Ireland will only have role in Biden’s new EU relationship by pushing hard to get space
THE “bad guy” Trump is gone and his successor Joe Biden wants a grown-up relationship with the European Union based on real engagement and co-operation.
Ireland does enjoy some very privileged access to the White House of “the most Irish US President since John Fitzgerald Kennedy”. So, Dublin could be the US-EU bridge, Europe’s Washington door-opener, and suddenly at one bound we are the people who can help make everyone happy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Alas, if life were only that simple – even briefly and for once. The reality of EU-US relations is far deeper and more complex and let’s try to see where Ireland fits – or maybe does not fit – amid all this in some kind of realpolitik context.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney was in Brussels yesterday for a rare faceto-face EU meeting which began looking at “re-setting” EU-US relations post Donald Trump. It offers us a chance to see how realistic are claims that Ireland can play a pivotal role in this difficult process.
Firstly, the sad reality is that Trump’s disastrous legacy in transatlantic relations will take time to dispel from Europe long after he has left Washington. A major survey of people across the EU last week showed the majority of Europeans are happy with President Biden’s election win.
But one in three said that after Trump, Americans can no longer be trusted. Only 27pc of EU citizens disagreed with that proposition.
It was a key finding of a survey of 15,000 people in 11 European countries, commissioned by the independent think-tank the European Council on Foreign Relations. The survey was conducted after the US election result was known last November and amid considerable global euphoria at the outcome.
In such cases we are always interested in what the specific Irish findings were. Well, here’s a clue about where we might fit in the EU-US line-up: Ireland was not included. And the 11 nations surveyed were Britain, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, France, Spain, Denmark and Germany.
It brings us to point number one – not everyone in the EU sees Ireland as packing a major punch in Washington. It’s impossible to imagine G7 economy nations like Germany, France and Italy publicly acknowledging they need the intervention of Ireland to make things happen for the EU stateside.
Yes, Ireland has provided two stellar EU ambassadors to Washington in former Taoiseach John Bruton and former EU Commission head David O’Sullivan.
But business is business and must not be confused with sentiment even if they do dye the rivers green for St Patrick’s Day.
Back with the big picture, the European survey’s finding was mainly about a reasonable view among many citizens on this continent that the US political system is very badly strained. More than half of German survey respondents said Americans couldn’t be trusted and more than onethird of Britons said the same.
In France, the most popular answer was a Gallic shrug of “don’t know”. Only in Hungary and Poland did a majority feel US politics’ decline was not terminal. Overall, across the 11 European countries, six out of 10 people felt the American political system is “completely” or “somewhat broken”.
Similarly six out of 10 Europeans felt China will become more powerful than the US within a decade. A majority felt Europe should keep well back from an impending US-China trade and diplomatic conflict.
None of this is to say Biden’s election means we cannot recapture previous optimism on transatlantic co-operation. President Biden’s early declarations that the US would rejoin the World Health Organisation in a time of Covid-19, while also resuming support for the Paris climate accord, discontinuing the Mexican anti-immigration wall, and ending the travel ban on many Muslim countries, are all very welcome and help set a much better tone.
And Biden’s arrival should end a particularly difficult period in EU-US relations. Both sides are now ready to step up co-operation in a range of fields, something that has been argued for by the Commission and the EU High Representative for foreign affairs in their joint communication, A new EU-US agenda for global change.
But we must not forget that we have been here before.
Business is business and must not be confused with sentiment
Barack Obama’s election saw in 2009 a similar burst of optimism.
It brought a very ambitious attempt at a comprehensive EU-US agreement on trade, investment and regulatory co-operation called TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. But such a major agreement proved elusive.
Hopefully, this time both sides will start smaller. And certainly, Ireland can work its passage. But this country will only get space if we push for it.