Contemporary Problems of Implementation of the Protocol on Northern Ireland after Brexit

The article analyses some aspects of the practice of implementing the Protocol on Northern Ireland as one of the main elements of the legal formalisation of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. The problem of Northern Ireland was one of the central issues in the Brexit negotiation process. The found and agreed solution in the form of the Protocol on Northern Ireland initially raised many questions and concerns primarily from the UK’s side, which were later confirmed during the implementation of the document. Immediately after Brexit, the British government took an official position on the need to revise the Protocol as an integral part of the withdrawal agreement, in particular, by initiating a Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which unilaterally terminates a number of provisions of the Protocol. It is quite natural that such actions on the British side caused indignation of the European Commission, which initiated the appropriate judicial procedure against the UK. An analysis of the process of implementation of the Protocol on Northern Ireland allowed the author to conclude on the negative consequences of the decisions taken by the British government for bilateral relations with the European Union in various fields, as well as the implementation of other provisions of the concluded agreement on trade and cooperation between the two sides. The scientific methods for the underlying research in this article are well-known. The purpose and objectives of the work are to study the relevant problems associated with the implementation of the Protocol on Northern Ireland, the factors contributing to them, as well as the consequences of the decisions taken.