Juncker junket was all about keeping our friends close...
JEAN-CLAUDE Juncker’s two-day trip to Dublin this week could have been a dummy run for the Pope’s 48-hour Irish tour in August. Both visits are the diplomatic highlights of 2018 for a Government that sees hosting two world leaders as a reflection of its own importance.
But despite his grand title, the president of the European Commission has no more claims to democratic legitimacy than Pope Francis; the public voted neither into their powerful positions.
Between the Taoiseach’s lovebombing and President Higgins’s backslapping, President Juncker also had the perpetual adulation of his travelling companion, EU Commissioner Phil Hogan. And future generations will not easily forgive Big Phil for Irish Water, his parting gift to Ireland.
Two days and nights of epic dinners, monumental praise and even an honorary doctorate, was a diplomatic bender for the president of the European Commission.
He even told a disarming joke about his reputation for drunken antics in the address to the Oireachtas last week.
And sometimes a day in the life of President Juncker is inseparable from a night on the tiles. For instance his diary entry for the first day of an infamous EU Summit in Latvia would read: ‘Welcomed EU leaders with kisses and slaps; hugged a visibly uncomfortable president of France; kissed the bald pate of another EU leader; greeted the Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban as “Dictator”.’
IT would have been a careerending spectacle for a democratically-elected politician, but nothing, or no one, will halt his five-year term. Mr Juncker’s qualification for the ‘presidency’ was 18 years as prime minister of Luxembourg, a tiny tax haven of a country with a population just a quarter of greater Dublin’s.
Still, humouring President Juncker for a couple of days is a small price to pay when Ireland needs powerful friends in the EU to take on Britain, the fifth richest country in the world.
The UK is our closest ally since signing the Good Friday Agreement, and it is vitally important to us. Its current Tory government, hapless Prime Minister Theresa May, and even the ultimate appalling Brexiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP are here today, gone tomorrow figures.
And then there is the alternative government in Britain, the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn – suspected of being as hostile to the EU as the Tories, and unlikely to be a dependable friend of any Irish government that doesn’t have a Sinn Féin component.
A convincing narrative on balancing our relations with the UK and the EU will be key issues in the upcoming general election, probably early next year.
It is hard to see anyone other than Leo Varadkar or Micheál Martin leading the government after the next election.
And the next Taoiseach will need the maturity of an elder statesman, plus inspiration underpinned with pragmatism.
President of the Commission Juncker and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, want to lead Ireland into a United States of Europe with a common budget and taxation policy – a goal shared by many influential Irish bureaucrats. Only one of the trio of unelected EU grandees visiting Dublin last week inspired my trust. Michel Barnier, the leader of the EU’s negotiating team with Britain, has shown quiet leadership and emotional intelligence. His professional manner and tough negotiating skills have won the trust of those Irish people who see their country as one of 27 sovereign, independent nations in the EU. Is it really too much to ask that the independence and relative prosperity that Ireland currently enjoys can be retained without surrendering our sovereignty ?