May`s conservative and unionist party needs the support of the DUP to stay in power, but the DUP has never backed the Good Friday deal. In fact, it was the only party to have retained the support of the agreement in 1998. She spent the most time rewriting or undermining the agreement. The proposed withdrawal agreement would end the special regime for Northern Ireland if a solution could be found that would provide a border as pictured as the one that became the Good Friday agreement until Brexit. Such a solution has yet to be identified from June 2019. Partial solutions were proposed but were not considered sufficient. Instead, the agreement found a creative path by allowing a form of co-sovereignty. The Good Friday agreement allowed Northern Irish to identify themselves as Irish, British or both and to have a passport from one or both countries. Some congressional leaders have pointed to the cost of a no-deal Brexit for Northern Ireland. House of Representatives spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi sounded the alarm last April as she and several colleagues travelled to London, Dublin and Belfast to warn that Congress would not support an American United Kingdom. 30 The co-chairs of the House`s Friends of Ireland caucus, MPs Richard Neal and Peter King, made a similar bipartisan promise.31 The congressional debate took on more partisan nuance in the letter from Senator Tom Cotton and 43 Republican colleagues to Prime Minister Johnson, who defended a trade deal „regardless of the Situation of Brexit.“ 32 Second, after losing her majority in the 2017 elections, May was forced to enter into a „confidence and supply agreement“ with the 10 Members of the Democratic Unionist Party to govern. The DUP sees a united Ireland as an existential threat to its British Protestant identity. It is the largest party in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday agreement, although it represents only about 36% of the electorate.
Economy: Brexit will create economic challenges for Northern Ireland. Agriculture is the most complex sector, accounting for 35% of the region`s exports (almost a quarter of exports to Ireland, while less than 2% go the other way).8 Since the UK`s withdrawal from the EU UNION internal market is on an island basis, the UK`s exit from the EUROPEAN UNION`s internal market will have an impact on the EU`s supply chain. , processing and migrant workers. A Brexit without a deal would entail considerable economic risks, including the expected loss of 40,000 jobs and an 11% drop in exports to Ireland to 19%.9 In the three debates, the peace process was not central to most MEPs. While the backstop received 795 mentions in the three debates we analysed, the „Good Friday Agreements“ and the „Belfast Agreements“ – two terms that describe the same agreement – together received only 90. This indicates that the discussion on the „backstop“ was not generally related to the agreement. Our analysis shows that it is not clear that Parliament has the cohesion or the obligation to do the hard work necessary to preserve the agreement. Under the withdrawal agreement, Northern Ireland has a different customs and regulatory regime than the rest of the UK, unless a free trade agreement removes disputes. This condition is due to the need to avoid the re-establishment of a hard land border that would sabotage the Good Friday agreement.