NI Protocol: Tony Blair says EU needs to be more flexible or risk damaging Good Friday Agreement

In what some unionist leaders will see as a significant intervention on the protocol controversy, the former prime minister went beyond suggesting the solution to the issue was only to change the way goods from Great Britain are checked coming into Northern Ireland.

Mr Blair also suggested that there should be alterations to the way the European Court of Justice and EU laws still exercise power over the lives of the people in the Province despite Brexit.

The ex-prime minister, a key architect of the 1998 agreement, said “significant movement” was required by the EU in terms of compromises over Irish Sea border checks on goods from GB, the ECJ and EU legislation.

In a paper for the think-tank ‘Forward’, Mr Blair writes: “We set out a practical way through, one that would obviate the vast majority of checks on goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland, provide a compromise on the involvement of the Court of Justice of the EU, and give greater opportunities for consultation on draft EU laws to Northern Ireland representatives from all sides of the community.”

He continues: “It is, at least, a possible landing zone for resolution of the dispute. It could be done within the framework of the protocol, but would require significant movement from the EU on its stated position around the protocol’s interpretation.”

Mr Blair adds: “My judgment – with long experience of EU negotiations – is that things have reached such a state of distrust that the two bureaucratic systems will not settle this; it has to be done at the highest political level, because, ultimately, it is not a matter of technical work but political will and leadership.”

He also calls on both the UK and the UK to display “maximum flexibility” in order to reach an agreement.

Describing Boris Johnson’s original post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, which all unionists believe has decoupled NI from the UK internal market and is pushing the Province out of the Union, Mr Blair says that “left unresolved, the issues at the heart of the protocol have the capability of causing an enlarged trade conflict between the UK and the EU, or undermining the Good Friday Agreement – and quite possibly both.”

The call on the EU to be more flexibile in protocol negotiations with the UK will be regarded by some unionist politicians as highly significant given Mr Blair’s pro-European, anti-Brexit stance as well as his central role in securing the Belfast Agreement.

After similar appeals for Brussels to soften its line on the Irish Sea border by Labour Party figures including Hilary Benn, the former prime minister is the most senior politician to implore compromise from the EU.