Northern Ireland suffered decades of bloody conflict until peace was negotiated in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Part of the agreement included having an open border with the Republic of Ireland to the south. When the UK was in the EU, there was friction-free movement of goods between north and south, because both sides complied with EU single-market rules. However, the 2016 Brexit referendum threatened to return a hard border, which would anger Republicans and potentially see a return of sectarian violence. The Northern Ireland Protocol was drawn up to prevent this. It came into effect when the transition period of the EU Withdrawal Agreement ended, at 11 p.m. on 31 December 2020.
Northern Ireland was divided by the EU referendum along sectarian lines. Leave voters (44.2%) were mostly Unionists, and Remain voters (55.8%) mostly Republicans. When the UK voted to leave, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a Republican, said: ‘Dragging us out of Europe will be to the detriment of all our citizens and will be bad for business, trade, investment, and wider society.’
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