Kate English

Currently, these powers would be at the central bank, wouldn't they?

Correct, yes, in each of the different nations.

But I think, I suppose, what this really comes from is, remember, we've spoken a lot on Friday mornings this year about the Draghi report, the move for greater competitiveness within Europe.

And part of that is the single capital and investment union.

So to try and create one single bloc

of capital availability in Europe to compete better with other large trading economies.

Absolutely.

And with any change or integration, there's always going to be difficulties when it comes to movement of those regulations.

And there's still a lot of work to do to see how it would actually work in practice.

But again, it's back to this is all back to trying to open new markets.

That would be good for us as consumers and Irish businesses.

But let's see how this all plays out.

Yes, we've spoken a lot about tariffs this year, but typically coming from the US towards Europe and other blocks.

But of course, tariffs, why are they there?

They're there because of competition between different economies.

And the Commission has stated that they're going to open a review into the tariffs applied for electric cars produced by Volkswagen in China last year.

And sold in Europe, correct.

So last year they had tariffs imposed on it and it was reported that they currently pay about 20.7% duties on one particular brand, the Kuber brand, manufactured in China and sold in Europe.

And I suppose it's important to remember that in one respect that

You know, international trade is not binary.