With a ‘strong wind’ in Europe’s sails, can Irish voices be heard?

BREXIT barely got a mention. Even when it did, it was in the final minutes of an hour-long speech.

The UK’s departure is already an after thought, at least that’s the impression you got from Jean-Claude Juncker’s bullish State of the Union address yesterday.

The speech was big on ambition and designed to rally the union after a year dominated by the UK’s impending exit, terrorism fears and concerns, later ameliorated, about the rise of Euroscepticism. Using emotive terms like the wind is in our sails, Mr Juncker sketched out a vision of a post-Brexit bloc with an EU finance minister running key budgets to help states in trouble, tax standards converging and Europe acting as the world’s major trading hub.

“The wind is back in Europe’s sails,” he said. “Now we have a window of opportunity, but it will not stay open forever,” he said, emphasising a need to move on from and even profit from the British vote to leave the bloc in 2019.

“We will keep moving on because Brexit isn’t everything, it is not the future of Europe.”

In a way, the wind is very much in Europe’s sails.

Britain voted to leave the EU with pro-Brexiteers arguing that being shackled to the bloc was holding the country back.

The statistics over the last year suggest a different picture. In the three months to June, the eurozone grew at twice the speed as Britain – despite the Brexit vote – bolstered by higher business optimism, strong domestic consumption and decreasing unemployment, which in June reached its lowest level since 2009.

By contrast, after a prolonged period of relatively benign economic numbers following last year’s vote, there are now signs of a slowdown in the British economy. They stretch from retrenching households to hesitant businesses, from a widening trade deficit to lacklustre manufacturing. Business investment is also at a standstill.

So Mr Juncker may feel justified in his optimism.

But, with the British nearing the exit door, he evidently also feels justified in arguing for an ever closer union. He seems to want to do away with the concept of a multi-speed Europe, suggesting all countries should be using the euro, that there be a single European president, that all countries should be in the banking union, that tax matters be pushed through without the need to get the backing of all members states and that the bloc should agree to put in place a European defence union.

Ibec boss Danny McCoy, who in the recent past warned that the cost of Ireland remaining in the EU post-Brexit could be very heavy if Europe insists on a “one-size-fits-all” approach to the bloc’s future, struck a more diplomatic tone, saying it was good to see the EU set out its post-Brexit vision. Ireland, though, is cool on the idea of a European finance minister, and cooler still on ending the national veto on tax changes. But with a strong wind in Mr Juncker’s sails in the UK’s absence, can it make its voice heard?