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The European Research Group (ERG) flocked to support a motion regretting the prospect of legal action from Brussels which will be debated in the Commons today. In March the bloc announced it was launching twin-track legal action against its former member state because it had failed to implement post-Brexit checks on shipments arriving in the province from Great Britain.
The European Commission sent two threatening letters to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, making their intentions clear.
The Government argued that the decision to waive the checks were “lawful and part of a progressive and good faith implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol”.
Passions will be running high in the House of Commons today when senior Conservative Sir Bernard Jenkin leads a debate on the Protocol, on a motion regretting the legal action.
The motion is signed, mostly, by senior figures from the ERG and is more or less in line with the Government’s position.
In backing the motion, ERG members are keen to tell the international community that Britain feels unfairly treated by the world’s largest trading bloc.
The dispute over the Protocol, which is deeply unpopular among Unionist and loyalist communities, continues to drag on.
Yesterday Cabinet Office officials accused the EU of dumping more than 800 new pieces of regulation upon Northern Ireland without notice, in a move criticised by Lord Frost.
The Brexit minister told peers that the development showed the bloc was failing to take “seriously” that it was making laws “for another territory” after Brexit.
His comments come after the Cabinet Office said Brussels sprung an update on it that more than 600 new measures impacting upon Northern Ireland had been adopted by the bloc in the past three months, with a further 200 in the pipeline.
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7.55am update: City of London’s ‘major win’ after ECJ ruled ECB ‘lacked competence necessary’
The City of London won a court ruling against the European Central Bank (ECB) before Brexit, which could have forced firms handling large euro transactions to move to the eurozone.
The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has said he does not expect the EU to open the doors to UK financial services exports after Brexit.
He told a news conference on Tuesday: “On equivalence, I think it’s fair to say that nothing really has moved forwards.”
After months of wrangling, new rules for trade were finally agreed on Christmas Eve but in a document spanning over 1,200 pages, there was very little mention of financial services – a sector which accounts for seven percent of the UK’s economy and 10 percent of its tax receipts.
Without this recognition, London firms will be blocked from gaining access to the market.
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