End User Certificates for Northern Ireland

 To the Editor of The Times

Dear Editor,

At last you have produced a constructive piece on the Northern Ireland protocol "The Protocol is broken: three ways to fix it." but the suggested measures would still be bureaucratic and expensive, even for approved trusted traders. Obviously the single market should be protected as much as the Good Friday Agreement, otherwise Northern Ireland would become in time a smuggler's paradise abused not only by UK traders, but also by exporters from countries with which the UK now has a trade agreement. 

In order to avoid provocative customs points in Northern Ireland, UK exporters to Northern Ireland could be encouraged to sell on a duty paid delivered basis whereby all phytosanitary or health certificates could be checked in the UK, prior to export. Exporters should also be able to issue end user certificates on receipt of appropriate evidence from the Northern Ireland importer and these goods could then be exported freely without documentation to Northern Ireland and no further. The EU would then be responsible to ensure that these goods did not disappear somewhere in the vast EU market. That could be a burden for the EU but at least then both parties could share the burden of what the two parties had negotiated. The very fact that this burden was shared by both sides should appease the loyalists satisfied that both sides, and not just one, carry the burden of Northern Ireland's unique status.

Of course we could all go back to the UK joining a customs union again, but only after the eventual Northern Ireland plebiscite on its future status.

Yours faithfully,

Wiktor Moszczynski