A new deal to ease post-Brexit trade tensions in Northern Ireland has been officially announced.
adopted on Friday by the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU), the two parties announced in a joint statement.

The agreement was signed by the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, James Cleverly, and the Vice-President of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, when they met in London.

According to their joint statement, the UK and the EU took a “positive approach” and “reaffirmed their intention” to use the framework to address any future trade issues.

The content of the new agreement, dubbed the “Windsor framework”, was finalized at the end of February after lengthy negotiations. Its aim is to address trade problems created by its predecessor, the Northern Ireland Protocol, which imposed border controls on British goods arriving in Northern Ireland.

Central to the new deal, the ‘Stormont Brake’, named after the palace that houses the Northern Ireland Assembly, aims to give Northern Ireland lawmakers more influence over the EU rules that will apply in the region.

While Northern Ireland’s political parties largely support the framework, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has questioned how the “Stormont brake” works. In protest, the DUP refused to join the power-sharing government in Stormont for over a year, undermining the region’s political stability.

APS