Alice-Mary Higgins: Ireland must defend EU values in presidency

I think in a way the previous speaker has said everything and covered it in real detail and I'm hoping that we, in this year with Ireland's presidency, that we move into those real discussions, real detailed meaningful discussions past a kind of simplified frames that we sometimes see thrown out about, you know, Europe is, you know, we are all proud Europeans, we are all proud Europeans and Ireland is proud European, you look to the poll of our citizens, that's there. But what does need to be looked to is the fact that a majority of those citizens who support Europe, who want to be part of Europe, believe that Europe is moving in the wrong direction. A majority do not believe that Europe is moving in the right direction. And a majority, not a majority, and then a third of them believe that Europe is not upholding its core values. So if you think of some of the hardest information that you get will come from those who really care about you and your friends, these are the citizens of Ireland who are supportive of the European Union sending a really clear signal which needs to be listened to. That they are very worried about the direction of travel and that they are really worried about that question of core values and those core values being upheld. And Ireland going into this presidency, you know, it's not like in say other countries where they are having to communicate why we should be part of Europe and all of that. What actually needs to be happening, there isn't a public communications issue here. There is a genuine message that needs to be brought back into the European institutions and leadership that Ireland needs to be providing to help Europe turn around in terms of that wrong direction. And to help Europe rediscover and reassert its core values and start to assert them again. I was very, very proud to have been part of the future of Europe process. And the future of Europe process was a moment, it was kind of almost a moment of, you know, when we felt we had had a curve of learning, you know, we had a decade of austerity where many of the major architects of austerity have admitted that it was wrong. You know, we've had individual members of the Troika coming out and talking about that there were mistakes made. We've had, we almost had as close as you will get to without having it, mea culpas, about the fact. And when we hear about competitiveness, I think it's also really important, the frame, like Europe hasn't been losing out in comparative advantages because of its regulations. Europe lost out because we had 10 years when we had a vision, smart, sustainable, inclusive growth. That was the Europe 2020 vision. And that vision was put aside for short term quarterly fiscal targets. And we lost a decade of investment, public investment in the green transformation, in the digital progress and our own digital technologies. And the rest of the world who respond to the recession by increasing investment got a head start at that point. Regulation wasn't the problem. It was a stepping back from public engagement and public investment that created that gap. And then we had, where the actual comparative advantage comes in, is that Europe, with its very large market, creates in standards which companies in Europe are meeting and can meet, is actually our comparative advantage. Right now, Europe has a comparative advantage of having policies, regulations, and standards that reflect the reality of climate change existing, the reality of us living in a world of diversity. And we are looking to others who are, frankly, setting fire to their scientific and economic progress because they are trying to harken back to a fantasy version of the 1950s. They are literally trying to remove some of this. But rather than leaning in to these areas, these are our strengths on a practical level. But also more importantly, going back to that future of Europe process, I was one of four parliamentarians from Ireland. We had citizens from Ireland. There was 800 citizens from right across Europe who came together for months and months and months and months. And what they said was, what they came through again and again, was exactly the things that senators across this house have spoken about, about what they valued about Europe. They came and made it clear that what they valued were the things we've heard about, gender equality, workers' rights, environmental standards, health and safety protections, that these were the facets. These are the things that made them proud to be European. They're the reason that these individual citizens from across Europe were willing to give up time and travel to Strasbourg multiple times and talk about the future of Europe, is because they were proud of what Europe had done in terms of rights and standards. And right now we have a European Commission who are not only making, you know, very poor choices for the future, but they are effectively setting fire to the past. Nine omnibus bills, each one of which contains the removal of an entire set of protections and standards that have been hard won. The due diligence directive, I went back and forth with a member, with Minister Kaliri, years and years and years developing the corporate, the idea that, you know, supply chain with basic things like child labour in it, like slavery involved, you know, like the basic accountability for the supply chain of the very largest companies. The sustainability reporting directive, which again, that the very largest companies should be acting on climate change. They got gutted in a three-month process with an omnibus bill. And now we have the digital omnibus, which will dilute the GDPR protections that we have. And we have seven more, eight more omnibuses after that, coming after every area, from environment through potentially to workers' rights. So we are really at a moment whereby we're at a risk, not just of the wrong direction of travel, but of digging up the road that got Europe to the point it is now, of literally digging up the road and the path that got us here. And Europe, Ireland is going to have, I'm going to just highlight this, again, Minister, you know, I had very specific questions, and again and again, we're coming to specific questions during the Ireland presidency. Ireland has the chance to do some very meaningful things. For example, talking about the standing up for the LIFE programme, the idea of climate and biodiversity. This is the one that supports farmers right across the country who are trying to do the right thing on climate change, that that would be ring-fenced rather than absorbed into a competitiveness fund where it's competing against drones and everything else. There's going to be debate on the digital omnibus. Will we actually be standing up for greater protections, or will we be contributing to the dilution? There's going to be questions on workers' rights that are going to be looked at during the period of the presidency, including, of course, you know, the pay directive, pay transparency directive, which Ireland has one month to transpose, which still hasn't really been properly transposed as far as we can see, and again, and there's going to be the EU scrutiny committee that has been mentioned, it was mentioned by the Cahirleach, which is a committee that the Seanad has formed with a view towards having a sense, giving people that sense of accountability in relation to EU legislation that is coming through. I think we don't want to be there to kind of, as an accountability wash, talking about that committee needs to be matched by genuine engagement by departments and genuine timely engagement on the statutory instruments that are happening. The last thing I would just say on values is mentioned as key. If values is going to be a theme, then international law needs to be within that, because we hear values and interests, and I feel like I'm hearing this phrase more, values and interests, which almost suggests we'll talk about values and then we'll have a chat about interests, and I would emphasise interests, they're very important, but they need to sit within values. If we are serious about values, those values apply, and we pursue our interests within a frame of those values. We don't balance one off against each other, and there needs to be some very difficult and serious discussion and challenging discussion for our colleagues in Europe in relation to international law, and that's what I would really like an answer on. Will Ireland be placing international law and Europe's role in that, and the need for seriousness in it, which means, in the case of Ireland, passing the Occupied Territories Bill, because we're crystal clear on the obligation of all states to prevent trader investment relations that contribute to the maintenance of the illegal situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that's what the International Court of Justice have told us. Will it include the blocking mechanism, Spain has called for this blocking mechanism to be used in order to protect the international criminal court justices who have been targeted by the US and cut off by Microsoft. Will Ireland be actually taking leadership in relation to international law as opposed to taking lip service to it, and will we be challenging countries and others, including large partners such as Germany, who are standing in the way of international law at this time? So again, I'd like to ask explicitly, will there be a focus on international law under the values theme as part of the Presidency? Thank you.