For the most part, I find that experts tend to be useless at explaining the field in which they’re expert. Especially computer experts, who have a tendency to look at you as if you were a moron because you don’t understand all their technical jargon. So given that the Windsor Framework is so much talked of and talked up, let’s see if I’m clear on what it is.
The Windsor Framework is a legal agreement signed between the UK, in the shape of PM Rishi Sunak, and the EU, in the form of Ursula von der Leyen, at a hotel in Windsor earlier this month. It’s not signed, sealed and delivered yet, because Rishi Sunak says the House of Commons will have to vote on it, and Ursula Von Der Leyen has to get a qualified majority from the European Council and also the consent of the European parliament. It’s hoped that neither side will have a difficulty getting approval.
The agreement is focused on goods that come from Great Britain to North(east)ern Ireland. There will be green lanes and red lanes – goods aimed for sale in NEI will take the green lane, goods bound for the EU (including the South of Ireland) will go through the red lane. Green lane goods will be a bit like ‘Nothing to declare’ in an airport, and there will not normally be any checks on these (although there will need to be occasional spot checks, otherwise the system would be absurd). The red lane goods will be checked.
To reassure highly-strung unionists, something called the Stormont Brake is part of the agreement. This means the NEI Assembly (assuming there is one) will be able to stop any new regulations introduced by the EU, if the Assembly thinks these regulations will have a “significant and lasting effects” on people’s lives. To apply this brake, there’ll have to be 30 Assembly members from two or more parties involved. After 14 days, the matter will be passed to the UK government. If the UK government decides to permanently block this EU change in regulations, a cross-party Assembly vote will have to give an OK to that decision.
This Windsor Framework gives NEI access to the Single Market of the EU and to the UK market. Nowhere else has such access -Rishi was right when he said that. What he forgot to mention was that all of the UK could have had this and lots, lots more if they hadn’t voted to publicly disembowel themselves with Brexit.
That said, Donaldson and Foster are financially bonkers if they don’t seize this deal on behalf of the people of NEI.
I’m not sure where you got that bit about the cross-party vote to confirm the veto of the new regulation, Jude. The British Govt can, and ‘is bound to’ veto the regulation purely on the strength of 30 unionists expressing concern. There is supposed to be a statement about how the new rule adversely affects the people of NEI (but divergence from GB rules ought to cover that in almost any eventuality), and a certain amount of consultation, but how do you quantify that?
There is also a dispute resolution panel, made up of British and EU nominees, which is decidedly not the ECJ. I believe any proposed resolution needs to go to a cross community vote in order to be accepted, so the unionists get another chance to veto it at that point too.
There is talk that such a veto would rarely or never actually be invoked, but why would a bunch of extreme euro-sceptics, paranoid about loosening the ties to their beloved ‘mother country’ agree to *any* new EU regulation…ever?