evidence: The North-South Ministerial Council between Northern Ireland and Ireland met in July 2020 for the first time since 2016, prior to the collapse of the Northern institutions. It was one of the key institutions established as part of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement to ensure cross border cooperation on matters of mutual interest and concern. [...] Concerns about North-South relations are mirrored in an East-West context as well. Cracks began to appear in the London-Dublin relationship immediately after the Brexit referendum and strong rhetoric was heard on both sides. But relations improved over time, evidenced not least by the May 2019 signing of a memorandum of understanding between the UK and Ireland to formalise the 1948 Common Travel Area Arrangement which allows for the free movement of British and Irish citizens across both jurisdictions to live, to study, to work, and to vote unimpeded. British citizens resident in Ireland will be free to vote in the Republic’s next general election – a reciprocal privilege afforded to Irish citizens in the UK. [...] This is important not least because relations between Northern Ireland and the EU will also be conditioned by the fact that more than 700,000 people born in Northern Ireland hold Irish passports. It is clear that the rights for Irish citizens (as EU citizens) resident in Northern Ireland will be protected after Brexit, but the Protocol itself on Ireland/Northern Ireland does not articulate exactly how these specific rights will be protected. In a landmark case, the UK Home Office has recently agreed that that people from Northern Ireland will be treated as EU citizens within the UK for immigration purposes.