Joe Biden has decided to mediate in the Ireland Protocol conflict and has warned “premier” Boris Johnson that “unilateral actions” in his confrontation with the EU could endanger the unity of the allies in the war in Ukraine.
A delegation of American congressmen and advisers arrived in Washington on Saturday, three days after the Johnson Government announced a law to “amend” at its own risk the most contentious chapter of the Brexit agreement, which has led to the creation of the most resembling an internal customs office between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“A fight between the United Kingdom and the European Union is the last thing Washington wants,” Derek Chollet, right-hand man of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, told the BBC. “We want this matter to be resolved, for the temperature to drop and the threats of unilateral action to disappear.”
“Putin would take any opportunity to show that our alliance is breaking down,” Chollet warned. “It is particularly important that at this time we send a message of unity to the world and that we do not undermine the success of these months in showing unity in the face of the Ukraine conflict.”
The intervention of a State Department adviser in a matter of domestic politics in the Kingdom is something quite unusual. President Biden, of Irish descent, has previously tried to defuse Johnson’s tensions with the EU, which marred the G7 meeting in Cornwall a year ago.
In the US Congress, in fact, it has a supervisory group for the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998, in which Washington very actively mediated. In this context, the arrival in London of a commission made up of nine congressmen and senators, Republicans and Democrats, led by Richard Neal, took place.
The US delegation made a first stop in Brussels, meeting the Vice President of the European Union Maros Sefcovic, who has warned of the risk of a trade war with London. The congressional expedition will then depart for Dublin, with a final stop in Belfast.
The refusal of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to participate in a “power-sharing” government with Sinn Féin, winner of the recent elections, has once again led Ulster to an impasse. The DUP demands the renunciation of the Irish Protocol due to trade barriers and considering that it endangers the integrity of the United Kingdom.
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