Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:-
“This afternoon’s invocation of Article 16 of the Protocol to inhibit exports of COVID vaccines from the EU to Northern Ireland is the most telling illustration imaginable that for the EU the Protocol is a plaything to be exploited when it suits its selfish interests. The idea that the EU cares anything for Northern Ireland or its people is exposed as utterly bogus.
“The effect of today’s regulation is to disavow the much vaunted free trade from the EU to Northern Ireland as part of its single market and instead to treat deliveries of vaccines from the EU to NI as “exports”, which they can then restrict, lest such vaccines would make their way to GB.
“The fact that the EU has so unilaterally invoked Article 16 to serve its selfish purposes, leaves HMG with no excuse for not itself now invoking it to protect the vast disruption to trade that we are day and daily experiencing from GB.
“I trust the supporters of “rigorous implementation” of the Protocol will now see what sort of a charlatan organisation it is dealing with.”