Forestry: Will new NI/EU deal end chaos for tree exporters?

IN December 2020, Forestry Journal reported on how botched Brexit negotiations and the Northern Ireland Protocol were preventing trouble-free export of plant material from Great Britain (GB) to Northern Ireland (NI), down to very earthy reasons like the presence of soil on plant roots. Two years on, most political faces have changed, but NI importers and their traditional GB suppliers still faced significant problems in ferrying plant material across the short stretch of water to NI, despite both being part of the United Kingdom. Now, at long last, a new deal between the UK government and the European Union has been presented which it is said will solve all such problems.

I had almost forgotten about the trials of NI importers and their GB suppliers until the present UK Foreign Secretary (James Cleverly), accompanied by the latest UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Chris Heaton-Harris), travelled to Northern Ireland on January 11 for planned talks with all parties at Stormont on the EU–UK shared trade deal. 

Their visit hit the headlines not because of any breakthrough at that stage, but because they managed to exclude – by accident or design – some of the key political players in Northern Ireland. Looking back, the planned talks were clearly crucial, coming just two days after a meeting between Cleverly, Heaton-Harris and the European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic. The meeting in London was part of ongoing talks to find a solution to the NI Protocol impasse and the wide-ranging fallout. 

Cleverly decided to hold a press briefing during the talks at the Saintfield Garden Centre and Nursery in County Down – obviously not so he could help garden centre staff pot up the polyanthas. Back in January 2021, Beth Lunney, who runs Saintfield Nursery Centre, had spoken out strongly about the plight of NI businesses and their GB suppliers with regard to exports of plant material. 

READ MORE: Contractor feared business was 'gone' amid planting paperwork delays

She said problems were already predictable by November 2020 and told how she had started to prepare by signing up to the UK government’s Trader Support Service. But her long-standing GB supplier of hardy nursery stock, including azaleas and rhododendrons, had contacted her with bad news, messaging: “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get this over to you. It’s really about the possibility that there’s soil in the pots.”

It seems crazy, but her supplier had correctly interpreted the new rules as they appeared on UK Government websites.

NI was still in the EU’s plant health system and as such had to apply EU rules to plant material sent to NI from GB. These plant movements required a plant health certificate, although some products were actually prohibited. In addition to the long list of plant species, including most commercially important native, broadleaf trees, the banned products included soil, which can carry insect pests and plant pathogenic microbes. Of course there will invariably be soil on plants, even bare-rooted ones, unless they were grown in peat or some other substrate allowed under the regulations.

THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER

The situation had changed in the aftermath of the UK leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union. For regulated plants, NI importers and GB suppliers were now firmly in the realms of phytosanitary certification. GB companies had to obtain a phytosanitary certificate from the competent authority in the UK to confirm the consignment had been inspected and was free from relevant pests and diseases.

Plants imported directly into NI from countries totally outside of the EU (which Great Britain now is) could only enter via designated ports of entry which DAERA (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs) specified as: Belfast City or International Airports, Belfast Port, Larne Port or Warrenpoint Port. Movement of plants in this way required both the importer and exporter to be registered as ‘professional operators’ with the relevant authorities.

But extra complications appeared. DAERA said that since April 2022 certificates could only be issued for plants grown and inspected on registered, professional premises until their time of sale and export. This meant private individuals were no longer eligible to apply for a certificate to cover such plant movements and could not legally bring these items with them from GB into NI.

For its part, the UK government’s own website, under the heading ‘Exporting high-risk and prohibited plants’, said: “You cannot export some high-risk and prohibited goods from Great Britain to the EU and Northern Ireland. High-risk plants and plant products cannot enter the EU and Northern Ireland, until a full risk assessment is conducted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).”

It then said the following plants for planting from GB are prohibited. The list comprised 35 genera of trees and shrubs including just about every mainstream deciduous broadleaf tree traded and planted in the UK commercial forestry sector including: birch (Betula), chestnut (Castanea), hazel (Corylus), hawthorn (Crataegus), beech (Fagus), ash (Fraxinus), walnut (Juglans), crab apple (Malus), poplar (Populus), wild cherry (Prunus), oak (Quercus), willow (Salix), lime (Tilia) and elm (Ulmus).

Just normal procedure, you may say, with NI importers able to obtain most of what they want from GB suppliers provided all documented and documentation requirements are satisfied. However, this was costing money on both sides of the arrangement. And why should a GB supplier go to all the extra trouble and cost when it could sell its plants trouble free to any customer elsewhere in the UK? By the same token, why should NI companies put up with all this nonsense if they could access the same plants from the Republic of Ireland or another EU country?

It was a particularly perverse situation in that a forest nursery in Cornwall could send tree-planting material trouble-free to anywhere in the UK except NI, which is still part of the UK (at least it was the last time I looked).

WHAT’S IN STORE WITH THE WINDSOR FRAMEWORK?

Impasses created by the Northern Ireland Protocol have prevented or at best held up exports of tree-planting material from GB to NI. (Image: FJ)

Following an increasing rush of rumours though late January and into February 2023, the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, finally announced a post-Brexit agreement on a new trade deal for NI. It was subsequently set out and published in a document entitled ‘The Windsor Framework: a new way forward, Presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister and Minister for the Union by Command of His Majesty, February 2023’.

Following its announcement, the Windsor Framework was lauded as a done deal by the press, but as usually happens with such complex agreements the devil is in the detail and in the following days, optimism around universal acceptance began to evaporate.

So what’s in the Windsor Framework, specifically relating to trade in plants and forestry machinery?

The UK government said: “The NI Protocol had previously put a series of certification requirements, checks and prohibitions in place for plants and plant products. This meant £150 certificates for individual movements, with many products such as seed potatoes and apple trees [also oak trees] unable to move under any circumstances. This did not reflect any real-world biosecurity risk and had real impacts on longstanding flows to Northern Ireland gardeners, farmers, garden centres and environmental projects.”

All this has now been addressed through the Windsor Framework, as a result of which, plants and seeds staying in NI will move from GB on a virtually identical basis to those moving elsewhere within the UK, the UK government says. Details are:

Instead of full EU certification, all plants and seeds will move under the existing UK-wide plant passport scheme, in line with traders throughout the UK. That means rather than paying £150 per movement into Northern Ireland, growers and businesses can pay £120 a year to be part of the UK scheme, as they did before the NI Protocol came into force. 

Seed potatoes previously banned will once again be available from other parts of the UK while remaining prohibited in Ireland. 

Bans will be removed on 11 native British and other commercially important plant species by the next planting season, as industry has called for – including those trees that were prevented from moving to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. This will unlock tree and shrub movements between the UK and the EU overall. 

Needless certification requirements for used agricultural and forestry machinery will be removed, with the only requirement now being a single, self-applied label to indicate the machinery will not move into the EU. 

Rishi Sunak

The government said: “This will put Northern Ireland back on a level playing field with growers, gardeners, farmers and others right across the UK, thus allowing long-established trading patterns to resume.”  This will presumably ensure equivalent availability throughout the UK of all plants and plant products.  

During the first week of March it became increasingly clear that swift universal agreement, acceptance and passing of this legislation was by no means clear at all. Both the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) and ERG (European Research Group) were still poring over the document, with some projecting weeks if not months until they made a decision on whether to accept the deal.

The Windsor Framework is of no practical use for the 2022/2023 tree-planting season, which has essentially come to an end. Even if the agreement is ratified rapidly, reports suggest all the new rules and regulations won’t be in place until autumn if we are lucky, not least because significant legislative changes are required.

NOTE: This article originally appeared in FJ's April edition. All information was correct at the time of writing