Supreme Court has done widely rejected An appeal by unionist MPs from Northern Ireland to declare the UK region’s post-Brexit trade rules unconstitutional.
In an eight-minute oral ruling, the five judges of the UK’s final constitutional arbitrator found no merit in the case and supported dismissal outright. Belfast High Court And this court of Appeal in Northern Ireland.
Wednesday’s decision found that the Northern Ireland Trade Protocol – a key part of the UK’s withdrawal agreement from the EU that keeps Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, subject to EU goods rules – was valid.
Unionists supporting the case, among them former Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster and the late Ulster unionist leader David Trimble, argued that the Protocol was illegal on three grounds: it violated the original union act which brought the whole of Ireland into the UK in 1801; It needed democratic support from the Northern Ireland Assembly to go ahead; And such a vote requires majority unionist support.
But the judges completely sided with the two earlier Belfast decisions.
He noted that the Act of Union had been amended several times over the past two centuries, including when Northern Ireland itself was created in 1921. It was valid, he concluded, that parliamentary approval had been given to amend that Act once again for a protocol agreement. Change.
They agreed with earlier rulings that no vote was needed from any regional UK body, including the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, for the UK-EU treaty containing the Protocol trade agreement to go ahead.
And he rejected the unionists’ final contention that any Stormont vote should need support from a majority of its unionist members in order to maintain the Protocol trade arrangement. While UK rules for rolling out the protocol stipulate that Stormont can vote To keep the system in place until late 2024, this democratic test would only need support from a simple majority of members.
Federalists in the Stormont chamber are outnumbered by Irish nationalists and middle-ground politicians, who support the protocol mainly on the grounds that it avoids creating barriers to cross-border trade with EU member Republic of Ireland. . This means a 2024 vote – which will be needed a working assembly – will be sure to produce all Pro-Protocol Results,
Democratic Unionist Party is Refuse to form a new cross-community government at Stormont unless the UK “replaces” the Protocol. Negotiations underway between London and Brussels reportedly around To produce a compromise breakthrough that would reduce, but retain, the need to check goods arriving from the UK at ports in Northern Ireland.