Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, for what reasons he refused a request from the EU to establish an office in Northern Ireland to facilitate the implementation of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol.

The UK Government considered the EU's request in February and again in March, to establish a Belfast office of the EU Delegation to the UK and responded on both occasions that we cannot agree to a permanent EU presence in Belfast. While Article 12 gives EU officials the right to be present during the activities of UK authorities related to the implementation and application of the Protocol, we do not accept that that necessarily requires an EU Delegation office in Belfast, or indeed any other permanent EU presence in Northern Ireland.