On Tuesday 22 March, the European Affairs Ministers of the EU27 held a brief public debate on how the European Commission can defend their interests vis-à-vis the United Kingdom and possibly take autonomous measures on their behalf to enforce the two agreements signed in 2019 and 2020: the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič thus briefly presented the two draft regulations published on 11 March setting out the arrangements for deciding and consulting Member States, should the Commission decide to take autonomous measures, as a means of ensuring that the UK complies with its obligations.
The EU can thus, under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, suspend or terminate the application of one or more programmes, if the UK does not pay its financial contribution or makes significant changes to certain initial conditions.
The EU should also be able to take appropriate measures, if effective recourse to a binding dispute settlement mechanism under the agreements is not possible because the UK does not cooperate in making such recourse possible.
However, the item did not lead to a more intensive exchange on Tuesday.
The day before, MEPs on the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, however, had a longer exchange with the EU’s representative in the UK, João Vale de Almeida, on the general state of relations.
These are “good” at the moment from a diplomatic point of view and in terms of the frequency of exchanges, largely due to the war in Ukraine which is welding the partners together, he explained. And this again demonstrates the value of having more formal cooperation on foreign affairs, which London refused when it left the EU.
The ambassador also considered that the implementation of the withdrawal agreement with its component on citizens’ rights, including the right to apply for permanent residence status in the UK, was also “a success”. This is despite delays in some cases, with the applications of 300,000 Europeans still being processed by the UK administration.
Yet on the issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the ambassador felt that while the tone had “changed” in a positive way with the arrival of Minister Liz Truss, who succeeded David Frost, things had “not changed that much in substance”.
“We have made great progress on medicines and customs controls, but there is still a lot to be done on sanitary and phytosanitary controls”.
João Vale de Almeida also warned MEPs to “remain prepared for all eventualities”, including the triggering of Article 16 of the Protocol by the British government, which, according to the country’s press, has recently put this option on the table.
Parliament will have its first parliamentary assembly with British MEPs in early May.
Link to the regulations: https://aeur.eu/f/wb , https://aeur.eu/f/w5 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)