Irish Backstop May Trap EU In UK's Lower Environment Protection Standards - Report

The Irish backstop provision in the Brexit agreement, which has been voted down three times by the UK parliament, could potentially undermine European environmental and social protection standards, a report commissioned by the German Green party and seen by The Guardian said

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th April, 2019) The Irish backstop provision in the Brexit agreement, which has been voted down three times by the UK parliament, could potentially undermine European environmental and social protection standards, a report commissioned by the German Green party and seen by The Guardian said.

According to the report, although the backstop agreement explicitly states that the United Kingdom must not undermine European standards for social and environmental protection, it does not establish an authority that would ensure that those standards are met. In effect, this would mean that London would allow companies to self-regulate and potentially violate the EU protection policies set in place as well as potentially export goods and services to the bloc that do not meet Europe's standards.

"If the EU wants to have a level playing field, it must not just set up the goals but also assign a referee. At the moment it has even given the UK licence to assign its own players with officiating the match," Rene Repasi, EU law expert and author of the report, said, as cited by the newspaper.

Franziska Brantner, the member of the Green party who commissioned the report, said that the backstop gave the United Kingdom access to the European Union while lowering the standards of products and services that the country needed to adhere to.

"The bitter reality for the EU is that the UK negotiated successfully in their interest to lower standards, limit freedom of movement but keep de facto market access," Brantner said, as quoted by the news outlet.

The backstop arrangements were agreed upon between the United Kingdom and the European Union in November as a way to prevent the creation of a hard border between the independent Republic of Ireland and the UK Northern Ireland territory after Brexit. The backstop stipulated that the United Kingdom would remain in a de facto customs union with the EU bloc until a trade and security agreement were reached between the two sides. The Brexit deal has been voted down three times in the UK parliament, particularly due to concerns that the backstop negated the independence from European customs regulations that the United Kingdom sought to establish in the first place.