Ireland's foreign min @SimonCoveney says there will be no breakthru at the #euco this wk, that EU fishermen will not be "sold out" in order to secure a future relationship deal, and that if there is a deal it will not be ratified unless the UK "remove" Internal Mkt Bill clauses

2/ Speaking at the General Affairs Council Mr Coveney said: “We value fishermen, we value their contribution across the EU and cerainly EU fishermen are not going to be sold out in an effort to get an agreement on a future relationship with the UK on trade.”
3/ He said that while there had been some progress on the level playing field area, there had been “little or no” movement on fisheries. Both sides, he said, had legitimate concerns on the issue.
4/ Mr Coveney had bilateral meetings with both @MichelBarnier and @MarosSefcovic
5/ “There was a very clear message that if we do manage to negotiate a deal on a future relationship agreement that involves many different areas, before that deal can be ratified or finalised, the domestic legislation that the UK has introduced...
6/ ...effectively threatening to break the Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol, that that legislation will need to be removed."
7/ However, he said progress had been made by the Joint Committee on implementing the NI Protocol, and he said it would have to be implemented in a way that "worked for people living in NI and the island of Ireland as a whole"
8/ He concluded: “I think a deal is very much still possible. But there’s an awful lot of work to do for the two negotiating teams. But for the European Union, the perspective is that unity is strength and today we got very strong unity on all of the issues.”

More from Tony Connelly

Irish foreign min Simon Coveney says he is "more optimistic" about progress in the EU UK Joint Committee over implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol.

2/ Last night @rtenews reported that if a free trade deal were to be concluded, a sequence would be put in place at the end of which the UK would drop the clauses in the Internal Market Bill which breach the Protocol.

3/ This morning, the EU’s representative on the Joint Committee, which implements the Protocol, said he would be meeting his counterpart Michael Gove in Brussels today.


4/ Mr Coveney said: “There is more cause to be optimistic and positive in the context of the Joint Committee and its work in terms of implementing the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.

5/ “Maros Sefcovic and Michael Gove have made really practical progress on many of the outstanding issues that were not resolved up until a few weeks ago.

More from Brexit

Brexit also brings UK pork sector to standstill. Surprise eh? @RichardAENorth 🙄
UK pork processors are experiencing significant issues in exporting products to the EU, which has already brought part of the industry to a complete standstill, risking knock-on impacts on farm.


The widely seen footage of overzealous Dutch (*my edit: "no they were not"*) inspection officials confiscating ham sandwiches transported by British hauliers is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the UK pig sector is concerned.
The NPA’s processor members have reported that

excessive (*my edit: only for non-EU members*) bureaucracy associated with paperwork requirements are causing delays at Dover, Calais and other ports. With pork being a perishable product, these delays are making UK shipments unattractive to buyers in the EU, forcing processors

to reject shipments and cancel future orders.
Despite the trade deal agreed between the EU & UK just before Christmas, the UK’s formal departure from the EU Customs Union and Single Market was always going to mean additional checks, new labelling and certification requirements

and delays at ports. While the full overall impact of the new rules is yet to be felt, as UK export volumes remain lower than normal for the time of year, the UK pig sector is already feeling the effect. Processors have reported a number of issues, including:
A not-so-little thread on how post-Brexit work permit regulations will apply in Scottish football and why it’s, broadly, not a good thing...

1) Work permit calculations are based on the points formula from this site -
https://t.co/sjqx8Df7Zg

As things stand, while this article deals with England, the system applies to Scotland also.

The goal is 15 points and the article shows various ways to get there. Essentially, play regularly internationally or in a top 5 league and you’re in. But read the article because it’s a bit trickier than that.

2) There are elements of this I’d dispute. For example, here’s the banding of leagues and, lower down, it’s an absolute mess - Denmark (ranked 14 in coefficient table) and Serbia (16) banded lower than Croatia (20), Greece (18) and Czechs (19)? It’s wholly random.


I get the point that leagues should be banded, but there doesn’t seem to have been loads of sense applied to how these things are actually banded, rather they’ve just shoved a bunch of leagues together and hoped for the best.

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