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But maybe you should say to yourself, you know, i m a very experienced diplomat, you ve been in this game in the eu commission and elsewhere for decades you know that, in the end, there is always a compromise out there somewhere. if one takes the british proposals now, with the red and the green channels, doing away with a lot of the oversight which you guys now demand on the trade between great britain and northern ireland, if you look at their proposals, look at yours, cos you ve said to me, you know what? we re open to reducing the paperwork, we re going to reduce the standards necessary on some of the products live animals can go through without the same scrutiny that we demanded in the first place, you re actually not very far apart. you re a good diplomat. they re good diplomats in london. why can t you just get this done? you are not referring to some other proposals on the british side, which are. ..on which we have zero margin of manoeuvre. you know, putting in que ....
All is your contention that the northern ireland protocol does notjeopardise the good friday agreement. but the good friday agreement, fundamentally, is about cooperation between the two different views within northern ireland of its future that is the unionist view and the nationalist, republican view. the good friday agreement only works if both sides are brought on board, and right now, your protocol is rejected by the unionists. it s not. there is no unionist politician in northern ireland who accepts the protocol. it s not our protocol. it s the protocol agreed between the uk and the european union, for which there is no, as far as i understand, no formal and comprehensive alternative. the question here is to implement what we have agreed in the most flexible way possible, and that s what we re trying to do. but there comes a point where it s just not working at all. and i m going to quote to you the foreign secretary in the united kingdom, ....
Agreed in two major agreements, the withdrawal agreement, which contains the protocol on northern ireland and a number of other issues, and the trade and cooperation agreement, which looks at the future. let s implement that in a goodwill spirit. oh, my goodness, that does sound so nice and your tone is so emollient. but the truth is, this is not working out at all. i m just describing our attitude. well. . .yes, but let s explore whether that really is your attitude or whether that s just the public face for diplomatic purposes. because in the end, it really, at the moment, comes down to northern ireland. now, the uk government is quite clear they signed an agreement which included a northern ireland protocol, and the idea of that was to ensure that trade could continue to work across the irish sea, that is from the landmass of great britain into northern ireland. at the same time, northern ireland would have the status of being in the eu single market and there would be special measu ....
Here, but let me be very clear about one point. what we are. the message we are passing to our ukrainian friends and, for that matter, for our moldovan friends as well, is a very clear one, and to the georgian ones as well you belong to the european family. and this is the most important political message you can send. on top of that, the european commission, which is responsible under the treaties to provide an opinion, and if the european commission goes against that fact, nothing will happen. well, it happens the european commission is in favour of providing ukraine and moldova immediately with a candidate status. and this is absolutely historic. yeah. and your. i say yours as a citizen of portugal. antonio costa of portugal says, the eu, if it goes for candidate status for ukraine, is in danger of creating false expectations. he clearly, like macron just a few weeks ago, thinks that there is no chance of ukraine actually becoming a member of the eu for decades. the leaders ....
European council would hear the opinion and consider the opinion of the commission. i think all the indications point to a positive direction. but who am i to say what our leaders will decide? but i think what s already been done, if you take the position of the european commission, if you take the position of a number of leaders in europe and what you expect to happen in the european council, i think very much goes in the direction saying, ukrainians, you are part of our family. ukrainians, we want you to be a candidate and we want you, of course, to perform all the reforms necessary to be able to one day be a member of the european union. and we ll see exactly what the leaders say in just a few days. but on the strategic point i m trying to make, emmanuel macron of france basically said europe needs to develop a much greater, coherent security strategy and capacity of its own. strategic autonomy, he calls it. isn t the truth of what we ve seen unfold in this crisis, that it is ....