Assembly votes to keep special trading arrangements despite long-held division with unionist opposition
SDLP leader of the opposition Matthew O'Toole and assembly members at the vote on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements.SDLP leader of the opposition Matthew O'Toole and assembly members at the vote on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements.as a means of maintaining an invisible border on the island of Ireland, despite continued opposition in some unionist quarters.
It came after almost five hours of debate, described by Social Democratic Labour Party MLA Sinéad McLaughlin as “triggering”, with a retread of the Brexit points from unionist benches. The Alliance party’s Naomi Long, the justice minister, said it helped no one to allow Brexit to be a “constantly open wound” and she would vote to retain the arrangements to allow NI to “move forward”.
Tuesday’s vote was the first test for the compromise deal struck by former prime minister Rishi Sunak and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in February 2023. Under the Windsor framework, goods from Britain destined to remain in Northern Ireland travel through a “green lane”, with a separate “red lane” for goods destined to go over the border into the Republic of Ireland and therefore the EU.
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