Brexit: 11 things you need to know about the UK-EU ‘Sausage War’
ITV News Political Correspondent Romilly Weeks has the latest on the row
On Tuesday, Environment Secretary George Eustice branded as “bonkers” a situation in which British-made sausages could not be sold in Northern Ireland, amid continuing rows over post-Brexit border arrangements.
"There’s no problem with our sausages or indeed our chicken nuggets," Eustice stated, in an update to an increasingly bizarre saga dubbed 'Sausage Wars' by the media. But what is the 'conflict' and does it really boil down to just sausages? Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen explains.
Here's 11 things you need to know about the UK-EU ‘Sausage War’: 1. It involves almost no sausages. Very few travel from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. A lot go the other way but aren’t involved in this ‘war’. 2. It isn’t a war. It’s a dispute about chilled meats. Sausages just make the best headlines. 3. The problem is the Brexit deal signed by the government (yes, this government) which kept NI in the single market while the rest of the UK left. 4. To avoid doing checks on goods entering the EU along the sensitive border in Ireland, the deal said they would be done between GB and NI instead. 5. Delays were agreed on some of the more disruptive checks on supermarket lorries and chilled meat products. 6. At the time a very senior Irish government source told me those checks might then never have to start. 7. The delay on checks for supermarket lorries was supposed to end in March but the UK decided to extend it without agreement from the EU. 8. That really annoyed the EU. 9. The delay on checks for chilled meats is due to end this month. 10. The UK say the EU is being too strict about the implementing the deal. Anyway, Europe is hardly going to be flooded with chilled meats through Northern Ireland. 11. The EU says they’re trying to be helpful, but if Boris Johnson doesn’t like the deal he shouldn’t have signed it. Et voila. It’s the Sausage War.
'What we can't have is that EU law should apply to the rest of the UK,' Lord Frost says
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