Thread by @tconnellyRTE

Where to next for the NI Protocol, following the G7 and the growing stand off over UK threats to unilaterally extend the grace period for chilled meats?

2/ Contacts between the European Commission and the UK govt have resumed, with talk of a possible meeting of the Specialised Committee, the technical body which prepares work for the more political Joint Committee.

3/ Nothing is confirmed yet, and there's no meeting planned between @DavidGHFrost and @MarosSefcovic. However, the July 1 chilled meats deadline is fast approaching, so things may start to accelerate if both sides want to avoid another clash over unilateral action

4/ EU sources say there has been no formal request from the UK asking the EU to extend the chilled meats grace period, certainly not during last week's Joint Committee meeting. So they're not sure if Frost's allusion to a request was a balloon floating exercise...

5/ ...or if he was referring to an informal, historic suggestion.

6/ The view in Brussels is that a request for an extension would not be absolutely and flatly ruled out. However, there are problems: firstly, the original chilled meats grace period, mutually agreed in December, came with strict conditions attached

7/ These included a commitment that chilled meats - sausages, etc - would be clearly labelled as for sale in NI only, that the UK would develop simplified Export Health Certs stating that such products fully comply with EU legislation

8/ ...that they are "submitted to a systematic documentary check and to a risk-based identity check on a selection of items in the means of transport"

9/...and that they are specially monitored when moving from NI ports to designated supermarkets.

EU sources say these conditions have not been met, which does not encourage member states to agree to a new grace period

10/ Secondly, the EU believes that rolling grace periods and derogations go against the spirit of the Protocol and what was agreed by @michaelgove and @MarosSefcovic in December, and that they do not provide stability and certainty for businesses

11/ On an EU UK SPS agreement, the EU continues to regard this as the best way of removing the vast majority of checks and controls on agrifood products crossing the Irish Sea..

12/ David Frost's allusion in the NI Affairs Select Cttee on Wed to the problem that the EU wd want to "police" any such agreement through the ECJ has been spotted as a potential opening (well, mainly by Protocol nerds)

13/ A source says that Switzerland, Norway and others who dynamically align with EU food safety rules are all subject to ECJ oversight. Could an exception be made for the UK, in the same way that the TCA managed to keep the ECJ out of the picture?

14/ Possibly, said one source, but then you are into creating an entirely new SPS relationship from scratch, and that would take time, and would certainly not be done before July 1