Government statement on notwithstanding clauses
Published 17 September 2020
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HMG will ask Parliament to support the use of the provisions in Clauses 42, 43 and 45 of the UKIM Bill, and any similar subsequent provisions, only in the case of, in our view, the EU being engaged in a material breach of its duties of good faith or other obligations, and thereby undermining the fundamental purpose of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Examples of such behaviour would include:
a. insistence that GB-NI tariffs and related provision such as import VAT should be charged in ways that are not related to the real risk of goods entering the EU single market;
b. such insistence under (a.) leading to a failure to reach agreement in the Joint Committee, with the result that the default provisions on tariffs between GB and NI apply;
c. insistence on paperwork requirements (export declarations) for NI goods going to GB, thereby compromising the principle of “unfettered access” in Article 6 of the Protocol;
d. insistence that the EU’s state aid provisions should apply in GB in circumstances when there is no link or only a trivial one to commercial operations taking place in NI; and
e. refusal to grant 3rd country listing to UK agricultural goods for manifestly unreasonable or poorly justified reasons.
HMG confirms that in parallel with the use of these provisions it would always activate appropriate formal dispute settlement mechanisms with the aim of finding a solution through this route.
Further measures will be set out in the Finance Bill, relating to tariffs on GB-NI movements, including the same Parliamentary process that the Government has committed to for the UKIM Bill.