Northern Ireland

British moves to override NI protocol ‘illegal’, minister says

Thomas Byrne, the Minister for European Affairs, rejected the idea that Britain could act unilaterally on either the protocol or the Good Friday Agreement

Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary, said that the EU’s proposals ‘take us backwards’. Picture: Getty

Any British attempt to override the Northern Ireland protocol through new legislation would be illegal under international law, regardless of what the British Attorney General’s office has advised, according to the Irish Minister for European Affairs.

Thomas Byrne told the Business Post that while he still believed solutions were possible in the long-running argument over the post-Brexit arrangements, the repeated threats by the British government to tear up the protocol unilaterally would not help.

“It ...