Britain and EU must fix Northern Ireland protocol, PM Johnson says

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday said that disagreement with the European Union over the Northern Irish Brexit protocol could be sorted out with goodwill and patience but that the current arrangements did need to be fixed.

“One of the things that we’re talking about, as you rightly point out, is the protocol, where there remain a lot of issues to be solved,” Johnson said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“We have to sort it out. I’m sure that, as Angela says, with goodwill and with patience, we can sort it out. But we’re going to need to do that, we’re going to need to fix it because it needs to be fixed.”

(Reporting by William James and William Schomberg, writing by Alistair Smout)