US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing criticism from the leader of Northern Ireland’s biggest unionist party after saying Congress won’t approve a trade deal with the UK.
If Britain scraps the agreement governing post-Brexit trade on the Irish island.
The trans-Atlantic sparring follows British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government announcing its intention to introduce legislation that would allow it to unilaterally suspend the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, an international agreement between Britain and the European Union.
Northen Ireland is the only part of the U.K. That shares a land border with an EU member country — the Republic of Ireland — and required special attention when the UK withdrew from the EU.
The protocol is designed to preserve the Northern Ireland peace process, but unionists complain it has created a trade barrier between the province and the rest of the UK.
Pelosi said on Thursday that Britain’s actions threatened to undermine the 1998 Good Friday Accords that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland. She called for “good-faith negotiations” to resolve any differences over the protocol.