Does the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill breach international law?

By Mark Elliott
Professor of Public Law, University of Cambridge

This post was originally published on the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law website on 17 June 2022.

On Monday 13 June, the UK Government published the text of the proposed Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. The Northern Ireland Protocol forms part of the Withdrawal Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The Protocol creates a special legal position for Northern Ireland in the light of its particular political circumstances, effectively enabling Northern Ireland to remain within the EU’s Single Market for goods. The UK Government argues that it is necessary to ‘fix’ certain practical problems that it perceives in relation to this arrangement, including ‘disruption and diversion of trade and significant costs and bureaucracy for business’. It therefore proposes the enactment of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

In this video, Professor Mark Elliott considers the extent to which the Bill could be considered to be proposing a breach of international law.