Irish Examiner view: EU must learn from Covid errors

Everyday consumer issues cannot be discounted

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

Perspective is everything, context is usually, or at least it should be, definitive. Judgement, without a reasonable appreciation of prevailing circumstances can be worthless. 

Our relationship with the EU offers many questions, some specific some spectacularly grand and complex. Context can, almost, be made to measure. 

Our place within that community, our commitment to it, and its recognition of our needs, offer many ways to approach, sustain, and develop that relationship.

On what might be called pocket-book, everyday consumer-facing issues the level playing field promised by the single market has not brought the benefits expected. We, because of VRT — up to 37% — pay well above EU norms for cars. 

Our out-of-kilter mortgage rates, a regular theme for Michael McGrath, the minister for public expenditure and reform since June, while he was in opposition, persist. Those gouging rates contribute to our housing crisis, social and transgenerational injustice too. 

Constraints around buying insurance from a Continental source is another bugbear.

That the EU may prevent holidaymakers buying alcohol or cigarettes at local prices while visiting other EU countries — whenever that happens — would rub salt into that wound. 

Ireland’s wine prices are, by some distance, the EU’s highest. We are the second most expensive for spirits and third-highest for beer. 

In a consultation launched on Tuesday, the EU argued that holidaymakers should pay excise duties at their national rates rather than those imposed where they buy various products. 

The EU is also considering lower limits on the quantity of alcohol or cigarettes holidaymakers can buy. 

In our pandemic world, where vaccine wars simmer just beneath the surface, and as Brexit’s sunny uplands are clouded, these measures may seem inconsequential — but then, so did the long-ago imposition of Vat on children’s shoes, a tax that brought an administration to a premature end.

That those suggestions follow a disastrous few days for the EU, particularly its leadership and bureaucracy, is significant.

Article 16

The incomprehension that invoked Article 16 is the very incomprehension that would dismiss any negative reaction to changes in how EU citizens can take advantage of market differences. 

At a moment when so many forces and individuals are determined, by any means, to exploit EU vulnerabilities, a new sensitivity is required and not just around the price of a holiday bottle of Rioja or Ripasso.

EU membership is the best thing that happened this island since independence and it is not too hard to argue for an even longer timeframe. 

After all, the opportunity independence promised was not made real until we joined the community. 

It is reassuring therefore that Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has expressed regret over the misuse of Article 16. 

This shows that she, unlike so many of her peers, has the capacity to learn and to acknowledge error.

The EU is still, despite the vaccine cock-ups and the glaring fact that it is far from perfect, and so very hard to reform, the only game in town, no matter what perspective you take.