The challenge of EU reform Ireland’s new MEP talks about bringing Sinn Féin’s vision for a Citizen Centred Europe to the next level
BY CHRIS MacMANUS Reforming all that is wrong with the EU project is a slow process, but it will never happen if we don’t make tangible efforts to change it now. To find common ground across the political spectrum on the aspects that require a system overhaul is the first and probably the most difficult task to achieve. To put it mildly, we in Sinn Féin never made it a secret that we have a radically different outlook on the European institutions. For obvious reasons, the idea of any kind of foreign governance doesn’t rest easy with Republicans. That said, critically engaging with the EU shouldn’t imply just ‘hurling from the ditch’. It should mean that we acknowledge what is right with the EU and work to remedy what is wrong with it. We must forge bold but reasonable plans to address the EU’s inadequacies and protect those elements of the project that work well for all its member states, not just the select few geographically closest to the EU parliament buildings or with a federalist outlook like Germany and her neighbours. It was the German statesman Otto von Bismarck who once stated “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made”. I’m not sure about the latter but, after only a few weeks as an MEP, I can already attest that the former rings true. Every single decision moves at a glacial pace. The sheer size of the European Union means every meeting, plenary, committee or parliamentary sitting is noted, minuted and entails an excessive paper trail as does every amendment or rejection faced by legislation on its way to fruition. Not to mention the questionable outlay of time and money (€114M per annum) that is the monthly trek to Strasbourg. I could also dedicate a separate article to the EU’s fixation on a onesize-fits-all pan-European policy that hasn’t and will never work. For example, the definition of a ‘small farmer’ in Sligo is quite a different concept to the one considered in Bavaria or the Po Valley in Italy. The EU’s steady march towards militarisation is another major cause for concern in recent years. Ethics aside, this is an increasingly dangerous funnelling of funds that could be put to better use elsewhere. Surely this is not the European Union that was envisaged by its earliest pioneering dreamers. My concern is that the longer you stay in European politics the
The definition of a ‘small farmer’ in Sligo is quite a different concept to the one considered in Bavaria or the Po Valley in Italy
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• When a border poll materialises and reunification talks are in process, it’s better to have the EU to be working with us
more acclimatised and accepting you become to the EU ’bubble’ and maybe that’s the problem. As Ireland has become so enthralled with the system, it’s lost the ability to critically engage with it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Irexit cheerleader. I, for the most part, consider the EU to be a worthy notion. There is no doubting the positive impacts it has had since its formative decades post-WWII. As a peace project and as a framework for inter-European trade, it has been largely successful. We should never forget the fragility and simmering tensions that existed across our continent prior to its inception. Likewise, from a more selfish, domestic viewpoint our major road infrastructures have benefited massively in recent decades through EU funding. Some of you will be able to recall car journeys from Belfast to Cork taking upwards of seven or eight hours. If you didn’t complete that same journey now in under four hours, you’d be disappointed with yourself. The same applies east-west, with a Dublin to Galway venture taking less than half the time it took in the ‘80s. These infrastructural improvements have been greatly beneficial to the economy across the island but it has also brought Irish society in our four provinces closer together. Post-Good Friday Agreement, the EU put its money where its mouth was. Many cross border projects benefited greatly from funding in the past twenty or so years. I worked for over a decade with the former political prisoner community, primarily funded by EU special funding, and there’s no doubting that many such projects helped bolster the peaceful times we now live in. And when, indeed, a border poll materialises and reunification talks are in process, I’d much rather the EU to be working with us, similar to German unification in the early ‘90s. ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 anphoblacht
