A highly symbolic date for an entire country. Monday, April 10, Northern Ireland celebrates 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement, which put an end to 30 years of violent conflict in the territory, recalls La Presse. While the peace agreement has brought an end to the fighting, deep divisions remain within the population and the recent exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union after Brexit has rekindled some tensions between Catholics and Protestants. Here’s what to remember from this historic agreement.
Signed on April 10, 1998 in Belfast, the Good Friday Agreement was reached after three decades of violence (1969-1998) between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. On the one hand, the Catholic community was nationalist and in favor of reunification with the Irish Republic while the Protestants were loyalists and pleaded for the maintenance of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. These divisions led to numerous attacks and caused the death of 3,500 people, including 2,000 civilians.
The agreement gave Northern Ireland its own political body, the Northern Ireland Assembly, made up of 108 proportionally elected members, and enabled the creation of a council of ministers (the British Irish Council listen)) led by a Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. The various paramilitary groups (Provisional IRA, UVF and UDA in particular) were ordered to destroy their weapons while prisoners accused of violent crimes related to the conflict were released.
This agreement also enshrines the right to hold both citizenships, Irish and British, regardless of how Northern Ireland’s status develops in the future. The signing of this agreement was approved by a majority of Irish people in a referendum in May 1998.
While the signing of the Good Friday Agreement was the culmination of four years of discussions and negotiations between London, Dublin and Washington, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will be in Northern Ireland on Monday 10 April for the 25th anniversary celebrations of the agreement. Joe Biden, who often mentions his Irish roots, will also travel to Dublin, Ireland.
Despite the signing of the agreement in 1998, the political situation in Northern Ireland remains highly complex. And for good reason, the text indicates that the government must be led jointly by a loyalist party and a nationalist party. Any decision must thus be taken in pairs and each camp has a right of veto allowing it to block decisions that do not benefit it, or to leave the government. For 25 years, Parliament has therefore been regularly paralyzed and veto rights have been used outrageously.
With Brexit and the exit of the United Kingdom from the European common market, Northern Ireland could have left the European Union completely and a physical border could thus have been reestablished between the two parts of Ireland. But this perspective would have generated a serious step backwards and a situation similar to that of before 1998, only worse, since at the time both countries were in the EU. After several months of negotiations, Great Britain and the European Union reached an agreement at the end of February for post-Brexit control in Northern Ireland.
Signed in 2020, the Northern Irish protocol regulates the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, the only land border with the European Union. The aim was to protect the European single market without jeopardizing the peace agreements by putting a border in the Irish Sea.
