Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ireland's Presidency of the EU has ended. The last major event was the Council meeting last week. For many people poverty is seen as having grown in Europe, recession has returned, hunger is knocking on many doors, and there is not much hope about. The Taoiseach spoke in terms of success. He may be too close to it but many people across Europe who are stuck in that awful place would not describe what is happening in their lives as a success.

One of the key stated aims of the Presidency was to tackle the huge levels of unemployment in the EU, and mention was made of youth unemployment, but that has not happened. At the last Council meeting it was agreed to spend over €6 billion in the next two years to support job creation, training and apprenticeships for young people, but there is a strong belief across Europe that €6 billion is not nearly enough funding to tackle this major socio-economic problem.

We know from official figures that more than half of those aged under 25 in Greece and Spain are out of work and that in Italy currently 40% of youths are unemployed. In Ireland, the youth unemployment rate is over 30%, and could be higher but for the haemorrhaging of youth from rural Ireland and from towns and cities across the island. Youth unemployment in France is above 26%, more than double the national rate. On deprived urban estates and in many rural areas, youth unemployment is a whopping 40%. That is the impact it is having across many families.

The current generation of European youth is probably one of the most educated generations Europe has ever produced, yet the scandal is that many of them face a future of unemployment, underemployment or emigration. The fact that we are allocating insufficient investment in the youth guarantee, which will create real jobs, is an indictment of this Presidency. The International Labour Organization has also criticised the shortfall in funding being made available for the youth guarantee. Its estimate is that €21 billion would be needed over two years to facilitate and halt the decline in the EU's youth unemployment rate. Along with the EU budget, the youth guarantee is not fit for purpose. It promises a great deal in rhetoric but, crucially, it does not provide the necessary stimulus funding or investment to provide essential jobs and sustainable economic growth. This is not new funding that we have been promised but money from within the new scaled-down EU budget. Eurofound estimates the cost of youth unemployment in Europe at €150 billion a year. The social costs are also evident every day in constituencies across Ireland and Europe. For many, that €6 billion shows that the EU and Ireland's Presidency has not reacted accordingly to the scale of the crisis.

Most of the talk over the weekend and into this week was about the revelations that the US Government, through its covert PRISM programme, was spying on EU officials and national Government officials. The German paper, Der Spiegel, revealed over the weekend that the US intelligence agency, the National Security Agency, NSA, spied on EU missions in Washington and in New York, and that NSA agents may have also infiltrated EU security communication lines in Brussels. That is like playing poker with people who are supposed to be one's friends but they arrange, with tricks and mirrors, to see the card one is holding. They have an unfair advantage over the game, and they always come out winning and on top. It should not be a surprise to anyone that spies spy but it is an uncomfortable wake-up call for states in terms of how far they can trust some states which are supposed to be their friends and allies.

This is not unique to the US. Many European countries engage in this undemocratic practice. In 2004, a listening device was found in my party's office building in Belfast. My colleague, Barbara de Brún, who was then an MEP, had her office bugged by Britain's MI5.

I am sure this issue has been talked about at the highest level since the revelations, and I hope the Taoiseach will raise his concerns at this undemocratic and covert action. It is a warped friendship that promotes and allows that activity.

I congratulate Croatia on joining the EU today and warmly welcome it into the European Union. Croatia is now the 28th member of the EU but this comes ten years after it started the accession process and just under 20 years since the end of its war and eventual separation from the former Yugoslavia. It is a difficult time for the EU due to high unemployment and low growth, and for the past four years Croatia's own economy has either been in recession or stagnant, similar to our own. A priority for the EU must be assisting the unemployed and the disadvantaged, narrowing the gap between rich and poor, and improving the living standards of citizens across the European countries. The EU must focus on an investment stimulus that will create economic growth, not the current policies of cuts and more cuts. The current economic mix has failed to deliver and more people are coming to that conclusion.

Along with others, I am disappointed that there were no Council conclusions on illegal colonial Israeli settlements. At the Foreign Affairs Council last week there was no agreement to publicly condemn Israel's continued settlement construction. According to media reports, Baroness Catherine Ashton pushed strongly against that, wanting to give the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, time to pursue his latest initiative. That is extremely disappointing. Regardless of whether there are negotiations, these illegal colonial settlements should be condemned and efforts towards a ban on settlement produce or even labelling should not be hindered because of it. There was disappointment during the Presidency that we did not see that initiative coming forward. Baroness Catherine Ashton's move is another indication of the lack of willingness from the EU to play a significant and positive role in resolving that extremely difficult conflict.

Along with my colleague, Deputy Adams, I am extremely concerned about the question of Syria and the developments that some countries are talking in terms of arming rebel groups. When we get to the questions we might get some sense of what happened in regard to that.

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