Member's statement: EU Protection of Geographical Indications Regulation
Member's statement by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on .
- MLA
- Dr Steve Aiken OBE
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 26 February 2024
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- EU Protection of Geographical Indications Regulation
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4230516
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Members will now be aware of the notification of a new EU regulation on protection of geographical indications for craft and industrial products. You wrote to Members of the Assembly on Friday evening, Mr Speaker, informing us that an applicability motion must be tabled by the FM and the dFM, acting jointly, to the Assembly within 14 days of its receipt. Members may not be fully aware that that applicability motion requires the cross-community consent of the Chamber for it to be added to the Windsor framework legislation. The notification, which came originally to the Clerk of our Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee, was not, as I understand it, originally forwarded to you, Mr Speaker, as it should have been, by the Cabinet Office, and there is a particularly tight timeline for it that commenced on 21 February. The Chair of the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee has made clear to the rest of the Committee that our remit stretches only to future regulation, among other areas, as outlined in the letter that the Committee sent to Ministers the previous week. In the light of that and the taut timelines required, we are concerned that insufficient scrutiny will be conducted on this new EU regulation, whereby, according to the explanatory note, it may downplay the implications for Northern Ireland businesses. There is, by implication, a possibility that it may impact on internal UK trade, particularly on the vital east-west dimension of our internal UK market. While the note refers to minor changes, those of us who have been in the Assembly previously may remember that the impact of the removal of only a few minor words from a piece of transferred legislation brought down a Government. Our party notes with concern that scrutiny of the legislation has not already been expedited. Furthermore, with future timelines of five working days for other matters that are due to come under the purview of the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee and the need for us to move accurately at pace, there is a need to ensure that our Committees start looking beyond the narrow remits that they have been given, and if the lessons of the renewable heat incentive (RHI) inquiry are not to be forgotten, we must stop being incurious and start critically examining the potentially fundamental changes in legislation that are beginning to affect us, starting with this protection of geographical indications regulation.
402 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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