European governments have agreed in principle to extend the grace period for British firms selling chilled meats to Northern Ireland, bringing the so-called ‘sausage war’ Brexit dispute a step closer to resolution.
European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic has advised diplomats from the 27 EU member states to agree to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s request for extra time to work on the fraught question of trade rules for Northern Ireland, according to officials familiar with the talks.
A formal deal has not yet been reached and talks are said to be “ongoing”.
Under current arrangements, the sale of chilled meats – including fresh sausages – into Northern Ireland from England, Scotland or Wales is due to be banned when the grace period expires at the end of the month.
The development follows an earlier report by Bloomberg News that officials on both sides were growing increasingly confident a truce would be struck and that the grace period would be extended.
It’s not clear yet whether any extension would be for three months, as the UK requested, or for six.
Some European officials believe a longer time-frame is needed to reach a lasting solution, while others want the UK to spell out clearly how it would use the extra time.
Yesterday, Mr Johnson’s spokesman Max Blain said talks with the European Union are continuing and the UK wants to find an answer before the current grace period expires on June 30.
Meanwhile, five years on from the Brexit referendum and six months after the EU-UK trade deal came into force, Irish firms have fundamentally changed how they do business with Britain.
“Companies are telling us they’re buying and sourcing less goods from the UK,” said Simon McKeever, head of the Irish Exporters Association.
“We are seeing a conjoining of some of the supply chains coming out of Europe directly into France, and that means that imports from Britain will remain lower, like we have seen at the start of the year.”
Imports from the UK fell by two-thirds at the start of the year. They have picked up since then, but they were still down 20pc in April compared to the same month in 2020.
Those figures are borne out by ferry sailings, with Stena Line’s freight routes between the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain down almost 38pc this year to date.
Meanwhile, direct routes between Ireland and France are up almost 200pc.
Hauliers say there will never be a return to previous freight volumes because Irish port authorities are being stricter than their EU and UK counterparts when it comes to checking goods from Great Britain.
Eugene Drennan, the head of the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA), said drivers continue to divert loads via Northern Irish ports as “you don’t have half the trouble”.
Another senior member of the IRHA, who asked not to be named, said the biggest problem for traders is Revenue’s IT system, which has serious
outages almost every week.
“Every time this happens it takes a minimum of two to five days for hauliers to get Customs to release all the loads on the trailers involved. This costs a lot of time, money and effort,” he said.
“I thought it would have gotten better now on the Irish side. When it goes wrong, it goes terribly wrong.”
Hauliers have still not gone back to using the UK land bridge to transport goods to and from Europe, Mr McKeever said, despite it being quicker – at least before Brexit – and cheaper.
“For drivers, in some ways, the direct shipping route is actually better for them – because, in terms of the rules around driver hours, they are getting on a ferry down in Rosslare or Dublin and are arriving after having had a full night’s sleep into the port of Cherbourg or Dunkirk.”
Aside from the ongoing difficulties with the Northern Irish protocol, the next major bump in the road for Irish exporters may come in October, when the UK starts phasing in its customs code.