It needed to be said. The European Commission was wrong to threaten to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol in a bid to prevent vaccines located within the EU from being transported into the UK across the Irish border.Not only was it wrong, it was reckless and stupid. Heads should roll. If the measure had gone ahead, it would have been Brussels – not previously best known for its unionist stance – that re-established a hard Irish border. How crazy was that?
No wonder the Dublin Government and the Stormont Executive protested. No wonder Michel Barnier, now the point man between Britain and the EU, was quick to distance himself from what looked to be happening.
It is a measure of how desperate the EU has become over its stalled Covid vaccination policy that it could even contemplate such an insane act.
