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Originally Posted by 1andrew1
I think the implication from earlier posts by Old Boy had been that the EU was treating the UK harshly by interpreting the Brexit Deal to the letter and not by the spirit of the agreement. Seph confirmed that this was wrong as the EU treated all Third Countries in the same way.
If I understand you correctly, you believe the Brexit deal was unreasonable with regard to the NI provisions.
I think Johnson's end game is to kick the tin can down the alley long enough to see out this Parliament. It's an interesting situation to watch.
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I agree with Old Boy to the extent that the EU is indeed trying to implement the letter without due regard for the spirit or indeed the difficult political context. However I don’t think the EU is trying to issue a punishment beating per se. It’s always good to bear in mind that the European Commission is the civil service of the Union. They are bureaucrats, not politicians, and they slavishly follow the rules because that’s the core skill set of a bureaucrat. It’s somewhat worse in the EU’s case because the European Commission is a civil service on the French model, rather than the British. The French civil service is typically more activist than ours in proposing and promoting policy to the executive. Such is the case also in Brussels. So in “defending the treaties” the Commission really is defending its own baby. Annoying for us, but unsurprising.
The Northern Ireland provisions in the Brexit deal must be seen in this context. They are designed to defend the single market because that’s what the European Commission is for. The European Commission has no real understanding of national sovereignty because part of its mission is to facilitate the transition away from that concept to one in which the EU has broad competency over many things. Fundamentally it does not, and cannot, understand Brexit because it is a move in precisely the opposite direction to that which it exists to pursue.
So, the Northern Ireland provisions pursue something intrinsically “good” as far as the Commission is concerned, and anything that hinders that pursuit is therefore “not-good”. This is how we ended up with an intractable situation prior to the deal being signed and, I believe, Boris’ ultimate decision to sign it for the sake of getting the deal done, and then undermine it at every opportunity thereafter. As written, it is blindingly obvious that it is incompatible with any internationally recognised definition of sovereignty, but given the European Commission’s entire raison d’etre it is also entirely understandable that it is either blind or indifferent to that fact.