The cost of the Northern Ireland Protocol outweighs any benefit

It is perfectly credible that a company based in Northern Ireland which exports a lot of goods to the EU may feel that on balance the protocol is beneficial (NI Protocol more beneficial than not says NI make-up entrepreneur,’ Dec 29, see link below).

However the equation will produce an opposite result for the many other companies, and individuals, who do not export goods to the EU but who must still bear the costs of the new EU-mandated restrictions on imports from the rest of the UK.

In that sense Northern Ireland now replicates on a smaller scale the position of the whole of the UK when we were in the EU, with about 6% of businesses exporting about 12% of GDP to the EU and sharing the rather small gross benefit of the EU single market, about 1% of GDP, but everybody else just getting the costs.

I would also politely question the wisdom of suggesting that Northern Ireland benefits from a ‘special loophole’ making it possible for goods from third countries like the US to be sent into the EU without customs controls, when that is precisely what the EU means when it warns that the land border must not become a ‘back door’ into its single market, and the specious reason why it has insisted on a customs border in the Irish Sea.

Dr DR Cooper, Maidenhead, Berkshire

NI Protocol more beneficial than not says NI make-up entrepreneur

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