The NI protocol, known as ”backstop,” is supposed to be temporary and applies unless it is replaced by a future relationship agreement that the parties will attempt to reach by December 31, 2020. The protocol provides that the common travel area and North-South cooperation will continue to a large extent as they do today, as well as the internal electricity market (so that some EU legislation on wholesale electricity markets will continue to apply). It is essential that the transition period can be extended by a mutual agreement between the EU and the UK. Please note that, in accordance with the agreement, the transitional period can only be extended once until 31 December 2022 and that the United Kingdom and the European Union must make a decision by 1 July 2020 on whether such an extension should be made. In practice, it is unlikely that the EU will raise objections if the UK asks for an extension, so the ball will be in the british Court of Justice`s court on that front. Following the first round of withdrawal negotiations, the UK and the EU set out an agreed approach to financial equalization in the December 2017 Joint Report. The comparison defines the financial commitments to be covered, the method of calculating the UK`s share and the payment plan. The withdrawal agreement transforms the approach outlined in this report into a legal text and provides for the continuation of negotiations on UK contributions to the EU budget if the transition period is extended. An extension would have no impact on financial equalization, which would continue as agreed.

The same conditions of competition concerned taxation, environmental protection, labour standards, state aid and competition. These have been replaced by less specific and non-binding commitments in the political declaration to impose these principles in any future trade agreement between the EU and the UK. If, at the end of the transition period, the EU and the UK fail to reach an agreement on their future relations guaranteeing the absence of a border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the ”backstop of Northern Ireland” will come into force. In this case, Northern Ireland will be part of the UK customs territory, but it will be aligned with a limited set of EU rules, particularly with regard to goods. Trade in goods is affected. There will be regulatory controls on goods taking place at the UK`s entry into Northern Ireland and not through the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In addition, the United Kingdom will apply tariffs to the United Kingdom on products from third countries as long as goods imported with Deminland are threatened with entering the EU internal market. This applies equally to goods arriving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland or directly to Northern Ireland. However, the UK will apply EU tariffs to products that are at risk of entering the internal market. This is, of course, an extremely complex issue, because at the moment we do not fully understand how the question of the risk of entry into the internal market is defined or what measures the UK will take to enforce EU tariffs in this case and what could happen if the goods actually remained in Northern Ireland.