Goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK after the end of the Brexit transition period may be subject to additional customs checks, according to a document published by Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th May, 2020) Goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK after the end of the Brexit transition period may be subject to additional customs checks, according to a document published by Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove on Wednesday, despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson's promise that no additional checks would be established.
"There will be no new physical customs infrastructure and we see no need to build any. We will however expand some existing entry points for agrifood goods to provide for proportionate additional controls," Gove said in the document which sets out the UK's Northern Ireland Protocol.
The cabinet minister stated that the new legislation would not be akin to creating a border in the Irish Sea as checks would be kept to a minimum.
"What the Protocol does not do is create - nor does it include any provision for creating - any kind of international border in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That means its provisions must entail the minimum possible bureaucratic consequences for business and traders, particularly those carrying out their affairs entirely within the UK customs territory," Gove wrote.
In the run-up to the December general election, Johnson stated that there will be no additional checks on goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. The European Union has demanded that goods traveling to Northern Ireland undergo customs clearance in the UK to prevent a hard border being established with the Republic of Ireland.
Border posts and checkpoints between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were removed after the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought three decades of violence between Irish republicans and unionists loyal to the United Kingdom to an end.
