Professor Gavin Barrett:

There is no doubt that getting people involved in talking about and discussing the European Union is not a vote winner in any country. That is the reality of the matter. In a country like Ireland, in particular, which has multi-seat constituencies and proportional representation, constituency work is where it is at more than this kind of stuff. There is no doubt about it. It is very challenging, and the Conference on the Future of Europe faced similar and perhaps greater challenges than most initiatives in that respect. There is no dispute there.

On workarounds with regard to unanimity, and there are protections with respect to unanimity, yes there are. We have to have majority voting at European Union level, because with 27 member states it is hard to get unanimous agreement on anything. However, the more qualified majority voting, QMV, you have the closer you get to issues that are closer to the bone. I am sure Ireland would not be too enthusiastic about, for example, proposals to get rid of unanimity voting on corporate tax. I am sure France would not be keen on getting rid of unanimity voting on the location of European Union institutions. They like the train down to Strasbourg every month. Increased qualified majority voting is easier spoken about in theory than in practice, yet I think we will see some movement in that regard. We probably have to, but even after this treaty change I think we will be left with quite a bit of unanimity voting. There is no doubt about that.

It was mentioned on the health situation that we did okay with the existing treaty provisions. That is true. We did extraordinarily well. I have reservations about new institutions, new measures and new everything being set up without that being reflected in the treaties. Democratic answerability requires that be dealt with in the treaties. The European Union certainly did well with vaccinations, after a slow start it has to be said. I take the point about disagreement on Israel. I suppose that comes back to Jean-Claude Piris's point about not being able to substitute for political disagreement. You cannot solve it with qualified majority votes. The Deputy gives me the example of Israel, for example, and I give him the example of Ukraine where unanimity is getting in the way. However, I agree that some of the time the problem is unanimity, and some of the time it is not; the problem is political disagreement and no treaty change will solve that. I suspect we will see less treaty change on common foreign and security policy than is being mooted.

On referendums, I reiterate that I am not getting at referendums in this regard. I am expressing doubts about the sustainability of a situation in which a treaty change for all 27 member states needs to be approved by every individual member state. I think in the future we will inevitably move to the kind of situation used to ratify the European Stability Mechanism, ESM, Treaty and the fiscal stability treaty. Changes may come about sooner or later for states once a certain number of votes are reached. States that vote against it will simply stay out of it - the Rhode Island situation. It is kind of mooted in the Franco-German paper, with its reference to the ESM Treaty. That cannot happen under the existing European Union treaties. It would have to happen under non-EU treaties. It is very much a plan B. I just thought that it was interesting.

The Deputy mentioned Moldova and Georgia. Moldova is a candidate state, and its chances of joining the European Union are probably better than those of Ukraine. It will probably join faster because it is much smaller, and does not involve the same budgetary implications. Georgia has not been given candidate status. If you look at its geographical position, it is a long way from the rest of Europe.