In recent weeks the EU Commission has published drafts of the EU/UK withdrawal agreement and the negotiating guidelines on the framework for the future relationship for consideration and agreement by member states, before forwarding to the UK as part of the negotiation process.
From an Irish perspective the two documents, while still works in progress, reflect the engagement this Government has had with both the task force and other member states since the referendum vote some 20 months ago. I particularly welcome the determination expressed in the withdrawal agreement to have as close a partnership as possible with the UK in the future.
On fisheries, our priorities have been to avoid any decoupling of fisheries issues from the rest of the negotiation and to ensure that the current mechanisms for access and quota determination are preserved. These priorities are reflected in the documentation referred to above, as a result of co-operation between my Department, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Commission Task Force.
On the agriculture-specific aspects of Article 5 of the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, these provisions are in accordance with our desire to ensure that the commitments made by the United Kingdom in the EU-UK joint report of December 2017 in relation to the avoidance of a hard border are reflected in the withdrawal agreement. More specifically, the protocol provides the necessary legal provisions to implement the backstop of maintaining full alignment in Northern Ireland with those rules of the single market and customs union necessary to protect North-South cooperation and to avoid a hard border, in the event that a solution in this regard is not arrived at through the wider EU-UK future relationship agreement or through specific solutions put forward by the UK government.
