It comes a day after it extended the grace period for checks on agri-foods, a move the EU said was illegal.
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The UK government has unilaterally extended another of the Irish Sea border grace periods, this time for parcels.
It comes a day after the UK extended grace periods for checks on agri-foods, a move the EU said was illegal.
Northern Ireland has remained a part of the EU’s single market for goods so products arriving from GB undergo EU import procedures.
The grace periods mean procedures and checks are not yet fully applied.
The first of these periods was to expire at the end of March; the UK says they will be extended until October.
All parcels entering Northern Ireland would have required customs declarations from 1 April.
The logistics industry said it was not ready to deal with that volume of new administration.
The government says the grace period for business-to-business deliveries will be extended until 1 October.
For all other deliveries, for example businesses to consumers, businesses will be given six months to prepare for new arrangements from the date those arrangements are announced.
In a protest against the UK’s unilateral changes, the European Parliament has declined to set a date for its vote to ratify the EU-UK Brexit deal.
EU parliament group chiefs had been expected to set a date this month for its vote at a meeting on Thursday.
Earlier, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said the UK’s move amounted to “a violation of the relevant substantive provisions” of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
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The protocol is part of the Brexit deal which prevents a hardening of the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said the EU could not trust the UK in post-Brexit talks.
He said progress had been made on the protocol and the timing of the UK’s moves could not be worse.
But UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the problems were technical and “eminently solvable”.
Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s first minister, told a news conference the British government had a commitment to protect the UK’s internal market.
The DUP leader accused the Irish government of ignoring unionist concerns over the NI Protocol.
But her deputy first minister, Sinn Fein’s Vice-President Michelle O’Neill, accused the British government “acting in bad faith” over the protocol.
The Northern Ireland Protocol is the part of the Brexit deal aimed at ensuring there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland.
It does that by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods.
That has created a new trade border with Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Unionists oppose the protocol, arguing that it has damaged internal trade from GB to NI and poses a risk to the future of the UK union.
But anti-Brexit parties in NI say that it must be implemented in full, and that issues should be worked out through joint UK-EU processes.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said the grace period extensions were aimed at helping consumers and businesses in Northern Ireland, suggesting the EU needed to adapt its timeframe to fit the supply chain requirements of supermarkets and businesses.
“If we’d have left it any longer we’d have had a risk for businesses and livelihoods of people in just a few weeks time,” he said during a visit to Northern Ireland on Thursday.
Mr Sefcovic said earlier the EU would respond in accordance with the “legal means” established by the protocol and the wider Brexit deal.
On Wednesday night he spoke to Lord Frost, the Cabinet Office minister with responsibility for EU relations, who said the extensions were needed for “operational reasons… and that they were entirely consistent with our intention to discharge our obligations under the Protocol in good faith”.