Mr. Maro? ?efovi:

I appreciate the Senator's questions. As he rightly pointed out, we based our package of proposals for 13 October on extensive discussions with Northern Irish representatives. We are in regular contact with business leaders on a technical level, but I also make sure that I try to talk to them every four to six weeks, and now our contacts are even more intense. What I hear from them is a call for the EU and the UK to resolve our differences, to give legal clarity to business leaders and to make sure that we will provide for stability and predictability in Northern Ireland. They see that as the best contribution we can make to peace, reconciliation and to the future of Northern Ireland. They are increasingly aware of the opportunity of businesses in Northern Ireland to access the Single Market. We are getting clear inquiries about possible investment in Northern Ireland, and about setting up shops and distribution hubs in Northern Ireland. To be in both very important markets at the same time is indeed a unique opportunity. I also recognised very clearly that there is an issue for those businesses that did not think about or have not been active in exporting and importing with the EU Single Market and have been focused on Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or east-west, trade. Therefore, I was listening very carefully to this preoccupation and hence through that discussion we came up with the 80% reduction in the sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, checks and the 50% cut in red tape when it comes to customs clearance.

On the discussion with Lord Frost, we have received extensive inquiries from his side over the past four weeks. We have received many questions on how this would work, what it would mean and about the cuts and reductions we presented in our communication. My best answer to this question is that we know the Single Market well because we set the rules, we implement them and we look after how they are respected.

We know what we are talking about when we say there is an 80% or 50% cut in respective checks.

Instead of having circular theoretical discussions, I suggested that this week we should focus on two particularly pressing issues, the first being medicine, because this was the number one issue for everyone I talked to, as well as the business community. We are under time pressure and I simply need to guarantee the uninterrupted supply of medicines to Northern Ireland and to other countries in the EU such as Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. We are listening very carefully to Northern Ireland but also to UK officials and to the pharmaceutical industry, with which we have had extensive consultations. It was my suggestion to Lord Frost that we should focus like a laser beam on the issue of medicines and give our experts - our technical teams - a very clear political mandate and task. I hope by Friday when we see each other they bring us an agreement because I think we are that close to it. I hope this will happen. Our technical teams will talk and I sincerely believe we should advance on this matter. Otherwise, because of the time issue, I would have to look for another way to solve this. I want to make sure we have a solution to the uninterrupted supply of medicines to Northern Ireland before the year expires.

The second item which we agreed upon was to move to very concrete discussions on the legal text. Only the legal text will reveal where there are any shortcomings. I suggested that another detailed discussion on the legal text should be on customs formalities. With Mr. Michael Gove, David Frost's predecessor, we adopted the decision by joint committee on 17 December. If the proposed 50% reduction of customs formalities is put in place, we would be required to amend that joint committee decision. Let us work on that and work on the concrete text. Let us work on how to translate our proposal and our commitment into a concrete legal obligation. Then we will have another problem solved. Our UK partner suggested we should also look at VAT and excise taxes, and I said we are ready to look at everything that it is within the protocol. We demonstrated very clearly we have a lot of creativity, that we listen to real problems on the ground and we are ready to solve them within the protocol.

Senator Dooley referred to the change of tone I appreciated after the meeting with David Frost. Indeed, it was a much better meeting than we had the week before. We focused much more on the concrete agenda and we did not focus on Article 16. That is my preference for the future, to look for constructive solutions and demonstrate by our actions that we are here for the people of Northern Ireland, that we know how to solve this issue and we can do it within the protocol. I appreciated this, even though I know David Frost and his team keep Article 16 as one of the options on the table. I appreciated the change of tone and I hope it will still be guiding us this week and in the meeting we will have on Friday.