The Brussels Report Podcast

Welcome to a new episode of the Brussels Report podcast.

My name is Peter Kleppen.

I'm the editor-in-chief of BrusselsReport2.EU.

And I'm very happy to have as my guest today, Daniel Dalton.

Daniel is a former British conservative MEP.

In the UK, before that he was a rather successful cricketeer, and he also is at the moment the

outgoing CEO of British Champ, the British Chambers of Commerce. So welcome, Daniel.

Thank you, Peter. Great to be here. Well, it's good to have a Brit again

at the Brussels Report podcast. I only had one so far. And of course, at the issue of the day, is of course,

Brexit. Brexit, I always said, was going to be eternal negotiation, and so far that

has proven to be correct. The big sticking issue is, of course, Northern Ireland. So there's

the Brexit deal governing the trade between the two blocks, but then there's the specific protocol, the Northern Irish

Protocol, which basically foresees that Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, remains

in the EU single market in the sense that it takes over all the rules of the EU. But of course,

then in return, you need to have checks to look to what extent

these rules are being respected. Now, because we don't want a hard border on the island of Ireland

between the Republic and Northern Ireland for the sake of the peace process.

The UK conceded to Czechs in the Irish Sea as it's called.

So this is the water between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

So this is basically the EU managing to negotiate checks inside UK territory in that Irish sea.

Now, during the course of 2021, the UK has been dragging its feet to properly implement all of these checks.

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