Irish trade chief says data deal may help resolve Brexit impasse

The EU and UK are likely to reach a deal on their post-Brexit trading relationship after they were able to clinch an agreement on data-sharing, Ireland’s trade minister said. 

The EU yesterday agreed to use the UK’s live database tracking goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, the first sign of progress in a long-running dispute on post-Brexit trading rules.

“The ability to get an agreement has for quite some time relied on trust and once there’s an agreement on how to share data appropriately in a way that the British government can support and in a way that the EU feels they can also facilitate, I think that is an important step forward,” said Simon Coveney, who was previously Ireland’s foreign minister. 

The deal “can be the basis for more flexibility and more cooperation in terms of how we manage the movement of goods,” distinguishing between those staying in Northern Ireland and those moving to other parts of the EU single market, he told reporters in Dublin on Tuesday.

Resolving how goods traveling through Northern Ireland are handled is seen as a pre-requisite for ending a dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol — the part of the Brexit deal which keeps the region within the EU’s single market in order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. 

Another major hurdle to overcome is the UK’s demand that the European Court of Justice be stripped of its role in settling Brexit disputes in the region. That remains a red line for the EU.

Coveney, who was deeply involved in Brexit negotiations until changing portfolio last month, said the election of Rishi Sunak as UK Prime Minister had “changed the approach coming from the UK,” which was “very welcome.” The European Union had responded “very generously,” leading to “serious and honest engagement from both sides,” he added.

Even so, Coveney said he didn’t want to overstate the agreement on EU access to UK IT systems and added that breaking the impasse on the protocol in advance of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in April looked “like a tight time-line.”