European leaders have offered a 'carefully calibrated' response to Liz Truss taking over as Britain’s new prime minister. tconnellyRTE says her association with legislation to dismantle the NI Protocol has tempered any optimism of a breakthrough
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed her to the company of European and world leaders. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he looked forward to working with her"in these challenging times", while Ursula von der Leyen's congratulatory tweet was qualified by a reminder that the new prime minister should show"full respect" for EU-UK treaties.
Exacerbating the animus felt towards Truss in Europe was a belief that she was instrumentalising the bill to further her own naked leadership ambitions."Without being naive", says a senior Irish source,"it's in everybody's interests that an incoming prime minister is given time and space to adopt their position. We shouldn't prejudge what she's going to do just because of what she's done in the past.
They didn't go far enough for the UK and the talks ground to a halt in February, just ahead of the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections. So, resets aside, there is not a lot of optimism that a breakthrough is just around the corner, simply because there is a new prime minister. The European Research Group of rightwing eurosceptics believe their support allowed them not only to write large sections of the Protocol Bill but to put Truss in Number 10, and they can agitate through parliamentary questions and the Tory press.
It seems clear Truss will not pause the bill but will try to coax the EU into reaching some kind of interim agreement on managing GB-NI trade, which might then supersede some of the bill’s more toxic provisions. These are conditional on UK good faith and a commitment to constructing Border Control Posts and the provision of real-time data on goods entering the North.
On September 15 and 22 the UK is required to provide a formal response to the proceedings and if the commission believes the responses are inadequate it could take the UK to the European Court of Justice over at least one of the proceedings.
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