Following a debate in the Stormont Assembly chamber on Monday, a majority of MLAs voted in favour of a Sinn Féin motion calling on the EU and UK government to align sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards.

Covering plant and animal products, an SPS agreement would act to minimise checks and paperwork on goods imported from Britain to NI, as well as making it easier for agri-food companies in Britain exporting to the EU and vice versa.

However, it continues to be a solution ruled out by the UK, amid concerns that an EU SPS deal would limit its ability to do trade deals with non-EU countries.

Not supported

It is also not a solution supported by a majority of Unionist MLAs, with most voting against the motion on Monday. Instead their attention is firmly focused on encouraging the UK government to trigger Article 16 of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, with the aim of renegotiating post-Brexit arrangements and removing the NI Protocol.

That Protocol effectively keeps NI in the EU single market for goods, allowing free trade across the Irish border, but with checks and controls on goods arriving from Britain.

While the UK government decided last month to extend indefinitely grace periods for supermarket goods, there are still 2,500 checks per week being done at NI ports, Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots told MLAs.

“That cannot be good for business in NI. If you are serious about representing people who are in need and people who are on the breadline, you will stand with everybody else in seeking the removal of the Protocol,” he said.

No hard border

He also assured MLAs that he did not want to see a hard border in Ireland, and that it was still possible to protect the EU single market without the Protocol, by checking goods at NI ports destined for the EU (Republic of Ireland) market.

Introducing the motion on Monday, Sinn Fein MLA Caoimhe Archibald claimed that triggering Article 16 would not solve anything, and would just add more uncertainty for business.

“The reality is that we all know the protocol is going nowhere. The only way forward is through continued constructive and pragmatic engagement in order to find practical solutions,” she said.

In the end 48 were in favour of the motion, with 29 against. Nine Ulster Unionist MLAs effectively abstained by going through both lobbies.

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