Britain’s chief European Union negotiator has been accused of damaging the North’s economy by “picking fights” with Brussels over the Brexit deal that he helped secure. David Frost, London’s cabinet minister in charge of relations with the EU, is risking inward investment in the region through his attempts to unpick the Northern Ireland protocol, said the SDLP’s Brexit spokesman Matthew O’Toole. Mr Frost, writing in the Mail on Sunday, said Britain’s new relationship with the EU “won’t be right” until problems arising out of the protocol, which his government brokered with Brussels, are settled. “Yet there is no evidence that goods not meeting EU standards are getting to the EU’s single market via Northern Ireland,” he said. “Lord Frost seems to see personal or political advantage in continuing to pick fights with Brussels,” he said.

Source: The Irish Times May 16, 2021 16:41 UTC