Diplomats expect the British government to trigger Article 16 of the protocol within weeks. How will the EU respond?
Diplomats now expect the British government to trigger Article 16 of the protocol within weeks. This permits unilateral “safeguard” measures if the protocol creates “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties” or diversion of trade. The government says this condition is clearly met, entitling it to invoke Article 16 and take corrective steps. It is seeking fresh legal advice to justify the move.is preparing to respond to what officials have termed the nuclear option.
This would all take some months. Meanwhile the British government may hope to show that the checks supposedly required to stop leakage into the single market are otiose. Mij Rahman of the Eurasia Group, a consultancy, says this prospect makes many in thekeen to retaliate more quickly. Possibilities include tariffs on fish and many food exports, as well as on whisky.
The biggest risk is that, under the threat of terminating the trade deal, Mr Johnson may revert to his atavistic preference for no deal. His team is fostering the delusion that he was forced to accept the protocol by pro-Europeans who tied his hands in the Brexit talks, and by the ineptitude of his predecessor, Theresa May. This skates over the fact that Mr Johnson himself chose to create the border in the Irish Sea, which Mrs May once said no British prime minister could ever accept.
The revived spectre of no deal would be bad for Britain’s fragile economy. But with his popularity dipping amid a sleaze scandal, Mr Johnson may find fighting with thepolitically attractive, even if it casts doubt on his claim to have got Brexit done. Labour’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, will find it hard to work out a way to respond to such a scenario. And experience has shown that when it comes to Brexit, politics trumps economics—on all sides.
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