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A breakthrough in Northern Ireland?

The Stormont Parliament Buildings in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The Stormont Parliament Buildings in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksJanuary 30, 2024
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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The Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s largest pro-UK party, says it has cut a deal that allows the government to function after two years of political paralysis – but the EU, whose Brexit deal is at stake, is watching closely.

DUP leaders claim that Rishi Sunak’s UK government has agreed to scrap the customs checks and paperwork that slow the flow of goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, a controversial feature of the Brexit deal that London originally cut with the EU as part of Brexit. The agreement, according to DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, “takes away the border within the UK between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.”

In exchange, the DUP has agreed to rejoin Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive with opposition parties that favor closer ties to the Republic of Ireland, which remains a member of the EU. By rejoining, the DUP allows North Ireland’s executive and assembly to get back to work for the first time since it began boycotting those institutions in February 2022.

There’s a catch, and it may be a big one: Details of the deal will only be revealed on Wednesday. If it does what the DUP leader says it does, the EU will want a word. Stay tuned …

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