The Never-Ending Struggle Over (Northern) Ireland

Claiming the need to “protect the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in all its dimensions”, the UK government threatens once again to adopt legislation unilaterally changing the Protocol Ire-land/Northern Ireland (NI-IRL-P). In legal terms, this would constitute a breach of the With-drawal Agreement between the EU and the UK. There is an element of repetition: English Con-servative politicians attempt to outdo each other in refusing to be bound by agreements with the EU on principle and use Northern Ireland as an exercise field for this. But does the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) indeed exclude divergence between Northern Ireland (NI) and Great Britain (GB) or even demand protecting trade from GB to NI? What specific vulnerabilities of Ireland require a continued EU response?