Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

I thank the witnesses so much for being here. It is lovely to see them again. I had not seen them since the European elections last year. We were best buddies by the end of that.

I have a couple of questions about defence spending and public trust in institutions. On defence, I thought some of the figures around this were very interesting. A quarter of people who believe that the EU is moving in the wrong direction cited concerns about militarisation as a reason and only 7% who have a positive view of the direction of the EU cite that as being connected to the same area. The survey states that only three in ten feel adequately represented at EU level. In that context, is funding a part of that defence spending because, obviously, anything we spend on defence is not being spent on the social focus that we could have said would have been the primary focus of the European Union? Belgium's budget minister was quoted in the Financial Times as talking about Belgium's scramble to get to the NATO percentage, stating, "every euro that's a deficit today ... is a euro that will be debt, and that debt will be one day a tax or a cut and in the social welfare state". I am asking for an insight into the numbers. Is that spending feeding into those figures?

My second question is probably not something the witnesses can answer in a few minutes but I would love to hear their thoughts on it. It is around that democratic deficit, the threat to democracy. Obviously, that lack of trust in our institutions, both in national government and at EU level, is something that is coming through very strongly.

We have heard criticism of the EU's decisions, particularly with the Commission described as opaque and overstepping the mark on some issues. We see the latest case coming from the Parliament to the Commission around their SAFE regulation. I would love to hear the witnesses' thoughts on that. Some of the Commission's positions on foreign affairs and defence are seen as being out of step with some of the member states. What can we do to tackle this? How can we build a strong, open, trusted EU? We focus a lot on external threats to democracy, but continue to ignore some of the issues within the Union which are eroding this trust.