The Peter Young column

of military equipment. The large American delegation, which included some 50 lawmakers, underscored the US Congress’s bipartisan support for assisting Ukraine.

What hit the headlines at Munich was Vice President Kamala Harris’ declaration that the US had “formally determined” that Russia had committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine. The UN defines such crimes as “widespread or systemic criminal acts” committed against a particular civilian population.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague prosecutes those accused of such crimes. But the Court has no powers of arrest and can only exercise jurisdiction within countries which have signed the international agreement that set it up.

Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016.

Even though the emphasis of this year’s Munich conference was on opposing rather than appeasing an aggressor nation, for historians it seems to have carried echoes of 1938 when the Bavarian capital hosted a conference that resulted in the infamous Munich Agreement in which European powers ceded the Sudetenland – then part of the border area of Czechoslovakia – to Nazi Germany in a mistaken effort to preserve peace.

Notwithstanding the inherent importance of the

Munich gathering, what has been of considerable interest to people in Britain is the meeting in its margins between the British prime minister and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.

Reportedly, this was to try to resolve the differences between the EU and Britain over the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed to by the two sides when Britain left the bloc three years ago. The protocol related to trading arrangements and it has for long been a contentious issue. The UK maintains it is not working and the way it is being implemented has caused difficulties.

It therefore needs to be changed.

With this in mind, there has been speculation recently in the UK press that a deal with the EU to enable a revision of the protocol was close. Last week, Sunak held a round of meetings in Belfast with