By Faith Barbara N Ruhinda Updated at 1403 EAT on Monday 18 May 2025

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill has welcomed news of a deal between the UK and EU, but says “the devil will be in the detail.

Speaking at Stormont, she said there’s been an improved relationship between London and Brussels.

Anything that protects the all-island economy, anything that maximises our access to both markets in terms of trade, anything that removes barriers for trade, then that’s something that we would obviously very much welcome.

Writing on X, Angus Robertson says there has been no recourse, involvement or approval of devolved administrations.

He says the Scottish government received no documentation or draft proposals in advance.

The Prime Minister must ignore the naysayers and dinosaurs in Reform and the Conservative Party and be more ambitious in getting the best deal in the national interest,” he adds.

A deal on food and agriculture will have the most consequence in Northern Ireland, with the potential to substantially dismantle the “Irish Sea border” between the region and the rest of the UK.

After Brexit, the UK and EU agreed Northern Ireland would stay inside the EU’s single market for goods. This was to ensure no hardening of the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The flip side is that goods coming into Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK now face checks and a blizzard of paperwork to ensure they meet EU standards – this is the Irish Sea border.

It has a particular impact on food as Northern Ireland’s supermarkets are still largely supplied from distribution centres in England and Scotland.

If Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK end up following the same EU rules on food, there will be no need for checks and regulatory paperwork as products cross the sea border.

However, this sort of deal will not end the sea border entirely. Short of the UK rejoining the EU’s customs union, goods being shipped from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will still need customs declarations.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is now welcoming EU leaders in central London for the summit.

We’ve got a situation where, after Brexit, we’ve got the same food standards in place on both sides of the border, yet our agricultural food exports are down by a fifth,” the business secretary says.

You can’t sell some products at all I mean, a British sausage made in my constituency. You can’t sell those. Can’t sell burgers.

We’ve got no real reason for that situation continuing, and, where we can work with our partners, where we can remove costs, where we can remove friction, that means cheaper bills in the long run.

SPS is Whitehall speak for sanitary and phytosanitary and translates to animal and food rules.

In other words, ministers will talk up what they see as the significant advantages, demanded by the supermarkets and others, of reduced friction in this trade into the EU.

More broadly, expect to hear the prime minister and senior ministers talk up what they see as the gains on jobs, bills and the border the trio of priorities they are repeating more and more often at the moment.

Elspeth Macdonald, who represents more than four hundred fishing boats as chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, described the deal on the Good morning Scotland programme as a “total capitulation to the EU”.

She says the multi-year deal means the industry loses any leverage it would have had through annual negotiations, so therefore the EU continues to take a far bigger share.

It would be a terrible deal for Scottish fishermen, she says.

In return, the UK secured an agreement that the aspect of the deal reducing checks on food exports to the EU would stand alone rather than being tied to any future negotiations over fish.

Politically, there are some concerns in government about an angry response from the British fishing industry, but also hope that they can persuade those who are concerned that the overall deal means it will be easier for UK companies to sell the fish they do catch into EU markets.

Later today the government will also unveil a fishing and coastal growth fund, which will be £360 million of investment in coastal communities.

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