EU poised to take legal action against UK over Northern Ireland protocol bill

The EU is poised to launch legal action against the UK after ministers controversially claimed an emergency loophole allowed them to scrap post-Brexit checks and standards in Northern Ireland.

In a surprising admission, the UK government accepted that its new Northern Ireland protocol bill would mean it did not meet its obligations under international law.

But the EU said it would launch legal action for infringing the protocol and a majority of members of the Northern Ireland assembly accused Johnson of being the reckless one by destabilising the Good Friday agreement.

It would also allow firms in Great Britain exporting to Northern Ireland to choose between meeting EU or UK standards on regulation, which are expected to increasingly diverge.

The legislation is likely to encounter serious opposition in the House of Commons and in the Lords, with doubts over whether Boris Johnson has support for it to pass. Ministers are also likely to come under some pressure for publication of the full legal advice on the move, as well as the impact assessment which was not published alongside the bill.

The legislation has some critics on the Eurosceptic right as well as some on the one nation centrist wing of the Tories.

The assembly is due to vote on whether it gives its consent for the operation of the protocol in 2024, four years after it came into force.

With opposition mounting, there are some doubts among MPs that the legislation will get anywhere. The government has insisted it would still rather find a negotiated solution to fix problems with the protocol. But Ireland said on Monday that the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, had not engaged in negotiations with the protocol in a meaningful way since February.