Brexit involves a fundamental reshaping of relations between the UK and the EU and its member states, including Ireland. As the Preamble to the Protocol recognizes, this represents ‘a significant and unique challenge to the island of Ireland’. Since the conclusion of the 1998 Agreement, the EU has provided a critically important, if often invisible, underpinning of the peace process in Ireland. In the wake of Brexit, Northern Ireland is a ‘place between’. On the one hand, it is no longer part of the EU and Protocol Article 4 confirms that it is part of the customs territory of the UK. On the other hand, under the WA and the Protocol, Northern Ireland retains its special relationship with Ireland and remains subject to a substantial body of EU law. If Brexit involves a shift in the legal framework for EU–UK relations from EU law to international law, that shift is incomplete, particularly for Northern Ireland. And, for Ireland, including in its relations with Northern Ireland, Brexit serves to reinforce the bonds with the EU. This is reflected in the role and status of the Protocol in Irish law, which is examined in this chapter.

This chapter primarily considers the way in which the Protocol Article 2 addresses human rights and equality issues in Northern Ireland, but also describes how the TCA supplements the Protocol in several respects, addressing issues that were left unaddressed by the Protocol, in particular issues concerning the protection of labour and social rights (in the ‘level playing field’ provisions) and the status of the European Convention on Human RIghts (ECHR). These will be considered more briefly in order to provide a more complete map of the new architecture of human rights and equality in Northern Ireland currently in place, without attempting to be comprehensive.

This chapter aims to reflect on the context and legal status of the 1998 Agreement, with a view to framing its place as a foundational document when considering the Protocol. Although it was written with a legal audience in mind, there is no suggestion that this is the only, or even the most helpful, lens through which to understand it.

The purpose of this Introduction is to set out some of the basic background needed to understand the scope and content of the Protocol, and how this book attempts systematically to describe and analyze it. The Protocol is most appropriately seen in the context of the desire to preserve the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement (1998 Agreement), the changing politics of the UK Parliament and government over the relevant period, and the subsequently negotiated Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).