Ulster Unionist Party leader, Steve Aiken OBE MLA, has stated that the UK Government and EU urgently need to come up with alternative arrangements to the Protocol when Michael Gove and EU Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič meet on Thursday.

Mr Aiken said:

“The NI Protocol continues in its wrecking path undermining Northern Ireland. Just over a week after the EU triggered Article 16, not to protect the ‘peace process’, but as part of a tawdry attempt to pressurise a Pharma company, the much-respected Ulster Bank PMI survey stated that Northern Ireland ‘finds itself on the wrong side of a regulatory sea-border which has effectively redrawn the map of the UK’s single market and customs union’. The same report pointed out that our firms ‘signalled the highest rate of input cost inflation across the UK with input prices rising at their fastest rate since June 2018. Higher shipping costs were widely cited alongside higher raw material costs and increased transport costs linked to the new Brexit arrangements’.

“Then an article published by Ulster University`s Senior Economist Esmond Birnie and Queen`s University Senior Lecturer in economics, Graham Brownlow, pointed out that those hoping for the ‘best of both worlds’ scenario could find that this will ‘become less likely to the extent that persistent frictions GB-to-NI lead to higher costs associated with the new regulatory environment.’

“Michael Gove also stated that it is clear the protocol is not working. Furthermore, in rare unanimity, all the main Northern Ireland political parties also agree that it isn`t working, albeit to different extents.

“When Michael Gove goes to meet the EU Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič on Thursday, he needs to be focused on emphasising the urgency of alternative arrangements. We cannot afford to continue down the line of a lacklustre political response to issues which are having a direct economic and societal impact on Northern Ireland.

“The Protocol has already driven a coach and horses through the Belfast Agreement. I hope they will not propose to reverse back over it again.”