Sharon Keogan: Calls for EU reform amid leadership scandals

6 and 4 or whatever. Thank you. Is that agreed? Thank you. I'm pleased today to be speaking on Europe Day which is technically not until Saturday but it's something that I'm glad we are marking in this chamber because while I'm sure everyone has different opinions on the specifics of what the European is doing right or wrong, and I certainly have plenty, I think I speak for all when I say that the European project is ultimately a good thing. But to bring the nations of our continent together in coordination and cooperation in order to ensure lasting peace, mutual prosperity and even our own independence and security, all of this is a worthy goal. And in fact even if we are totally disbanded in the morning we would have to reassemble it tomorrow evening. Trucks would still need to be shipped from Warsaw to Madrid, transfers would still be made from Sofia to Dublin and some supernational European body would have to exist to organise and oversee all of that. And that is what Robert Schuman foresaw when he made his declaration in 1950. But in the spirit of Europe Day I do have some criticisms of the current situation and direction and the state of the EU because what's more European than to constructively criticise something in order to make it better. We were debating the IPA Bill and the Migration Pact in this chamber a few weeks ago and I and several of my colleagues raised the point that we are seeing an alarming level of centralisation and competence creep coming out of Brussels these days and that we see alarming little being done either by our own or other European national governments to counter this. And this is underpinned in turn by a certain argument that more EU centralisation is better. That because we are in a more unstable world where big powers like India and China or Russia are on the rise the only chance we have is to federalise Europe. But this is a very simplistic thinking because if more centralised power is always unquestionably better then North Korea would be paradise and the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War. And on top of this we are really seeing a worrying calibre of leadership being put in charge of this increasingly centralised Europe. It would be one thing if our national power was being eroded but was in turn being taken over by unquestioned best of the best of our continent. But instead if we look at the EU's top three positions we have former ministers and prime ministers whose parties have collapsed in popularity among their own people and who all have made an exit from politics due to scandals. As Commissioner Vice President and High Representative of the EU Foreign Service we have former Estonia Prime Minister Kaja Kallis who was effectively forced out of the latter role by a scandal involving her husband's business ties to Russia and alone she reportedly med to her husband's business while Prime Minister. As President of the European Council we have former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa who had to resign due to corruption scandals in his party, not least including the alleged involvement of his Chief of Staff in nepotism concessions over lithium mines and data centres. And then last but not least we have the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who left her previous role in German's Defence Minister amidst a raft of scandals that included overpaid consultants, improper procurement, ministry phones that were being wiped before investigations could access them and a military that had been left in tatters. And to be frank we haven't seen much different now that she's in the Commission where she is alleged to have organised our 35 billion Covid vaccination procurement deal over text messages with the Pfizer CEO and in turn has refused to be questioned by the European Parliament and won't show the text messages despite the EU court ruling against her. Scandals happen in politics, I get that, but three out of three of the EU tops leadership is a pattern and a worrying one at that. In light of all this we cannot simply shove our shoulders. The European Union is not some distant or uncomfortable force. It is a political system in which Ireland has both a voice and a vote. We have the means through this House and through our government to demand higher standards, greater transparency and stronger accountability at the very top of the EU institutions. If the EU project is to keep the trust of its citizens it must respect the balance between Brussels and the nation-states and it must be led by people with full openness to scrutiny. I therefore call on everyone to engage in a greater debate over how we can better structure the EU with more respect for national governments and I call on the government to use every avenue available to us to push for reform, to strengthen oversight and to insist that leadership within the EU is held to the highest possible standard and that a better EU can be established because that is what European project deserves, that is what our citizens deserve and Minister I wish you well over the next six months as you take on the role here in Ireland.