UK ramps up pressure on Northern Ireland deal

LONDON－Britain will tell the European Union again next week that "significant change" to the Northern Ireland Protocol is vital for the restoration of genuinely good relations between London and Brussels.

The protocol is part of the Brexit settlement that Prime Minister Boris Johnson negotiated with the EU. But less than a year after it went into force, London has said it must be rewritten due to the barriers businesses face when importing British goods into the province.

European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic, who oversees post-Brexit relations with Britain, said on Thursday that the EU's executive would finalize measures this week aimed at resolving post-Brexit trading issues in Northern Ireland by the end of the year or early 2022.

But Sefcovic reiterated that he would not renegotiate the protocol, and that solutions would have to be found within terms of the deal designed to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland.

The European Commission's measures are expected to be presented on Wednesday.

Britain's Brexit Minister David Frost is due to give a speech to the diplomatic community in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon on Tuesday.

According to extracts of his speech released by his office on Saturday, Frost is expected to say that endless negotiations are not an option and that London will need to act using the Article 16 safeguard mechanism if solutions cannot be rapidly agreed.

Frost is also expected to signal a desire to free the protocol from the oversight of European judges.

"The role of the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland and the consequent inability of the UK government to implement the very sensitive arrangements in the Protocol in a reasonable way has created a deep imbalance in the way the Protocol operates," the transcript said.

"Without new arrangements in this area, the Protocol will never have the support it needs to survive."

Reacting to Frost's stance on the ECJ, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said the British government had created a new "red line "barrier to progress that it knows the EU cannot move on.

"Real Q: Does UKG actually want an agreed way forward or a further breakdown in relations?" Coveney wrote on Twitter.

Agencies via Xinhua