Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is meeting this Thursday, January 12, with the leaders of the political parties of Northern Ireland to try to resolve the blockage linked to the post-Brexit provisions in the British province.
For nearly a year, the Unionists of the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), seeing in the controls on goods from Great Britain a threat to the place of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, have been boycotting the local institutions.
They demand the abandonment of the Northern Irish protocol which introduces these controls or at the very least profound modifications.
An agreement is “still a long way off”
While a change of tone in the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union gives hope for a positive outcome, the leader of the DUP Jeffrey Donaldson estimated Thursday that an agreement “
is still a long way off
”.
“
Currently, while progress has been made on technical issues, there remain major political issues in these negotiations that have not been addressed
,” he told the BBC.
The Irish Prime Minister's visit comes the day after that of British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
A “positive commitment”
On Monday, London and Brussels reached progress on the issue of EU access to UK computer systems.
Negotiated at the same time as the Brexit treaty, the Northern Irish protocol effectively keeps Northern Ireland, which has the only British land border with the EU, in the single European market.
The text aims both to avoid the return of a hard border, as provided for by the 1998 peace agreements which ended three decades of bloody conflict, and to protect the integrity of the single European market.
After speaking with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday, the Irish prime minister hailed the "
positive engagement
" in talks between London and Brussels.
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His trip to Northern Ireland will allow him to hear the views of different parties in the British province, he added.
British Opposition Leader Keir Starmer is also traveling to Northern Ireland on Thursday.
This succession of displacements comes at the approach of the deadline set for January 19 for the restart of the Northern Irish institutions, without which new elections risk being called.