Bobby McDonagh

So, particularly on the Middle East and Gaza, I'm profoundly concerned about what is happening.

I've written about it quite a lot.

I've appeared on Al Jazeera.

I care about it a lot.

But the European Union has complex decision-making procedures, which is one of the things I'm trying to explain in this book.

So to do things, you need either unanimity of all the member states or a qualified majority of most of the member states.

And that's very difficult to achieve.

And the only way to change that would be to

remove the unanimity requirement for most foreign policy decisions.

Now, I'd be happy to do that.

But if there was a proposal to remove the unanimity requirement, which allows us to block things we don't like, I can guarantee you that many of the people who are complaining about Gaza would be the very first to object to a decision-making procedure being changed in the European Union to allow it to act more effectively.

No, absolutely.

I mean.

National characteristics are not diminished in the European Union.

Sometimes people might think that it's amorphous and every bit becomes a vague European.

But I can tell you, having sat around the table for decades, that there's probably no forum in which national characteristics come out more clearly.

You know, the assertiveness of the Spaniards, the philosophizing of the Italians, the certainty of the British and so on, and of the Dutch.

Identity is complex.

And we know that in so many ways.

For example, in this country, people fly Irish flags outside buildings in a sort of assertive and insular way, as we know.