UK urges EU to stay calm in Brexit spat over N. Ireland

LONDON • The United Kingdom urged the European Union to remain "calm" in the escalating dispute over post-Brexit Northern Ireland, as the EU's chief negotiator warned ambassadors that the negotiations aimed at avoiding an all-out trade war were going badly.

"I gently suggest that our European friends should stay calm and keep things in proportion," the UK's Brexit minister David Frost said in Parliament on Wednesday.

He was speaking following reports that the EU is considering terminating its free trade deal with the UK if Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government follows through on its threat to unilaterally suspend part of the post-Brexit agreement on Northern Ireland.

If Britain made such a move, "we would set our case with confidence and why it was wholly consistent with our legal obligations", Mr Frost said, adding that the UK is not yet ready to walk away from talks with the bloc.

Britain and the EU are currently locked in a fresh round of talks over their testy post-Brexit relationship, with the UK calling for a major overhaul of the so-called Northern Ireland protocol contained in the wider divorce deal.

If the EU does not agree to a re-write, Britain said it will invoke Article 16, which allows for limited suspensions of the deal to address disruption to trade.

The EU's chief negotiator, Mr Maros Sefcovic, told EU diplomats on Wednesday in a closed-door briefing that he is pessimistic about the talks, saying London appears to be preparing to trigger Article 16, according to two EU diplomats briefed on the meeting.

Member states were divided on how to react to a hardening of the British stance, with France, Belgium and several northern countries pushing for a very strong response, and a majority of nations urging dialogue and a proportionate reaction, one of the diplomats said. One envoy expressed very serious doubts as to whether the UK is acting in good faith, the other diplomat said.

Mr Frost told the House of Lords that if the EU responded by suspending the post-Brexit trade deal, it would be a "massive and disproportionate retaliation".

"They seem to be claiming it would be entirely unreasonable for the British government, uniquely, to use these wholly legitimate safeguard provisions in the treaty designed precisely to deal with situations like the current one," he said.

Irish Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadker warned earlier on Wednesday that triggering Article 16 would not lead to the UK securing a better deal, but would mean potential retaliatory action from the bloc.

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