A Common Travel Area? Brexit and the New (Northern) Irish

Abstract

The Common Travel Area (CTA) gives British and Irish citizens certain rights and privileges each other’s state. Its constitutes a central plank of the policy behind the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, whose overall purpose is to keep the border on the island of Ireland open and free from physical infrastructure. While the Protocol itself makes checks on good crossing that border unnecessary, its guarantee of the CTA ensures that routine checks on persons crossing the border need not be carried out. However, the CTA has only ever been a ‘common’ travel area for British and Irish citizens. The ‘New (Northern) Irish’, i.e. persons resident on the island of Ireland who are not Irish or British citizens, are excluded from its benefits. Many New (Northern) Irish enjoy EU citizenship rights either as EU citizens or derived rights as family members of EU citizens, which meant that until the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020 they were in a largely equivalent position to Irish and British citizens. This paper argues that their ability to travel freely throughout the island of Ireland has been affected negatively by Brexit. The legacy of the UK’s EU membership means that there is now a Byzantine web of rules determining who is entitled to cross the invisible and purportedly open border on the island and for what purpose and who is not. The paper shows that the situation has changed for the worse for EU citizens and their third country family members resident in both Ireland and Northern Ireland. Since the end of the Brexit transition period, many of these New (Northern) Irish are encountering new hurdles when crossing the border on the island of Ireland. This suggests that current CTA arrangements are unfit for the practical realities of life on the island of Ireland, where short term visits to the other jurisdiction – social or work-related, to receive services or buy goods or to simply transit through the other jurisdiction in a car or on a public bus – are a daily occurrence for many and an occasional occurrence for most.