no one was hurt, but the memory was instantly awake in Londonderry. On Saturday a car bomb exploded in the city, the Republicans call Derry, in front of the court. After the attack, there were immediate suspicions that the IRA or their splinter groups could be behind it. On Monday, they have been confirmed then at least to the extent that the police are now the “New IRA” responsible for the attack. The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, is only a few kilometres away, and the biggest point of contention between the EU and the UK in the Brexit is currently in negotiations. Many fear, for this reason, the fear of a hard limit, which could be pulled through the Brexit between the two political Parts of the island, could have led to this fact – and a Flare-up of the “Troubles”.

Oliver Kühn

editor in the policy.

F. A. Z. Twitter

But this fear should not be exaggerated, says Jonny Byrne, a lecturer at the University of Ulster. Violence have there been in Northern Ireland, even after the good Friday agreement in 1998, Republicans and unionists, the spiral of violence since the 1960s ended. The Brexit now offers however, people that be anyway, to violence application, to enforce political objectives, a way of dressing it with the reference to a possible hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. However, the situation is completely different now than in the nineties, believes Byrne. He is convinced that “there will be a Situation like in the seventies, eighties and nineties, never more”.

However, Byrne does not exclude that it could come in Northern Ireland back to violence and further attacks. Particularly the establishment of a hard limit, as you could be due to the Brexit between the two Parts of the island that make physical targets which could be attacked. But that was by no means inevitable, says Byrne. Because an intensification of the clashes would have been an increase in the number of security forces, he believes.