Mr. Maro? ?efovi:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. I agree with him, because I was part of the discussions with the member states, that there was spectacular solidarity with Ireland. We could feel how strong the European family is when we are working together in a united approach. Part of building that solidarity was based on the fact that Ireland has always been a loyal EU member state. It has always been collegial with other member states and therefore everyone understood how important these questions and issues are for Ireland. Its solidarity and investment in working closely with its EU colleagues and member states really paid off. In many meetings, the support from member states was clear and unequivocal. I can say the same about the European Parliament. If it comes to the mechanism of intensive engagement, the Deputy has been well informed that we have been doing our utmost to be in permanent and constant touch with different parts of society and with stakeholders in Northern Ireland.

We had, I believe, more frequent meetings with chambers of commerce and with business stakeholders. We have been working right across the civic society and had interactions with Professor Katy Hayward and with Peter Sheridan. I very much appreciate the interactions we had with them. We also had regular exchanges with all leaders of the political parties In Northern Ireland. I was very glad to meet my interlocutors, almost all of them, when I was in Belfast last week. I must also highlight that we are looking forward to further intensified engagement with stakeholders. We will do it on several levels. We agreed in these meetings with Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr. Chris Heaton-Harris, and the business leaders, what would be the best way forward. I believe our teams will talk to each other tomorrow when we have a specialised committee on the implementation of the Windsor Framework. Our teams will be talking to each other for the whole day, to make sure everything that was agreed is properly implemented, and implemented on time. Part of this discussion will also be around how to provide the business communities with a detailed joint guidance. I believe we will get a lot of positive remarks and feedback on the Windsor Framework but we also understand that the business operators need to know the details, the timelines and the nitty-gritty of how this would be operationalised. This is what our teams will discuss tomorrow. We agreed that we would make sure the business community will get the joint guidance by the UK and EU, so it would be very clear how all these arrangements should be properly implemented by the business operators.

The second very important element is that part of the increased engagement with the stakeholders will be refurbished and enhanced work of the joint working consultative groups. We decided that we would structure it in a way that it would be corresponding to more priorities of the business life and they would be focusing on the specific sectors and areas. We are ready in this body, and also in our in-house proposals, for business and stakeholders consultations when it comes to impact assessment or our new legislation. We have possibilities for Ireland stakeholders to speak up, to present their views and to make sure that there are well informed of any specificities or any particularities, which we need to know in relation to Northern Ireland, and of course so that they have access to European Single Market for goods.

I believe that through this very intensive and extensive stakeholder engagement we will be able to sort out most problems and to clarify most of the issues. If this is still not enough, once the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly is convened and is up and running, they would have this additional measure and additional instruments, which is called the Stormont brake, which is focused on the legislation which will be updated in the future. The mechanism is quite well described in the Windsor Framework. By these extensive consultations we want to make sure they would need to use this instrument only on very rare occasions. Our aim, which I believe we share together with our UK partners, is to clarify everything - and if not everything then as much as possible - before it would reach the political level, and we have every intention to do that.