Brussels briefing
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has decided it’s time to hand over his much prized role as one of the vice-presidents of the EPP, the political collection of centre right parties in the EU.
They are not just the largest group in the European Parliament, their members dominate the college of Commissioners too.
But with his onerous task as Taoiseach and with the up-coming Irish presidency, something has to give. So his MEPs are lobbying hard to have Europe Minister Lucinda Creighton elected in his place at their congress in Bucharest on Wednesday week.
Whether they will be happy replacing a Time-cover prime minister with a junior minister remains to be seen. Maybe he should make her a full cabinet minister first.
Two of the Labour party’s three MEPs called for Minister James Reilly’s resignation on the day that the Taoiseach, the Labour leader and Tánaiste and nine ministers were in Brussels meeting the European Commission.
Both women are involved in the health area — Phil Prendergast as a former nurse and Nessa Childers on the Parliament’s health committee — and that was where they were coming from.
Both said that reforming health in Ireland was too important for it to be hijacked by the controversy that appears to be following former IMO president and medical businessman Dr Reilly.
Their MEP colleague Emer Costello was more political, however, and said she would stick with the party line as the whole issue had been thrashed out at the parliamentary party meeting over the weekend.
The Taoiseach was guest of honour at the 20th anniversary celebration of the Brussels branch of the Institute of International and European Affairs. And despite a day of talking and listening to commissioners and MEPs, Enda Kenny was in sparkling form and made an uplifting speech.
He told of the question posed by China’s vice-president Xi Jinping during his Irish visit. “How do you build a sense of community in your country?” he had asked.
Mr Kenny told the large crowd: “I thought it was a strange question coming from the leader of a country of 1.3bn to the prime minister of a country of 4m.”
But he didn’t share what advice he gave to Xi.
Ireland should get rid of at least 10% of its ambassadors and close down embassies to reflect changing times according to former foreign affairs minister, Gay Mitchell.
The country has 74 missions including 55 embassies, eight missions with multilateral bodies like the UN, NATO and the EU and about 65 ambassadors at a cost of €57 million in 2010 excluding salaries. But with modern communications there is no need for offices in all of them, the Fine Gael MEP argues.
The British are increasingly more likely to have an in or out vote on their EU membership and research by the company YouGov suggests pragmatism rules.
They found that British Eurosceptics are overwhelmingly pessimistic, thinking the future generation is doomed, the country has gone to the dogs, that overseas aid and bodies like the UN are a waste of time and money and the EU is a failure.
About 42% of Britons fall into this category. Another quarter have no strong feelings one way or the other about the EU while the final 25% are optimists — pro EU, support overseas aid and say the country is better than a generation ago.
But would enough of them vote to stay in the EU? Quite likely, says YouGov — because many of the pessimists and the “don’t care” are pragmatic about jobs and prosperity and would be afraid to be left out.
With her €80 billion research budget up in the air at the moment, Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is hoping that Star Trek actors and European Space Agency astronauts will help win over reluctant governments and convince more young people to study science and become researchers.
A group of young MEPs have organised the event on October 18 and invited Walter Koenig aka Starfleet Commander Pavel Chekov from Star Trek, Dutchman André Kuipers the European who stayed longest in orbit, Belgian Frank de Winne, the first European commander of the international space station and astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
They will meet students from all over the EU in a debate aimed at inspiring the next generation of European scientists and researchers. The budget will be decided at a special EU leaders summit on November 22.
Ireland still has one of the highest percentages of the workforce in agriculture at 4.6% according to the latest figures, and one of the smallest working in industry and construction.
This is the third highest among the old member states, behind Greece and Austria.
The numbers employed in public service and the arts is on average with the rest of the EU at the moment, while we have by far the highest proportion working in market services — shops, transport, hotels and restaurants, insurance and banking, and the professions.
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