Thread by @pmdfoster

🚨🚨🇬🇧🇬🇧🇪🇺🇪🇺🇬🇧🇬🇧🚨🚨UK proposal to rewrite section of Brexit deal wins lawyers’ backing - my latest via @FT with ⁦@PickardJE⁩. It’s about Article 10, and why it’s arguably obsolete. Heralds battles to come.

1/thread.
on.ft.com/3jDa4iD

@FT @PickardJE This is an interesting intervention from @GeorgePeretzQC and @jamesrwebber
that runs rule over the demand from @DavidGHFrost
last july that Article 10 of the NI Protocol should be replaced/re-written. Their full text is here..but tl;dr /2

eurelationslaw.com/blog/the-uks-p…

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost Article 10 is that part of the Protocol on state aid which means that UK Govt subsidy decisions that could impact on NI goods trade need to be referred to Brussels...even if those decision are primarily for UK economy. Understandably Brexiters hate it. /3

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost Last July in his Command Paper Frost argued that it should now be re-written because it was conceived in October 2019 -- BEFORE the UK had done the Trade Deal and published its UK subsidy control bill which creates structures that now obviate such a sweeping clause/4

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost It is interesting that @GeorgePeretzQC -- no Brexiteer he -- largely agrees with the government analysis on this, alongside @jamesrwebber who has more consistently argued the Protocol needs wider reform. /5

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost It is not clear, per EU and UK sources, if the EU will go to this -- there is clearly a theological aversion to rewriting/reopening the Protocol text, but Article 10 has a far greater 'reach back' into UK policy that is necessary /6

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost Indeed it is has already been cited in UK courts in a very tangential case by British Sugar trying to UK govt subsidy of sugar cane imports struck down - thread here. /7

https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1410887661762535424?lang=en

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost Of course, as the two lawyers acknowledge in this paper, the Article 10 claim was only one element of Frost demands in Command Paper, the others of which (like ending ECJ oversight, including elements of mutual enforcement) are clearly not acceptable to the EU /8

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost You can read a gut of the five main proposals Frost makes here...but suffice to say, the paper hasn't exactly created the atmosphere the kind of dialogue that would lead to the fixing of Article 10 /9

ft.com/content/b0389e…

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost The word is that the summer talks haven't really got that far, but as @Mij_Europe noted yday the assumption is that there will be some extension to October deadlines this month to avoid imposing full Export Health Certs which folk like @MichaelAodhan warn would be disaster /10

@FT @PickardJE @GeorgePeretzQC @jamesrwebber @DavidGHFrost @Mij_Europe @MichaelAodhan How much political space that extension, should it come, will create remains to be seen.

In theory Article 10 ought to be a winnable argument, but trying to fix one of the pillars of the house while you're apparently trying to blow the rest down isn't always that easy. ENDS