Bordering on Agreement: Why post-Brexit trade agreements are still being put in place in Northern Ireland

Photo Courtesy: Sinn Féin (via Wikimedia Commons)

It’s 2016, and in a small town outside of Derry my teacher tells a class of 13-year-olds she wouldn’t vote for Brexit. She crosses the border from the south to the north in her thirty-minute commute every day.

Now, in 2024, Brexit discussions are still a point of contention in Northern Ireland. The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union has presented yet another Irish Question that has proven hard for Westminster to resolve.

Like Scotland, Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum. The decision to leave had a larger implication for Northern Ireland, with its neighbour, Ireland, still remaining a member of the EU. My parents can still remember a time where the border between north and south was manned by British armed forces, with their withdrawal only beginning after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the turning point in the peace process for Northern Ireland. Having only ever grown up under this agreement, a hard border seemed like a relic of a particularly troubled past. The decision to leave the European Union threatened a return of this border, with standard EU procedure requiring strict custom checks, in particular for food imports between Member States and non-EU states.

The UK and EU have been determined not to reintroduce a hard border in Ireland, with concerns over the implications of evoking a not-so-distant memory. The Northern Ireland Protocol, introduced in January 2021, avoided doing so. Instead, it introduced checks on goods coming from Great Britain into Northern Ireland and, in doing so, placed a symbolic “Irish Sea border” between the island of Ireland and Great Britain. The dividing line had been drawn and amongst Unionists (those who favour Northern Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom) it marked a move away from the UK. In response, on the 3rd February 2022, the First Minister of Northern Ireland resigned.

Northern Ireland’s legislative assembly, Stormont, is a product of the Good Friday Agreement; in order to maintain peace between both political polities, it is founded on a power-sharing system, dependent upon mutual cooperation. It places Unionists and Nationalists in a symbiotic relationship, since neither can act without the other. When First Minister Paul Givan of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) resigned, it forced the Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill of nationalist party Sinn Féin to correspondingly lose her position. Soon after, the entire parliament was effectively disabled. This is not necessarily a novelty for the Northern Irish people: in its twenty-five years of operation, Stormont has spent ten of those in a state of political paralysis due to intermittent abstention from its members (although notably this paralysis does not extend to their paychecks).

This shutdown, however, did signal to Westminster quite how deep the resentment towards the Irish Sea border runs amongst Unionists. This in turn encouraged the adoption of the Windsor Framework, an amendment to the Northern Irish Protocol agreed upon by both the United Kingdom and the European Union on 24th March 2023, coming into force in October of the same year. Whilst the Irish Sea border was not entirely removed, the Windsor Framework represented a relaxation of the trade restrictions between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and allowed for Stormont to utilise a “brake”, objecting to EU rules affecting trade agreements in Northern Ireland. Goods now destined to remain in Northern Ireland will be in a “green lane” of fewer checks, whereas those moving into the EU will still be subject to full controls. These proposed changes were sufficient for the DUP to agree to return to Stormont - for now.

The shutdown of Stormont isn’t the largest political shift Northern Ireland has seen. In the 2022 election following the shutdown, nationalist party Sinn Féin won 27 seats, replacing the DUP as the largest party for the first time ever. When Stormont resumed on the 3rd February, it resumed under its first ever nationalist First Minister. This is monumental in Irish history, and it will certainly be felt by both Unionists and Westminster that the Northern Irish Executive will be led by a party which champions a united Ireland - as well as a return to the EU. 

Also, whilst the re-establishment of a legislative body is certainly welcome, it is yet to be seen whether the new Brexit trade agreements for Northern Ireland can prevent future suspensions of Stormont and, if they do occur, how long they will last this time.