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14th Nov 2018

Under Brexit plan, goods from Northern Ireland will be labelled differently to goods from the UK

Alan Loughnane

northern ireland goods after Brexit

How exactly, is still uncertain.

Theresa May’s cabinet backed her Brexit withdrawal agreement following a “long, detailed and impassioned debate” on Wednesday evening.

It was released online at 7.45pm on Wednesday evening and is available to view in full here, but our attention has been drawn to Article 8 of the agreement.

The agreement, which discusses Northern Ireland from page 302 to 327, suggests that goods from Northern Ireland will be labelled differently from goods in the rest of the UK.

Article 8 states:

‘Where provisions of Union law made applicable by this Protocol provide for the indication of a Member State, including in abbreviated form, as markings, labelling, tags, or by any other means, the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland shall be indicated as “UK(NI)” or “United Kingdom(Northern Ireland)”. Where provisions of Union law made applicable by this protocol provide for the indication in the form of a numeric code, the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland shall be indicated with a distinguishable numeric code.’

This indicates there will be specific laws applicable to the single market in Northern Ireland, but not applicable to the rest of the UK as part of the agreement.

It seems likely that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and its leader Arlene Foster will not accept such conditions.

The Scottish Nationalist Party also look likely to reject the deal as well as the Labour Party, save for some dissenters.

There are also rumours that a large number of Conservative MPs will reject the deal, meaning it will be very difficult for Theresa May to get the agreement through the House.