Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses. As was said, the opening statements covered a broad range of issues, many of which we have touched on with various speakers in this committee in recent years.

I will pose several questions on Professor Barrett's paper, but I would like both Professor Barrett and Dr. Colfer to respond. On the comments Professor Barrett made on the EMU, basically saying that because of the lack of movement since the Maastricht treaty we have modified matters through supplementary non-treaty secondary legislation and what he called soft law, as someone who worked in the finance area over the past while, I would be interested in hearing specifically what he means by that statement. I ask because I am not clear on exactly what difficulties needed to be overcome and how they were overcome.

My next query is much more fundamental and I have asked this of several people who have come before the committee. I refer to Professor Barrett's view that Türkiye has relapsed into being an autocracy, meaning its admission process is on hold indefinitely. I do not think anyone would disagree with that. My question relates to the structure of the Union itself, which is a much more fundamental issue. It can be said that an autocratic country cannot join but it is not possible to stop an existing country becoming autocratic. What is the impact of this?

While the normal suspects, Hungary or Poland might be instanced, or even Slovakia now after the most recent elections, I put this question directly to the French ambassador. Whatever we might be able to sustain with an autocrat in power in Slovakia or Hungary, we could not survive a Marine Le Pen government coming to power in France. Is there a naivety about the structure of the Union itself, in depending on the outcome of the next presidential election in a country like France for its very existence? What are Professor Barrett's thoughts on dealing with this issue?

My next question deals with the EU's exposed inadequacies in foreign policy that need to be addressed. Is the issue here, and this is probably related to the previous point I made, that there are not inadequacies in foreign policy in the Union but fundamental disagreement? We cannot simply say we will have a legal mechanism to make everybody think the same. As a nation and a Parliament, we fundamentally have a different view on what is happening this minute in Gaza from Germany. There is almost a naivety again regarding the notion that we can structurally make people in the European Union think the same way on matters of international policy. This is not going to happen. We are not an integrated state that has a common and undivided view of events in the world.

My last point deals with Professor Barrett's strong focus on the Franco-German working group paper and its recommendations. It will be recalled that we discussed this point with our Minister of State and he was quite dismissive of it on two fronts. One is that is a single paper among many. It got, obviously, a degree of prominence because it was allowed to be presented to the General Affairs Council, GAC, but the Minister of State certainly did not believe that it was going to run as a real issue. We have resisted as a nation, as have most smaller nations, the notion of a two-tier or two-speed Europe, consisting of concentric circles or whatever. There have been various presentations of this concept over time but this would be a worrying one.

I am also taken by the point that Professor Barrett made on the current process for amending European Union treaties. I refer to the view which exists that it is too bothersome in many ways because it would require referendums in countries like Ireland and that, because of this, a mechanism might be sought that could avoid referendums. If there is anything that would kill the European project, though, it is the notion that someone is trying to get around putting issues to the people. I fully appreciate that it will not only apply to referendums in future. It is a very real issue. I will be saying something about it this afternoon in the debate on the new electoral commission and its work here. Dealing with misinformation and disinformation is going to become all the more real in terms of the impact of artificial intelligence, AI, in future, which will allow for the creation of fake presentations claiming to show the Cathaoirleach of this committee making statements he has never said.