BELFAST (Reuters) – The leader of Northern Ireland’s biggest pro-British political party hopes to receive a “definitive” response from the British government on its concerns over post-Brexit trade within weeks, but it could be months before that ends a political stalemate.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) collapsed the devolved executive 18 months ago in protest at the first post-Brexit deal with the EU. They then rejected a fresh agreement, the so-called Windsor Framework, struck in February to end many of the new trade checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The British government subsequently pledged to introduce laws to further protect trade with Northern Ireland and placate the DUP, but has yet to table any proposals and it is unclear how they would be compatible with the revised EU-UK trade deal.
“I hope that within the next few weeks we will have a definitive response from the British government,” DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson told reporters after meeting Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Belfast.
“I don’t know if Stormont (Northern Ireland’s assembly) will be restored in weeks or months, that depends very much on the (British) government’s response to the concerns that we have raised about the Windsor Framework.”
Unlike the rest of the UK, since Brexit, Northern Ireland has effectively remained in the EU’s single market to keep its land border with Ireland open, a key aspect of the 1998 Good Friday peace deal that ended decades of sectarian bloodshed.
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson, writing by Padraic Halpin; editing by William James)
