Great Brexit brawl: EU offers to improve N Ireland trade

The great Brexit brawl is heading into its next standoff when European Union concessions to improve trade in Northern Ireland are bound to be deemed insufficient by the United Kingdom

BRUSSELS -- The great Brexit brawl is heading into its next standoff on Wednesday when European Union concessions to improve trade in Northern Ireland look likely to be deemed insufficient by the United Kingdom.

Officials said that the EU's top Brexit official Maros Sefcovic is to propose major practical changes in the Byzantine system of customs and checks in Northern Ireland, which is U.K. territory but remained part of the EU's borderless trading market when the U.K. left the bloc last year. Under the new rules, goods must be checked between Britain and Northern Ireland.

However welcome such a cut in red tape might be to London, it is also insisting on a further, fundamental change. It wants the EU to cede final legal oversight of any trade disputes there, and leave it to independent arbitration.

EU officials, member nations and the bloc’s parliament have bristled at the thought that the EU's Court of Justice would lose its preeminence over part of its trading market, and Sefcovic's room for maneuver is narrow in negotiations starting later this week.