hello and welcome to the programme that brings together the foreign journalists who write, blog and broadcast to audiences back home from the dateline london. it s been a convention busting week, this one a queen s speech delivered for the first time in 70 years by a royal other than the queen. two countries strictly neutral for 80 years, preparing to take sides. in northern ireland, a party in favour of reuniting the island of ireland topped the poll for the first time in the centuries since ireland was partitioned. to discuss all that and more, in the studio are brian o connell, former bureau chief in london for the irish broadcaster rte, eunice goes, portuguesejournalist and university lecturer and newly created british citizen, and jeffrey kofman, who s been both a war correspondent and news anchor in canada and the united states. good to have you back with us. jeffrey, let s start with nato expansion. sweden and finland, finland s president, sauli niinisto, said on f
Finland has made a formal application tojoin in the coming days, while sweden is announcing later whether it will follow. the uk business secretary says he doesn t think there will be a trade war with the eu over the northern ireland protocol. reports say the uk government is poised to introduce legislation to strip away parts of the protocol a deal struck by borisjohnson which governs post brexit trade. lebanon is holding parliamentary elections for the first time since an economic collapse sparked widespread anger against the political elite. discontent worsened after the devastating explosion in the port of beirut. we will return to the subject of sweden and finnish accession to nato as i m joined by guests on dateline london.
And that oven ready deal. with the deal and it was fine. and then during the election campaign, he he told some exporters in northern ireland that if they d got any customs forms to fill up, they should tear them up or call him or something like that. now, borisjohnson has has let those people down. he s betrayed those people, and he s going back again. how on earth could anybody trust anything the man says about this at this stage? brian, i m curious, - as you know, as i first went to northern ireland as a reporter for the canadian broadcasting. corporation in the mid 90s, . i felt like i needed a dictionary and a road map to understand i the shorthand terminology that s used to cover this story. sectarian, unionist. when you re not inside. the bubble of this story,
Absolutely. the island of ireland, the republic is in the european union. so it was agreed that the border the uk is physically on the island. the it was agreed that the border would not be between the republic of ireland and northern ireland to safeguard the peace process and the good friday agreement. so it had to be on the irish sea. so that border has to remain there. and the way that the european union sees it is that, well, this was clear. this was clear since the beginning of brexit, they ve been talking about this problem since 2016. the british government signed the northern irish protocol in 2019 and borisjohnson said it was a great deal, a fantastic deal, an open trade deal and said it was fabulous. a fantastic deal, an oven ready deal and said it was fabulous. it sorted all the problems and so on. so what the european union sees is an incredibly bad faith because they signed it clearly with a view to break it soon after. and so they are saying, well, this is a government
A change in 2018 with president trump in office. president s escalating trade battles are leaving some countries to negotiate their own deals. just yesterday our allies japan and the european union signed a deal creating an open trade deal. set to eliminate $1.1 million. new eu and japanese trade zone accounts for one third of the world s gdp and encompasses over 600 million people. it eliminates about 99% of tariffs on japanese goods sold to the eu, eliminating 94% on european exports to japan. that will rise to eliminating 99% in the future. this isn t the only trade deal japan is working on without the united states. after the president pulled out of the trance pacific partnership. they began to work on a new deal