Good Friday Agreement Brexit

A number of bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements have made goods controls less intrusive; The completion of the European internal market in 1992 led to the end of goods controls. However, during the riots in Northern Ireland, British military checkpoints occurred at major border crossings and British security forces made some, but not all, crossing points impassable. In 2005, in the implementation phase of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the last of the border checkpoints was abolished. [1] 2 There is a general consensus that the UK`s exit from the European Union will have a negative impact on the Irish and Northern Irish economies, as well as on cross-border trade and relations between Ireland and Northern Ireland, particularly in some sectors that are heavily dependent on trade, such as agriculture and food. However, if a general agreement has still not been reached between the political parties London, Brussels, Dublin and Northern Ireland on the status of the Irish border after Brexit, it is not only because of these potentially negative socio-economic effects. This is mainly due to the fact that the current soft border system is an integral part of a very complex constitutional and institutional order, created by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and ratified by two simultaneous referendums in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Therefore, it can rightly be argued that the reason the Irish border is so controversial today is because the GFA has not provided a real and consensual solution to the unwelcome question of the very status of the Irish border. Despite 20 years of peace and a 56% majority in Northern Ireland in favour of remaining in the EU, northern Ireland`s Unionist and Nationalist nationals still do not agree on what will happen to this border. In other words, if Brexit raises several problems and debates on the Irish border issue, it is not so much the consequence of Brexit itself as a symptom of the initial weaknesses of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Northern Ireland political parties that approved the agreement were also invited to consider the creation of an independent advisory forum, which would represent civil society, with members with expertise on social, cultural, economic and other issues, and would be appointed by both administrations. In 2002, a framework structure was agreed for the North-South Advisory Forum, and in 2006 the Northern Ireland Executive agreed to support its implementation. The proposed withdrawal agreement would end the special regime for Northern Ireland if a solution could be found that would provide a border as pictured as the one that became the Good Friday agreement until Brexit. Such a solution has yet to be identified from June 2019.