Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Most ordinary people see Europe as positive. It is the Europe that supposedly came together after the Second World War to ensure peace and an end to war, and to ensure that France or Germany would never again create war at the cost of millions of lives. It was to ensure that fascism and authoritarianism would never again take root. They want a Europe that sets standards for the environment, women, workers and measures that could act as a balance to the free market drives across Europe while delivering fairness. It is a Europe that is synonymous with Beethoven's composition, "Ode to Joy". When most people react positively to Europe, it is to that idea of Europe, which is the concept of a commonality cutting across barriers of nationality, removing distinction and giving people the right to travel freely across borders. It is typified in something as simple as the common currency. This idea of Europe - a progressive, liberal and pro-worker Europe - is one I argue is and has always been more of a myth than reality.

If we saw rules and regulations in the past that changed and removed barriers for people or set standards that were good, it is worth understanding that this was not the purpose of the regulation or the change but rather it was often a by-product of the real aim of the European Union. The Common Market was not necessarily a progressive liberal goal but rather the goal of big business and a corporate Europe that in the 1980s feared the demise of profits and business. It saw that only by pooling markets together could the entities survive and compete in international business and a globalised economy, with one big market able to face up to the United States, Japan or China. That is the motivational force behind European unity, which is, above all, unity of big business and the European round table of industrialists that remains the single most influential force in lobbying Europe and its Commission. With other business groups, it remains the guiding force behind the regulation and rules that govern Europe today.

This European round table has the biggest and most profitable companies, including the chief executives of Volvo, Philips, Nestlé, Nokia, BAE Systems and Airbus. Europe is made and shaped in their interests and not on the instincts or in the interests of ordinary citizens of Europe. If we get the right to travel without borders and with a single currency, it is only because it serves the interests of those businesses and not for any lofty ideals of commonality. It is they who set the benchmark for every policy and goal of competitiveness, fiscal restraint, etc., in what the State can spend. It is why when we debate closures of post offices in Ireland and cuts to bus and health services, as well as the outsourcing of health, it is often the European rules that demand we tender out those services and allow private multinationals to win the awards.

The Europe formed after the Second World War was supposed to be a response to militarism but it has now become one of the leading sources of arms and military hardware across the world. It is a Europe of permanent structured co-operation, PESCO, and military units that can be deployed across the globe for so-called humanitarian missions when in reality it is there to ensure and continue to defend the reach and scope of the interests of former colonial powers. This is a Europe of 30,000 paid lobbyists, the majority of whom are corporate and big business lobbyists who help influence the rules on which the European Parliament votes.

The real Europe is that of the savagery inflicted on the Greek people. The real Europe is that of the savagery inflicted on the Irish people by shoving a bailout of €64 billion of toxic debt from French and German banks down our throats. Despite the catastrophe of the financial crash and the crisis leading from it, that same Europe has not learned its lessons. We want to see a Europe that will never again witness fascism or war but instead we are getting the opposite. We are seeing the rise of fascism across Europe, with fascists knocking on the doors of parliaments and a real confusion about what sort of world in which we want to live.

For us and our Brexit negotiations, the bottom line is there should be no hard border in this country. Therefore, there should be no co-operation with a hard border; for example, there should be no employment of customs officials or gardaí, etc., and we should totally resist the implementation of that hard border in Ireland. It is not the interests of Brussels or London but those of ordinary people across Europe and in Ireland that should come first. The Government should reflect that.

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