Professor David Phinnemore:

I have a number of observations. The reason we have seen quite high levels of stakeholder engagement by the EU and the UK on the protocol is we have had, and still have, serious issues around the implementation of the protocol and contestation. There was a desire on the part of the UK and the EU to engage more with stakeholders to find out what are the genuine issues on the ground because this is a new set of arrangements. It is an untested and untried set of arrangements that will have effects. Both sides found it useful to get feedback on these issues. We must remember, however, that the protocol is not just a static entity where any resolution to these issues is going to resolve the protocol. The protocol is about managing a set of relationships and providing a framework for that. Certainly the evidence to date suggests that the most trusted actors in this process at the moment are business representatives due to the trade dimensions. t follows that we should find mechanisms to ensure that existing level of stakeholder engagement becomes routinised and formalised. What structure is used needs some more thinking. Equally, we could think about multiple structures. The protocol has to sit within the UK-EU relationship. It must sit within the framework of the 1998 Agreement. What could we possibly be doing in and around the institutions and structures - whether those be strand one, strand two, or strand three - to facilitate that dialogue? That dialogue is important to try to provide at least some counter to some of the more politicised rhetoric we see coming from politicians on these issues. Often it is far more evidence-based because it reflects the situation on the ground, and certainly in terms of the trade dimension, that businesses are facing. There is an issue at the moment, for example, where the EU has put forward a number of ideas around governance. Professor Hayward has indicated that she has submitted papers on possible options there. I do not believe that much space has been given to some discussion about what models might work but it is in the interests of both the UK and the EU to try to identify some arrangements and to draw on what is a valuable set of views and ideas that are coming out of civil society, which tend to come not just with problems but also with solutions and ideas. We need to have that more creative approach to managing the protocol than we have possibly seen in some of the politics that has surrounded it over the past two years.