Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)

I welcome the ambassador and his official. I thank them for coming in and making the time to do this. I also am honoured to have the other excellencies here today as well. I thank them for coming in.

In these kinds of fora, the exchange of views is important and helpful. Sometimes, there are differing views on different things, but it is important to let us exchange those.

From my perspective, and I think I speak on behalf of everybody in the committee and in the Oireachtas, our sincere thoughts are with the ambassador on the issues in Greenland and the conflict in words between NATO allies on that issue. For us, the principle of self-determination is extremely important. It is enshrined in the first article of the UN Charter, so we see that as being an important part of how we would think about the Greenland issue, but also when we think about other areas, such as Ukraine and Palestine. That, hopefully, gives the ambassador some colour as to the starting point for us when we ask some of these questions. Of course, our solidarity is with the ambassador as well.

I will ask some specific questions on tech regulation and democratic resilience, which the ambassador brought up in his comments. I represent this constituency where we are right now, which is home to many tech multinationals, including Google and Facebook. I have specific questions about the Danish Presidency’s approach and policy on some of these questions in that umbrella. One of the areas that seems to have deteriorated between the EU and the US has been the question of data regulation and privacy.

The privacy shield has not gone as well as we all hoped it would and has not been implemented in the way we hoped. I have significant reservations and I am sure many other Europeans have too about how we implement proper privacy and data regulation and the transfer of data in particular between the EU and the US. I would like to hear the Danish presidency’s approach to that.

Second, in the age of Trump’s reactionary geopolitics, there is a change to how we think about tax regimes on technology companies in particular. The BEPS regime and its implementationis under question by the US Administration. Its precursor, the EU common consolidated corporate tax rate, was something that was considered by EU member states prior to the OECD discussions. Some member states wanted to bring in digital service taxes unilaterally as a counter balance to that. The Canadian Prime Minister has rescinded on the digital services taxes so I am interested in the EU-wide approaches the Danish presidency might take.

Finally, I am conscious in the context of supporting indigenous industries within the European Union that indigenous tech supports are really important. There are state-aid rules at the EU level. What kind of presidential approaches will Denmark take on state-aid rules as they have been relaxed around green energy and so on? Is there more room for that in other areas such as technology and indigenous start ups that would be very helpful?