Northern Ireland’s biggest pro-UK party is for the first time triggering a mechanism allowing legislators to object to the automatic application of EU law in the region following Brexit.
The Democratic Unionist party said on Thursday it was pulling the so-called “Stormont brake” — introduced as a concession to unionists — over changes to an EU law to alter the font on the labels of chemical products.
It said it had the backing of 35 unionist members of the region’s Stormont Assembly, including from the small Ulster Unionist Party, hardline Traditional Unionist Voice and one independent unionist.
That is five more than required to notify the UK’s Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, and trigger the lengthy objection process. But the brake does not constitute a veto and there was no guarantee implementation of the law would be halted.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson said the changed law would have “a significant, negative and prolonged impact on everyday life in Northern Ireland” — the grounds for the UK government to uphold the objection and escalate it to a joint UK-EU committee on post-Brexit implementation.
“Applying this law . . . would represent a further fracture in the UK internal market, driving up costs for manufacturers and creating a chill factor for GB-based companies currently supplying the NI market,” Robinson added.
He said the chemicals trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland was worth about £1bn a year. The Chemical Industries Association, a trade body, was one of two respondents to a public consultation on the issue by Stormont.
Gavin Robinson: ‘Applying this law . . . would represent a further fracture in the UK internal market, driving up costs for manufacturers.’ © Liam McBurney/PA
Steve Aiken of the UUP said the issue might sound minor “but it affects everything, from washing up to fuels to nitrates” and warned of potential “unintended consequences” if the legislators were “fobbed off” by the UK and EU.
“We genuinely don’t know which way it will go — but if the government does accept it, then it’s a major U-turn because it would mean accepting that EU law amendments can have a significant impact on everyday life in Northern Ireland,” said Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queen’s University Belfast.
The move puts Brexit back in the spotlight just as Sir Keir Starmer’s government is seeking to improve relations with Brussels after years of friction under the previous Conservative government.
The UK government said it had not received formal notification but “there are statutory obligations to assess any Stormont Brake notification against the tests set out by law and we will abide by the law in that regard”.
In order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland after the UK left the EU in 2020, Northern Ireland retained access to the EU’s single market for goods.
But that meant still accepting some EU law, upsetting hardline unionists who considered that it undermined their sovereignty as part of the UK. The DUP objected so strongly that it boycotted Stormont for two years, paralysing local politics. The assembly was only restored in February.
The brake was introduced last year under the Windsor framework governing post-Brexit trading arrangements. It allowed objections to be raised in the “most exceptional circumstances and as a last resort”.
Once the secretary of state is notified that the threshold for triggering the brake has been met, which is expected on Friday, the matter is out of Stormont’s hands.
The secretary of state can reject the objection or escalate it to the EU-UK Joint Committee, which governs the Brexit withdrawal treaties. The lengthy process can ultimately halt the application of updated EU laws but, if so, it would leave in place the original EU legislation.
