The Windsor Framework
Leyen was the product of an arduous 4 months of negotiations. The newly coined Windsor Framework aimed to tackle the shortcomings of its predecessor, notably the stipulation that all goods travelling into or through Northern Ireland had to undergo inspections and document checks (even if they were to stay in Northern Ireland). The new deal made a distinction between goods that have Northern Ireland as their final destination, and goods that will go on to enter the EU. Goods destined for the EU are 'red lane' goods and will still undergo extensive checks and require documentation to ensure they meet EU standards; whilst goods that will go no further than Northern Ireland will be subject to no checks or require any more documentation beyond being registered to the UK trusted trader scheme. Moreover, to tackle the democratic deficit arising from NI being required to be 'dynamically aligned' with various EU laws, a new 'Stormont Brake' would allow for the Northern Ireland Assembly to block the imposition of any new EU laws, (had a cross-community vote agreed on the issue, and the EU acknowledge that there are issues in the first place.) The new framework has removed over 1700 EU laws, with only 3% of EU rules remaining, and with this 3% comes privileged access to the EU single market so as to avoid a hard border within the island of Ireland - placing Northern Ireland in a unique position with unrestricted access to both the UK internal market and the EU single market. These EU laws have been replaced by UK ones, with Northern Ireland being subject to the same rates of VAT as the rest of the UK, and food and medicine regulation being UK-managed, rather than EU-managed as had been the case under the previous Protocol. Northern Irish consumers can now buy the same foods, drinks, and medicines that they would be able to buy had they been in mainland Britain, which they could not do before. At the surface level, this new deal is a staggering improvement from the old Protocol and could be viewed as a resounding result for Unionists, and for both Northern Ireland and UK firms. However, despite appearing to be a marked success, the reality is that this new deal is unremarkable in practice. One of the main reasons that the Framework was initially so highly praised within the UK, was that the extent of the EU concessions on issues such as regulation of goods – which seemed almost too good to be true for UK firms and consumers. This, it subsequently turned out, was because they were too good to be true! The Framework claimed to remove 'any sense of a border in the Irish Sea' by removing all bureaucracy and red tape for British firms wanting to trade with Northern Ireland, And while it is true that the 'green lane' has allowed for the trade of goods such as chilled meats, which had previously been banned under the old Protocol, the Framework has not totally removed the red tape around internal trade within the UK. The Trusted Trader scheme is complicated to use and register to, with firms needing to ‘prove that they are of good financial standing, that they have a clear understanding of their obligations under the scheme' and that they 'are able to correctly identify the goods they move to Northern Ireland'. This discourages smaller British businesses from signing up to the scheme as they would struggle to afford the compliance costs, and they could simply just trade with the rest of the UK which is figuratively and literally on their doorstep - with a population 35x the size of Northern Irelands, and no red tape getting in the way of their trading. It is also very much the case that there are still checks on 'green lane' goods, with identity checks in operation on retail food goods being scaled down from 10% to 5% by 2025 (whilst security checks on green lane goods remain on a ‘risk - based’ and ‘intelligence - led’ basis.) In addition, there are several procedural formalities required fo r goods to be allowed entry into the 'green lane', such as the arduous new labelling criteria that UK firms will have to adhere to. Marks and Spencer warned that these new labelling requirements would add ‘ overbearing and prohibitive costs ’ . Labels stating ‘not for EU’ are now required on every individual packet and container, on shelves in shops, and on posters in shops. British firms would likely have to use this
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