The UK will not trigger an emergency provision in its Brexit deal on Friday, Britain's Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost said arriving for talks with his EU counterpart aimed at overcoming disagreements over the Northern Irish Protocol.
The emergency measures, called Article 16, allows either side to take unilateral action if they deem the agreement governing post-Brexit trade to be having a strongly negative impact on their interests.
The UK left the bloc last year, but it has since refused to implement some of the border checks for goods travelling to the North as obliged to under the deal.
The UK says the checks are disproportionate and are heightening tensions in the North, but the EU says tighter controls are necessary to protect the single market.
"We are not going to trigger Article 16 today, but Article 16 is very much on the table," Lord Frost told journalists.
Later on Friday, a spokesperson for British prime minister Boris Johnson told reporters the country would press on with negotiations to try to resolve the issues regarding the protocol.
We need to resolve these issues urgently, because the disruption on the ground in Northern Ireland hasn't gone away.
"We obviously want to agree consensual solutions on the protocol and we need to resolve these issues urgently, because the disruption on the ground in Northern Ireland hasn't gone away," the spokesperson said.
As expectations grow that the UK might resort to that option, Lord Frost said the best way of avoiding it was "if we can reach an agreement, an essential agreement... that provides a sustainable solution".
He said there was a "significant" gap between the EU and the UK on the matter and that time was running out for his negotiations with the European Commission's Maros Sefcovic.
A spokesperson for the Commission said the EU was "fully concentrated on finding solutions that provide predictability for people".
Asked earlier this week whether it was planning what to do should the UK trigger Article 16, the Commission said it always prepares for eventualities.
