Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The general joy expressed by the principal participants at the conclusion of the European Council was not an expression of jubilation at a wonderful outcome, rather an expression of profound relief that an agreement had finally and actually been achieved. What was at stake, as was clearly expressed within the Council, and if we believe the various news reports, by both Chancellor Merkel and President Macron was a fundamental test for the Union. A fundamental question being asked was whether the current Union of 27 nations is still committed to the principles of mutual solidarity and mutual support or has the Brexit contagion diminished that principle to the extent that now each nation coming to any European Council must prove to a home audience that it won. The principles that underpinned the very foundation of a European union in the aftermath of war seem to have been diminished.

The longest summit in 20 years finally reached an agreement that was not as ambitious as we hoped for but, I must acknowledge, for the first time it was decided to mutualise borrowing and share debt within the Union. This is a very important principle, one which Ireland would have welcomed and benefitted from during the last economic crisis the people of Ireland endured, however it was resisted. There is still that pocket of resistance among the frugal four, or with Finland, the frugal five. The €500 billion that was in the negotiating box to be direct grants to those regions and countries most adversely impacted was substantially reduced to €390 billion.

Instead, in order to placate at least some of the frugal four, Margaret Thatcher’s legacy of the rebate has now been extended. In order to get them to agree, the richer nations have had to have something back for themselves. Ireland’s share was never going to be massive or substantial in scale. We understood that. I have said many times in the debates leading up to this Council meeting that loans are of very little value to us. We can borrow money very cheaply and we did last month at less than 0.25%. It is direct grants that are of benefit to us. We are now to get something like €1.3 billion in 2021 and 2022. That is obviously to be welcomed. It will help support our own domestic economy but it will not be decisive in order to maintain a real and substantial recovery in what we need to invest in our economy in the various sectors that have been crushed under Covid -19.

I wish to make one very clear point. I heard Opposition voices make this point in the last few days which is that if we use a Tory Brexiteer formula, a zero-sum calculation, where we add up what we contribute and look to see what in cash terms we get back, and if we do not receive more cash back than we actually pay in then the Union is not working for us. That is a disastrous calculation and is sterile and dangerous. It ignores the importance of the Single Market for the health and well-being of our economy. We need our trading partners to be strong and we need a healthy market to exist. We export more per capita than virtually any other country on the globe. We have left behind us the isolationism which characterised the early decades of our State and we look now to trade our goods and services to add value. Access to sustainable markets is a critical component of that. If our trading partners are not in a healthy state, that impacts greatly on us.

I will make some comments now on the Multiannual Financial Framework, MFF, discussions. Seven years ago I was involved in those discussions and I know how torturous and convoluted they can be. There are added complications this time which I acknowledge. One tries to negotiate, where a great amount of deals are done by eyeballing people, taking people aside, and having words in people’s ears. That has been made extremely difficult over the last number of months. I also acknowledge the fact that the UK, a substantial net contributor, is no longer part of the calculation. We really need to have an open discussion on whether we want to be ambitious for the future of Europe. It seems now that the prevailing argument has won, where the populism of diminishing the capacity of the Union to act with mutual support is the dominant view within the European Union, which I regret. We were not ambitious in what we can do on both the green agenda of transforming our economies and in using the resources that we collectively have to make an extraordinary and substantial advance. Some things are good but it is not as ambitious as it could have been.

We will have opportunities in the future to talk about the impact on agriculture, on pillar 1 and pillar 2 funding. I want to acknowledge the continuation of the PEACE PLUS programme funding that was hard fought for the last time, which I thought might be the last iteration of that. It is very welcome. What is not welcome is a reduction of health preparedness within Europe for the next pandemic or crisis that will arise, or for the amount of resources available for climate transition. As I said earlier we will have other opportunities to get back to discuss that.

In my remaining time I will mention two further points. One is the Brexit reserve fund which is something we can look to. I am not so sure of some of the language but it has been talked about consistently as being in the region of €5 billion. The Taoiseach in one of his interviews said up to €5 billion. Can I ask how much will be in this fund? When will it be accessible and what are the criteria for drawing it down? That is to be used as the victory for Ireland, if there is to be one, that that support is there for us.

My final point is on the paying for the mutualised debt. I am very strongly in favour of using the common strength of the Union and to deploy it where it is most needed. The principles of cohesion - I negotiated the last cohesion round of funding in the last MFF - is of great importance and gives hope to people to draw everybody up to the highest level of income within the European Union and we need to be much more ambitious in that. From anything I have read from the summit conclusions or the aftermath, we are not clear as to how this is to be paid for. There were discussions on different types of taxation across the Union and a substantial willingness for a plastic tax of some sort that was not exactly specified, and a less clear attitude towards a digital tax. This is worthy of discussion and I would not be so dismissive of it. This needs to be on a worldwide, or OECD basis, at least. We should have an upfront discussion on these matters. If we have an ongoing capacity to borrow significantly within the European Union we can tackle some of the gross inequalities that have alienated more and more of the European peoples from the European concept and allowed those who want to exploit that alienation and that genuine concern for inequality in order to break up the Union. That is something that all of us should seek to resist.

See this speech in context