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Launching Ireland’s EU Council presidency on July 1st, Taoiseach Micheál Martin outlined three core priorities, namely: competitiveness, values and security.
Martin’s priorities may be laudable but they hardly align with what many observers would see as the actual core priorities for Ireland’s hosting of the same presidency. Those real-politik priorities might more correctly be described as: cultivating a sense of hubris and demonstrating to anyone who is interested that we really are the model Europeans.
In a bloc better known around the world these days for suffocating regulation and economic stagnation, that Irish nod towards ‘competitiveness’ is both welcome and timely.
However, in a union of 27 countries, no-one should hold their breath on a sudden breakthrough on the competitiveness front. As for ‘values and security’ they sound suitably vague enough to be kicked down the road onto the list of ‘core priorities’ for at least the next EU presidency.
If you want evidence of Ireland’s obsessive need to be perceived as the model Europeans then consider how the country has behaved during the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
This is not to say that Irish people are not wholly sympathetic to the plight of Ukrainians in the face of Russian aggression. Irish people know more than most what it is like to live in close proximity to a super power with imperialistic ambitions.
However, the disproportionate and over the top response of the Irish political class to that conflict says more about their need to impress their European colleagues than it does about the proportionate response of a country located on the Atlantic periphery some 2,500km from Ukraine.
That entirely disproportionate response included full accommodation usually in hotels, generous social welfare payments and even generous third level education funding which most Irish citizens could only ever dream about.
It included an ARP accommodation payment of €800 per month which effectively incentivized discrimination by accommodation providers against Irish people. It’s little wonder that Ireland’s per capita intake of Ukrainians was more comparable to countries adjoining Ukraine than it was to other countries in western Europe.
Of course, the beneficiaries of this generosity were not just Ukrainians and the accommodation operators making huge sums housing them. The main beneficiaries were Ireland’s political class who were now able to dine out on their favourite narrative about themselves: Ireland and the Irish are the model Europeans.
That Ireland is an enthusiastic supporter of the European project is not in doubt at this stage. However, the real question is which version of the European project is Ireland actually in favour of?
The version that the Irish people voted overwhelmingly to join in a referendum in 1972 was principally an economic union which went out of its way to respect the sovereignty of its nine western European member countries.
In contrast, the version of the European project we have today – the European Union – leans heavily on a federalist model and sees power increasingly concentrated at its centre. This is now a union of 27 countries with plans for greater enlargement. It is the version of the European project that Ireland’s political class are now loyal to.
No one in Ireland or elsewhere remembers ever voting for this version of Europe – it is largely the result of mission creep whereby the politicians and Eurocrats have gradually been moving the goalposts to suit their own needs.
For Ireland’s political class, one of the main benefits of a federalist EU is that it provides another political theatre which offers additional opportunities for politicians in terms of career openings. Thus, there are opportunities for rising stars as well as soft landings for those who are disillusioned or have been rejected in domestic politics.
A feature of Irish political life these days is the enforced consensus around most issues. This also applies to Europe. Interestingly, this was not always the case. In fact, Sinn Féin campaigned for a No vote on the basis that it would diminish Irish sovereignty. How right they were.
However, the irony today is that the leadership of Sinn Féin, far from taking that as a win, have never explained their dramatic u-turn to the electorate or even their own voters. Instead, the party now invests much political capital in chasing down the rich pickings in the European theatre with the same zeal as its supposed political opponents.
This is not to say that something like Irexit is some magic solution to the ills of today’s European Union. Given the interconnected nature of life in Europe today, the one thing that Brexit surely demonstrated to all was that it wasn’t an instant solution to the UK’s immigration and economic woes.
Ireland is, and always has been, an intrinsic part of Europe. However, it’s the political expression of that relationship that needs to be debated rather than some supposed simplistic binary solution based around Irexit. That’s the one debate that Irish politicians are unlikely to be encouraging anytime soon.
Parading Ireland’s loyalty and devotion to the European Union has been a long-standing policy objective for Ireland’s ruling political class. It was on display again recently with the visit of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, to Cork to mark the launch of the Irish presidency. That visit had more the feel of an emperor inspecting her subjects than a diplomatic exchange involving a sovereign country.
That unswerving loyalty to a federalist Europe has seen Ireland take on European banking debt during the crash; it has seen Ireland sacrifice its tourism industry amongst other things for the war in Ukraine. It’s also looking increasingly likely that Ireland will again take one for the team and close down the Aughinish Alumina plant.
These are just some of the costs that go with that narrative about Ireland and the Irish being the model Europeans.
The EU often likes to cite European values such as a love of individualism which has always underpinned Europe’s artistic and democratic heritage. Of course, another part of those European values, that some prefer not to talk about, involved autocracy and the creation of empires.
It’s those latter values that now appear to be in the ascendant in the European Union. When Irish politicians declare themselves to be model Europeans, it’s to those autocratic values that they are now declaring loyalty to.
The near-obsessive need to demonstrate that we are indeed the model Europeans should really be seen for what it is – a thinly-veiled excuse by Ireland’s political class to curry favour with their EU overlords rather than serving the interests of those who elect them.
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