Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the most recent meeting of the European Council. I am grateful to the Taoiseach for his report on the meeting. There is much to cover, as there always is with these Council meetings. I suspect all Members could make different speeches on different topics relating to the meeting. There are three issues on which I will offer my thoughts. The Minister of State may wish to respond on some of my questions.

The first issue relates to the notion of a European political community that was floated at the Council meeting and will be reflected on in more detail in Prague in October. This is a matter on which President Macron, following his re-election in France, has put much focus. It has garnered a certain amount of attention in respect of who it would attract and how it is not an alternative to the accession process for the many countries that aspire to be a member state of the European Union. I note that today is the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the body that kicked off what we now know as the European Union. It is understandable that so many countries want to become a member state but I have always believed there has to be something more than applicant status. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to leave countries as applicants for far too long. They are left in limbo. The European political community offers an opportunity for countries that may not know their way or may never be fully in line with the Copenhagen criteria.

Reference is made to countries that are in the neighbourhood. Obviously, the country with which the EU has the closest relationship is the only country that, sadly, has left the EU, namely, the United Kingdom. That brings me to the serious concern in respect of the protocol-busting Brexit-type Bill that is going through Westminster today for its Third Reading. It has been wrapped up in the internal wranglings of a Conservative Party leadership election in which all the candidates, regardless of whether they are for remain or for leave, are threatening to get a better deal to get Brexit done, make it work and unleash a cavalcade of opportunities. It is all nonsense. None of them has said they will uphold their responsibilities to international law, be that to the Brexit withdrawal agreement or to the tenets of the Good Friday Agreement. What reply is the European Council preparing for when a new British Prime Minister forces that legislation through the House of Commons and enacts legislation that will break international law and be in breach of the withdrawal agreement? That has to be met with a realistic response. All present want a negotiated solution to this and we all want good relations but it cannot be one-way traffic.

As regards Ukraine, there has been reference to the importance of the sixth round of sanctions. It is clear that the six rounds have not worked, however. They have not crippled the Russian regime to an extent where it has had to cancel this war and withdraw its troops. When can we expect a seventh round of sanctions? What can we expect that to include? More important, what is the European Union going to do? What will it ask of third-party countries with which it has extremely close relationships but which simply do not view this war in the same way that we in the EU do? These are countries that are more than happy to continue to do business as normal with the brutal regime in Moscow.

The need for reconstruction has previously been discussed in the House but we are still seeing an unadulterated campaign of disinformation and misinformation. That has been evident in the past couple of days, with the Russian ambassador to this country saying the most false and vile things about the visit of the Taoiseach to Kyiv but also, more generally, about Russia's vicious war. Will the Government please look once again at not just expelling the current Russian ambassador but also closing down the Russian Embassy? It is located on Orwell Road, in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown. This is increasingly becoming a practical issue at constituency level. Residents and constituents in the area are extremely concerned at what is going on in their near neighbourhood as well as the attention it is attracting. The simple solution to this is expulsion. It is long past time for that to be done. We have seen what happened in Lithuania and Bulgaria. There is precedent across the European Union for such measures.

The final issue I wish to address did not receive massive attention at the European Council and probably will not receive much attention in this debate. It relates to the Conference on the Future of Europe. The Minister of State was a delegate to the conference as part of the European Council, while I was a delegate on behalf of the Oireachtas, along with Deputies Ó Murchú and Niamh Smyth and Senator Higgins. As the Minister of State may recall, the findings were much celebrated. The conference served a useful purpose as an exercise in engaging European citizens on key issues but, to be honest, it is just a publicity or public relations exercise if the recommendations are not considered seriously and appropriately acted on. There is a recommendation for treaty change. It refers more pertinently to the health aspect and the competency of health within the European Union. Having come through the plenary sessions of the conference, the Minister of State, in his initial briefing to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs, stated the Government would not necessarily be in favour of treaty change. Has that changed? Is the Government open to the prospect of European treaty change? Is it still against that or does it have an open mind? Is it something that it favours? We should not fear treaty change. I appreciate Ireland is the only member state that would be compelled to have a referendum on such a change, but doing so would not be a problem. Let us have the referendum. Let us have a frank and robust discussion. Let us make it about the issues that are up for discussion rather than, as happened in previous referendums, the discussion going off on tangents to areas not specifically relevant to the vote. We should not be fearful of treaty change.

The conference made recommendations that reflected the current situation for the European Union. There were recommendations for the EU to do things it is already doing They were not necessarily recommendations to do them better. Unfortunately, there was a lack of information provided. The European Commission is brilliant at paying people to give out about it. It paid Nigel Farage a salary for a couple of decades. Perhaps it needs to do more to get into communities and show people what the work of the European Union is. The EU can be an easy punching bag on which certain individuals can rely domestically when needs be. The conference showed that, unfortunately, there is an element of disconnect between politics at European and member state levels and, more important, local and regional levels.

One of the things I found disappointing about the conference was that the discussion on the Friday and Saturday and the plenary session was simply a repeat of the discussion that had previously taken place in plenary week of the European Parliament. Unfortunately, that discussion was often removed from the issues at hand. It was caught up in internal EU debates, such as the power struggle between various European institutions or existing European legislation that was stuck at a trilogue stage, rather than discussing the recommendations and reflections of the citizens' panels that were brought together at great inconvenience, given that most of this was done at the height of the pandemic, but also at great cost. Their opinions needed to be heard and debated in good faith. The challenge now is for the European Council to act on that, to have the convention and see what needs to come of it. The conference was a worthwhile exercise and it should be repeated every five or ten years if needs be, but there is no point doing it unless it is followed up.

See this speech in context