The agreement was reached between the British and Irish governments and eight political parties or groups in Northern Ireland. Three were representative of unionism: the Ulster Unionist Party, which had led Unionism in Ulster since the early twentieth century, and two smaller parties linked to loyalist paramilitaries, the Progressive Unionist Party (associated with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Democratic Party (the political wing of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)). Two of them have generally been described as nationalists: the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Féin, the Republican Party associated with the Commissional Irish Republican Army. [4] [5] Regardless of these rival traditions, there were two other rallying parties, the Alliance Inter-communal party and the Northern Ireland Women`s Coalition. There was also the Labour Coalition. U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell was sent by U.S. President Bill Clinton to lead discussions between the parties and groups. [6] 20 All this shows several important features of the persistent problem of the Irish border.
First, it is not just an economic and trade problem, but a highly political and constitutional one. An exclusively economic and technical solution to the commercial dimension of the problem is not of natural importance. The second conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that the current enigma of Ireland`s borders is not a new issue that would only be a consequence of the June 2016 Brexit referendum. Although the decision of a majority of voters in the UK destabilises the current soft Irish border regime on the island of Ireland, the main causes of the current difficulties with the Irish border lie in the weaknesses of the GFA itself. If there is an Irish border problem today, it is primarily because the GFA has not provided real and long-term political solutions to the historic dispute over the status of the Irish dividing border, which was set between 1920 and 1925. The Brexit referendum itself is a sign that both the Irish and British states have not yet defined the precise and agreed constitutional terms of their common sovereignty over Northern Ireland. If so, the decision to hold the 2016 referendum, upheld by the UK Supreme Court, shows that, in accordance with the UK Constitution, the London executive was right to consider Northern Ireland as an integral part of UK territory and not as an area of shared sovereignty with Dublin. Despite the GFA, the British Constitution remains a strictly unionist constitution.
As far as Northern Ireland`s internal institutions are concerned, the situation following the Brexit referendum showed that despite a 56% EU majority in favour of maintaining and a common interest in maintaining an open border, both communities still maintain their old sectarian views on the border. The causatal power-sharing democracy, established in Northern Ireland in 1998, institutionalised ethno-territorial antagonism and clearly did not transform ethno-local identities in Northern Ireland. In the context of the withdrawal negotiations, the Irish border issue was one of three [c] areas requiring a specific flow of negotiations to reach the necessary withdrawal agreement before the future relationship between the UK and the EU could be agreed. [41] [42] [43] The Irish and British governments, as well as EU officials, have stated that they do not want a hard border in Ireland, given the historical and social “sensitivities” that cross the island. [44] On the Labour Leave website, there is no proposal on how to deal with the problem of hard borders. . . .