The first ‘EU law’ story since the Windsor Framework could not have been more perfect if a joint committee of satirists had negotiated it.
Last week, Brussels cut the permitted level of arsenic in baby food by 80 per cent. The new regulations will be adopted in Northern Ireland this month.
Alliance and nationalists have expressed concern that unionists will pull the Stormont brake repeatedly to frustrate the protocol. But would any party argue over how much poison to give babies on a principle of sovereignty?
It was immediately clear there will be no practical reason to complain.
British baby food and ingredients can continue to enter Northern Ireland through the green lane, with as much delicious arsenic as UK regulations allow.
Producers in Northern Ireland will have to follow the EU rules, even when selling in the UK, although potential leeway on this has yet to be clarified or explored.
But food producers here want to follow EU rules. They seem unconcerned by the risk others have mentioned of being undercut by lower-standard products from Britain.
“We are trying to maintain the ability to trade both to Europe and Great Britain,” Michael Bell, executive director of the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association, told the Financial Times.
Although Northern Ireland is not a major exporter of baby food its wider food industry is tied into the Republic, which is a major exporter.
Food producers do not want leeway that would jeopardise their reputation and market access, or that of their industry, when they can just observe EU standards and still sell into Britain.
The final word arrived this week from the UK baby food trade body, announcing it will be observing the new EU standards as well.
Writing to BBC business correspondent John Campbell, it said: “Any product produced in GB will be compliant with EU levels to protect the right to export to all EU countries."
It added: “The majority of baby food products on the GB market are imported from the EU.” In other words, everyone’s supply chains are too interwoven to untangle.
So the only difference all this has made between Britain and Northern Ireland is that producers in Britain will face a higher legal and reputational burden to prove they are meeting the same standards as everyone else.
Who in Northern Ireland would object to this?
Presumably, few parents take the view of the Persian king Mithridates that a little deadly poison every day helps build up the immune system.
There is a sovereignty issue about the EU setting standards but the only way to address it is to rejoin the EU – not an argument the DUP wants to start.
Nor does the party like arguing with the business community: it has declined to comment on the baby food story.
Most standards are set globally and even the EU has to compromise on them. The UK’s command paper on the Windsor Framework contains a remarkable paragraph on manufactured goods, noting that of the 3,600 international standards in place the UK and the EU differ on only 11; these are minor differences where British standards are 'higher', and the UK-EU free trade agreement obliges both sides to share minimum standards.
In an attempt to reassure unionists the protocol is meaningless, the government has admitted Brexit is pointless.
The challenge of adopting EU laws in Northern Ireland will “go on and on”, as Michael Bell put it.
Sooner or later, one will cause a political row – apparently simple changes can have bizarre, unforeseeable impacts.
When the EU proposed cutting the power of vacuum cleaners a decade ago, it insisted this was a higher environmental standard, British consumers felt it was a lower technical standard and Dyson claimed it was protectionism by German rivals. Years of headline-grabbing contention followed, possibly influencing the Brexit referendum. In the end, fittingly for our purposes, it was resolved by Dyson winning a case at the European Court of Justice for different labelling.
Similar arguments could be more unpredictable in Northern Ireland but the Windsor Framework means they should still be resolved without applying the Stormont brake.
Suppose a firm in Ballymena invents a better vacuum cleaner – the Flursucker 5000 – that breaches EU standards. Under their new spirit of partnership, the EU and UK might agree it could be made and sold here with the right risk assessment, data sharing, UK-only sticker and a trusted trader scheme.
The example of baby food will be the norm.
