UK seeks fast progress in NI pact talks

The United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will next week present "constructive proposals" to end the deadlock over the Northern Ireland Protocol in a meeting with her European Union counterpart, Maros Sefcovic.

The talks are to be held over dinner at Chevening House, a 17th century stately home in southern England, as Truss seeks to end the post-Brexit protocol dispute by the end of the month, The Daily Telegraph reported.

A UK Foreign Office source told the paper that Truss wants rapid progress with the EU on the issue that has caused trade disruption and damaged wider EU-UK relations.

The protocol is a way to maintain a free-flowing land border on the island of Ireland following the UK's withdrawal from the EU. During Brexit negotiations, both sides sought to avoid a hard border on the island to protect the Good Friday Agreement and prevent a return to conflict.

But since it came into force in January last year, the UK government and unionist parties in Northern Ireland have expressed serious misgivings about it. The UK claims that EU-ordered border checks on British goods are having a negative effect on trade.

"Liz has invited Sefcovic over at the earliest opportunity and wants to go full speed ahead with talks," The Telegraph's source was quoted as saying.

"She wants urgent progress. She is determined to get this thing done and find a fair, proportionate, and durable solution that genuinely solves problems and protects the Good Friday Agreement. She wants a constructive relationship with Sefcovic and the EU and to get off on the right foot."

Truss has said that if a solution is not found she remains prepared to trigger Article 16, which allows either party to undertake unilateral safeguarding measures if the protocol leads to "serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade".

Last week, Sefcovic warned that if Truss was to invoke Article 16, it would throw into jeopardy "the foundation of the entire deal" reached between the two sides.

He told German news site Der Spiegel that he is "pragmatic" about Truss taking over post-Brexit negotiations with the EU, after Brexit minister David Frost resigned last month. But he argued that London had "breached a great deal of trust "with the EU over Northern Ireland.

Sefcovic said: "This is a very distracting element in the discussions. You try to achieve something together and-bam-there's the threat of Article 16 again. It touches on the fundamentals of our relationship.

"The Northern Ireland Protocol was the most complicated part of the Brexit negotiations, and it is the foundation of the entire deal. Without the protocol, the whole system will collapse. We must prevent that at any cost."

In response to those comments, the leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, Jeffrey Donaldson, told The Telegraph that Truss needed to provide a "clear date" for ending the talks.

"If we don't get rapid and decisive progress, and one side or the other is kicking the can down the road, this will have major implications for the stability of the political institutions in Northern Ireland," he said.