Mr. Tony Connelly:

I thank the Deputy. It is good to see her again. I remember meeting her many times in Brussels, although probably not as often as she would have preferred at the time. I take her point that the European Parliament does not get a fair crack of the whip as regards its profile. Certainly, RTÉ and other media tend to cover the plenary sessions in Strasbourg. The day-to-day work often gets overlooked, which is a pity. The Parliament does a massive amount of co-legislation. It is a very important institution but it is also a clearing house for many of the big issues that flow through Brussels. That is perhaps to its detriment in light of the Qatargate scandal, where there are allegations that Qatar and Morocco in particular have been funding MEPs and organisations to try to influence the Parliament and the complexion of different policies towards Gulf states.

As the Deputy said, significant work is done by rapporteurs and committees. Much of that work involves the very hard processing of EU legislation. It is very important that work is given its due consideration and coverage, where possible. The problem is it is just so vast. There are so many angles to it and more than 700 MEPs. The secret from a news point of view is to know, when it is covered, not every twist and turn can be covered but it should be covered when there is an outcome. Many of these outcomes are through, as the Deputy said, trilogues, which are very complicated pieces of machinery that bring the Commission, Parliament and Council together to try to reach a consensus on a particular topic. That is often done at 4 a.m.

I accept the Deputy's point regarding the importance of the Parliament. It is going through a difficult period in knowing how to respond to these allegations of corruption. Ms Roberta Metsola, the President of the Parliament, was in Dublin last week. She has a 14-point plan that would see quite a few changes, including much more transparency regarding who MEPs meet and when, and abolishing the friendship groups between MEPs and outside interests. The overall view is that there has to be legislation at EU level covering all the institutions. Ms Ursula von der Leyen proposed that when she became president of the Commission but nothing has really happened. The problem is that in order to have an EU ethics body, it has to essentially be proposed by the Commission and then agreed by the member states and the Parliament. That will take quite a long time. The Parliament is trying to produce something more quickly in the short term that will deal with that issue.

To address the globalisation question, there is a real debate at present about whether we are in a period of deglobalisation or even re-globalisation, whatever that means. This was the big theme at the World Economic Forum in January. The pandemic showed that globalisation does not often work when it comes to essential medical supplies, for example. Countries will hoard things in a pandemic and, therefore, other countries cannot get them. That then casts doubt on the effectiveness of supply chains.

The EU is now looking at ways to have much more autonomy on that level.

Loosening state aid rules is part of the Commission’s response to the Inflation Reduction Act. The problem is that a country like Germany, which has huge coffers, can spend much more on public works and supporting green tech. That puts it at an advantage over other countries. The principle of solidarity, which is supposed to underpin the Single Market, is then lost. I am not sure how the EU and the US will resolve their differences on this. Both sides have worked very well on this EU-US technical council. They have had quite a few meetings which seem to go quite well in terms of regulating huge digital corporations and how to manage that sphere between the EU and the US. If the EU and US cannot get it right, other actors will step in to take up the baton, perhaps China or others, which is not something that the West seems to be too much in favour of.

I do not see any appetite for an EU-US trade agreement that could deal with some of these issues. That seems to be off the table for now. In the meantime, we will get into a messy situation where the US does its thing on the Inflation Reduction Act and the EU tries to follow and will have to follow in such a way as to bring 27 countries along with it. That will be quite difficult. We should see more about this over the next few days.