The European Commission and the UK government held a meeting on Monday 21 February with mixed results on resolving implementation issues of the Northern Ireland Protocol or the withdrawal agreement, with Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič saying that the ninth meeting of the Joint Committee did not achieve a “breakthrough” or mark a “turning point” in the talks.
The Vice President and UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss discussed both the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Commission’s October proposals to relax rules on customs and plant health controls, as well as citizens’ rights and the 2019 withdrawal agreement.
On this last point, the Vice-President expressed particular “concerns” on two specific issues related to the temporary residence status of EU citizens living in the UK and the law applicable to such persons. The Commission believes that London is in breach of the withdrawal agreement even here.
The first problem is that those who arrived before the end of the transition period with provisional status must apply for permanent residence status within a period of 5 years or risk losing their provisional status, which goes against the withdrawal agreement.
The other problem is that these applicants for permanent status do not know whether they fall under the Withdrawal Agreement or under UK immigration law. “For the moment, it doesn’t make much difference in practice”, said one EU source, but “in future, it’s not clear whether the laws will diverge”.
On the Northern Ireland protocol, the two sides also agreed to continue discussions, with the Commission saying it had so far made slight progress on customs controls, but less progress on rules for sanitary and phytosanitary controls, as the UK still did not “understand” that it should apply EU-aligned standards here, another source said.
On access to data on checks carried out between Britain and Northern Ireland, things are improving, the source said, although the UK should have given the European authorities access a year ago.
The EU’s European Affairs Ministers will return to the subject on Tuesday 22 February with the Vice-President. French Secretary of State Clément Beaune told a press briefing that Liz Truss’ messages are “somewhat reassuring” for the moment, “even if the difficulties have not disappeared”. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)