Why is the Northern Ireland protocol so contentious?

AFTER YEARS of head-scratching, the European Union and the United Kingdom found in late 2019 an answer to one of the trickiest questions of Brexit: how a contested border could be made to appear non-existent. Blandly named the “Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland”, the 63-page document succeeds in avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. But it does so by creating another border within the UK, which is causing new problems and threatening to undermine the peace in Northern Ireland. On February 3rd Paul Givan, Northern Ireland’s first minister and a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, resigned in protest over the protocol, leaving the province without a devolved executive. What exactly is the Northern Ireland protocol, and why is it so controversial?

When the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016, the 95-year-old, 310-mile (500km) border that separates the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland had never been less noticeable. That was for two reasons. In 1973 the simultaneous entry of the UK and Ireland into what would become the EU started a process of economic harmonisation that eradicated customs posts and checks on goods. The army remained at checkpoints as a consequence of the “Troubles”—the 30-year sectarian conflict involving the Irish Republican Army, loyalist paramilitaries and the British security forces. But after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 largely ended the violence, those border posts also disappeared.