The “premier” Rishi Sunak has summoned the president of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen to a “mini-summit” in Windsor to close the agreement of the Protocol of Ireland. The meeting is scheduled for noon on Monday (one o’clock in the afternoon in Spain) and the two will appear hours later before the press in a more than likely joint announcement on the end of the “pending issue” of Brexit.

Von Der Leyen’s trip was in fact scheduled for Saturday, but it was postponed to close the last fringes of the agreement. The operation received the code name of “Windsor Agreement”, which triggered the alarms before the possible implication of King Carlos to overcome the internal resistance of the eurosceptics and the unionists.

The president of the European Commission finally traveled to the United Kingdom early on Monday morning and the meeting with the monarch was not scheduled on her agenda, after harsh criticism of Downing Street for the supposed and symbolic role of the king in the straight final.

It is therefore expected that the meeting on Monday will put an end to the two years of tensions due to the Irish Protocol, which came into force in 2021 to avoid a return to a hard border on the island after Brexit. In return, and to preserve the integrity of the single market, controls were imposed on trade in goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The creation of the closest thing to an “internal customs” created major trade frictions and political tensions, such as the April 2021 riots in Belfast that reignited fears of further clashes between unionists and republicans. Brussels refused from the outset to “rewrite” the rules of the Protocol, agreed at the time by Boris Johnson as part of the Brexit agreement, but both parties decided to return to the negotiating table.

The final agreement would mean the virtual elimination of customs controls with the creation of a “green lane” for the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The second great point of friction these two years has been the role of the Court of Justice of the EU in possible disputes: everything seems to indicate that Sunak is willing to accept a “limited” role and as a last resort, although in the first instance the responsibility would fall on the Northern Irish courts.

As a sign of goodwill, the “premier” would have also agreed to renounce the so-called Protocol Law, promoted in its day by Boris Johnson to unilaterally “rewrite” the rules. The deal would also give the Stormont local assembly a stronger role in consenting to the application of future EU laws on its territory.

Following the joint appearance with Ursula Von der Leyen, Rishi Sunak is expected to present the agreement in Parliament, although he has not yet formally committed to a vote. More than a hundred hard-line Conservative MPs, led by Boris Johnson, could vote against their own leader, although prominent Eurosceptics such as former Brexit minister David Davis have already announced that they will approve the deal out of sheer pragmatism.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which has refused for a year to participate in a unity government due to its opposition to the Protocol, has indicated that it will take time before announcing its official position.

In any case, Rishi Sunak is risking his political future with the double challenge – to the unionists and the eurosceptics of his own party – convinced as he is that the time has come to put an end to the eternal disputes with the EU and “make Brexit work”.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project