Statement by TUV leader, Jim Allister:-
“With non-Unionists, the NIO, liberal commentators and the minority of unionists who’ve given up the Protocol fight, trying to raise a crescendo of speculation and demand that Unionists, who have refused to implement the Union-dismantling Protocol, should climbdown, it is important to not just urge strength but highlight the parlous state they wish to cajole the DUP and others to embrace in the very week our nation has been partitioned by a regulatory and customs border.
“A recent example of just one of the foreign EU laws imposed on NI illustrates the reason why no self-respecting unionist, or devolutionist, can operate a system where their powers are debased to those of colonial rule takers.
“A case in point is REGULATION (EU) 2023/1231 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 14 June 2023 on specific rules relating to the entry into Northern Ireland from other parts of the United Kingdom of certain consignments of retail goods, plants for planting, seed potatoes, machinery and certain vehicles operated for agricultural or forestry purposes, as well as non-commercial movements of certain pet animals into Northern Ireland.
“The shocking and audacious thing about this Regulation is that it is the EU which is legislating for both “the entry into Northern Ireland from other parts of the United Kingdom” of British goods and the operation of our retail market in NI. These are internal U.K. market matters, but it is not the U.K. Parliament which is legislating, but the European Parliament and Council. Likewise, it is the same foreign entities that have legislated for the Irish Sea Border.
“That is the context in which Stormont would now have to operate – that a foreign power and parliament decides the very goods which can come from GB to NI. What a humiliating debasement not just of U.K. sovereignty and confirmation of EU colonial rule, but of the very idea of the people of NI deciding these things for themselves.
“This is but one example of how Stormont and democratic control has been hollowed out by the Protocol.
“Little wonder on 28 September 2021 unionist leaders unitedly pledge as our “unalterable position that the Protocol must be rejected and replaced by arrangements which fully respect Northern Ireland’s position as a constituent and integral part of the United Kingdom”.
“Whereas Doug Beattie, sadly, may have disavowed this position, the hyped speculation that others might do likewise must be wholly disappointed.”