rule of Northern Ireland and leader of the Unionist DUP party;
and with Michelle O'Neill, Northern Irish Vice President and member of Sinn Féin, the Republican party in favor of the reunification of Ireland.
You have heard first-hand their concerns and the description of the tension in the area.
All have demanded a solution to the current political crisis.
"What is required now are political solutions, not technical (...) Northern Ireland today would not be what it is if the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Accords had been carried out on a technical and legalistic basis," he had warned. Go to Sefcovic in the letter sent hours before.
Finally, both have agreed - and announced in a joint statement - to sit down again to review the Irish protocol.
“We unreservedly condemn any threat or intimidation.
The safety and well-being of the people of Northern Ireland and our staff in the area will always be our priority, ”the text said.
The Joint Committee has agreed to meet again in London next week to continue discussing “the appropriate development of the protocol, which protects the gains of the peace process, maintains stability in the area and avoids any disruption of the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants. or a hard border on the island of Ireland ”.