Belfast's High Court on Friday said checks on food and agricultural goods traded from Britain to Northern Ireland under the post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union must remain, pending the result of a judicial review to be heard next month.
The British region's Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots on Wednesday demanded an immediate halt to checks on agricultural goods and food coming into the region from the rest of the United Kingdom as part of protest by his Democratic Unionist Party, which opposes the post-Brexit rules.
But Poots' order, which an EU commisioner described as a breach of international law, was not immediately implemented as his department said officials were "considering the wider implications of fulfilling the minister's request.
The court provisionally named March 7 for a full hearing on the legality of Poots' order.
(Reporting by Conor Humphries and Alan Erwin; editing by John Stonestreet and Frank Jack Daniel)
