Northern Irish leader questions Brexit deal after vaccine export spat

The head of the government in Northern Ireland has called for the special Brexit rules for the Irish border to be scrapped, in the wake of a spat with the European Union over new coronavirus vaccine export controls.

"The protocol is unworkable," First Minister Arlene Foster told broadcaster BBC on Saturday, saying that she would urge the British and Irish governments to scrap these Brexit arrangements.

The Northern Ireland Protocol, which keeps the British-administered territory aligned with EU customs rules post-Brexit, is causing considerable tensions, Foster said.

The announcement of new restrictions on the export of Covid-19 vaccines made in the European Union triggered a backlash in Belfast, Dublin and London on Friday amid confusion over whether exports to Northern Ireland could be blocked.

The European Commission was forced to clarify overnight that it was not triggering an emergency override clause in the Brexit deal, after apparently mistakenly invoking it in an official legal document on the export restrictions.

The new temporary EU system appeared to make possible even blockades of exports at the border between EU member the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which officially left the EU with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Brexit negotiators had strived for years to reach an agreement preventing exactly this: Controls on the internal Irish border are considered poison for the fragile peace process in Northern Ireland, still recovering from civil war.

It is thought EU officials were trying to stop Britain being able to bypass restrictions by routing EU vaccine deliveries through Northern Ireland.

"Should transits of vaccines.... toward third countries be abused to circumvent the effects of the authorization system, the EU will consider using all the instruments at its disposal," the commission said in a written statement on Friday night.

The EU executive published a new version of the document on Saturday, making no reference to the clause in question - article 16 - or the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Instead, EU states will simply monitor the amount of EU exports headed to Northern Ireland, the document states.

But the political damage was already done.

The EU cooked up the exports register - which was slammed as a worrying indication of vaccine nationalism by the World Health Organization (WHO) - amid a row with British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

As of Saturday, it allows blockades on exports of vaccines made in the bloc that the EU feels it is legally entitled to by its agreements with pharmaceutical firms.

Countries like Switzerland, Israel and Ukraine are exempt, as are humanitarian exports.

AstraZeneca announced last week that it would only be able to deliver around 40 per cent of the vaccines it had promised the EU in the first quarter of 2021.

The bloc is trailing far behind front-runners like Israel and Britain in the push to inoculate its population.

The cheap and easy-to-use shot was the third vaccine approved for use in the 27 member states on Friday, but issues at an EU production site have pushed back the agreed delivery timetable.

EU officials argue that AstraZeneca should divert vaccines being supplied to Britain, which is largely untouched by the issues, and hand them over to the bloc. Anything else is unfair burden-sharing, the commission argues.