BBC Ni Economics and Business Editor


A summit of the United Kingdom should open the way to an agreement that could considerably reduce the impact of the Irish sea border.
The United Kingdom wishes to reset its post-Brexit relationship with the European Union (EU) after years of tension.
The summit on Monday should include an “agreement to agree” on commercial issues, including trade in food and agricultural products.
If a complete agroali agreement follows, potentially later this year, this will reduce the need for checks and controls on GB’s sent products to Northern Ireland.
This could mean the end of the labeling “not for the EU” and the deletion of most physical checks on the goods.
A food company in Belfast said that reset cannot happen early enough and that immediate measures are needed to help small businesses.
BBC News or spoke for the first time to the owners of Arcadia Deli in 2020 before the marine border begins to be implemented. They faced continuous difficulties with the necessary processes to obtain GB products.
The co-owner Laura Graham-Brown said that The new rules of the sea border on plots aggravated the situation in the last month.
“Our partners in England have decided that they do not provide northern Ireland until further notice until they can obtain clarifications on how to facilitate the task,” she said.
“He is our biggest distributor, so he is starting to say on our counter because he becomes more and more empty.”
She said that she would welcome any transaction that improves the situation, but said something had to change soon.
“All we want to do is sell cheese and olives. In order to continue to store our shelves, we need something fairly quickly,” she said.
There is no guarantee as to the negotiation of the agreement and, in itself, it would not eliminate the sea border.
Stuart Anderson of the Chamber of Commerce of Ni said that companies would take the time to analyze the details of any agreement.
“The Chamber or asked the British government to conclude an ambitious sufficiently ambitious agreement to considerably reduce bureaucracy for all operators in our agroali supply chain,” he said.


This is a survey of the Queen’s University Belfast suggests reducing the Unionist support for the current Brexit agreement in Northern Ireland, The Windsor Framework.
Professor David Phinnemore said that there was an “obvious drop” in the already limited unionist support that exists for the Windsor framework, especially among those who identify as “slightly union”.
The support of this group increased from 51% to 26% compared to last year.
Professor Phinnimore said: “If this trend should be reversed, a closer relationship of the United Kingdom must make obstacles to GB-Ni traffic of goods.”
What does the British government say?
The Labor Government is committed by the manifesto to seek a new agrifood agreement with the EU which, he said, would aim to “eliminate most of the border checks created by the Tory Brexit agreement”.
The agreement would apply to the United Kingdom as a whole, but would have the greatest impact in Northern Ireland.
Indeed, nor is always effective within the EU single market for goods, but its supermarkets are mainly supplied by the United Kingdom.
The Center for European Reform (CER), a reflection group, said that an agrifood agreement would not be of “great macroeconomic importance” for the United Kingdom as a whole, but that Ni would be a “main beneficiary”.
He added: “The closer regulations in the Kingdom are closer to those of the EU, the less the need to control the borders on the goods crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.”


What is the Irish sea border?
The Irish sea border continues to have an impact on Northern Ireland policy and its economy.
He came following an agreement on Brexit between the EU and the United Kingdom in 2019, which was revised in 2023, and is now Known as the Windsor Framework.
It has been agreed that the most practical way to keep the border open between Ni and the Republic of Ireland was that neither followed many EU laws on goods regulation.
This means that goods from the rest of the United Kingdom in facial checks and controls or to ensure that they respect the EU rules.
For many nationalists in Ni, this is a compromise necessary to minimize the impact of Brexit on the island of Ireland.
For many trade unionists, it is a constitutional affront which undermines the place of or in the United Kingdom.
The largest Unionist Party, the Democratic Syndicalist Party (DUP), prevented the government from sharing the power to operate between 2022 and 2024 to protest.
How could an agro-food agreement change things?
EU agro-food transactions turn into two main categories: New Zealand style or Swiss style.
EU’s agreement with New Zealand means that each party recognizes that the other has high food standards and that the frequency of product and documents controls is therefore reduced.
However, New Zealand still establishes its own standards and a proportion of goods is always verified when they enter the EU.
On the other hand, there is no control of regulatory borders for the trade in agrifood products between Switzerland and the EU.
But the Swiss have only this agreement because they agreed to follow the EU rules almost to the letter, without saying too much in the establishment of these rules.
Switzerland is obliged to modify its laws in response to changes in EU legislation, what is called dynamic alignment and to accept the surveillance of the European Court of Justice.
A Swiss style agreement would mean that GB food controls entering NI can be effectively completed.
The EU previously declared that this agreement would be proposed in the United Kingdom, but the government had kept an ambivalent position on the question of whether it would accept this.
However, in recent weeks, the ministers have taken care not to exclude it.
Such an agreement will be confronted with the opposition of the supporters of Brexit who say that this would involve renouncing powers that have been returned to the United Kingdom after leaving the EU.
What border processes would remain?
The Irish Sea is really two borders.
One deals with product standards – Ensure that goods can be legally sold. The other deals with customs – Ensure that the correct prices have been paid.
An agrifood agreement would greatly contribute to withdraw the border from the standards, but that would leave the customs border intact.
GB companies should still make customs declarations for goods going to or with the risk that the goods are delayed if the documents are incorrect.