The unionists reproach London for “using” Carlos III to persuade them to accept the Northern Irish protocol

LONDON, March 1 (DPA/EP) –

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has reproached the London Government this Wednesday for having “used” King Charles III to persuade them to accept the agreement reached with the EU to unblock the Northern Ireland protocol, after the monarch’s meeting in Windsor Castle with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

One of the leaders of the DUP, the deputy Sammy Wilson, has assured that “using the monarch in the way in which he has been used is something very dangerous” and denotes that London “knew that this agreement was not a great agreement”. .

In this sense, he regretted that the United Kingdom Government has tried to convince them by taking advantage of the “great respect for the monarchy” that they, the Northern Irish unionists, have.

On the other hand, Wilson has stated that the DUP will not “react hastily” to an agreement they are not convinced of and has warned that they will take “as long as it takes” to decide how to proceed.

The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced this Monday a “historic” agreement with which to turn the page on two years of tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol agreed as part of the Brexit divorce but that London refused to apply due to the complexity and costs involved in its compliance in the Northern Irish province.

The controversy arises from the de facto trade border that was created between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland in the Irish Sea to avoid controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. However, Northern Irish unionists considered that it isolated them from the rest of the British territory and tied them to the jurisdiction of the European Union.