Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union
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What does Ireland's presidency of the Council of the European Union entail?
Next though, as we've been hearing, Ireland today takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union, putting us at the centre of EU lawmaking and diplomacy. It comes at a time of intense geopolitical strain with escalating hybrid security threats and deep divisions over international law. Joining me now to discuss Ireland's priorities, the security measures in place and our stance on Middle East trade sanctions is Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and for Defence, Helen McEntee. Minister, good morning. You're very welcome. Good morning, David. Hi. Thanks for taking the time because I know you've got quite a lot on your plate, as you will for the next six months.
But explain to me how this is of benefit to the ordinary Irish citizen. I know it's a huge responsibility. It comes around on rotation.
How does geopolitical strain affect Ireland's presidency?
You don't have any choice about it. But we got a text in. Although pro-EU, I can see absolutely no benefit to everyday Irish people of Ireland hosting the EU presidency. And it goes on in that way. And people are facing traffic disruption. They're... facing, you know, whatever security cordons are going to be in place at various times.
What are Ireland's main priorities during its EU presidency?
What's in it for the ordinary citizen?
Well, the last thing I want is for people to think that it's about traffic disruptions and certainly where we have big events happening on uncertain days, you might have that for a few hours. But what we get back, and it's not just financially what people might get back, but in terms of the access that we have and what that means for people every day. is significant i mean our country since we joined has been utterly transformed because of that membership and the fact that we now not only get to chair the meetings but we kind of set out the agenda and what we want to prioritize so people might be sick of hearing it or they might never heard it but we have three key priorities it's our values making sure that everything we do it's underpinned by our core values protecting human rights basic human dignity upholding our laws our
our security, that we work closely together, that we focus on not just the conflicts that are happening around us, but how do we protect our economic security, our critical infrastructure? How do we do that together? And competitiveness is an area that we've really wanted to prioritise. So if I could give you two or three examples. So I spoke to a neighbour of mine last night. He's a farmer. He gets up every morning with his son, half four, probably five o'clock in the morning to milk cows. we are, during the presidency, going to be negotiating and hopefully agreeing a final figure to our budget. That matters for somebody like Kevin, if I could name him, because what we agree on the cap budget means something to our farmers and our communities, but importantly, how they access that as well.
So from the competitiveness agenda, we want to make sure that where people are able to access funds, that we make it easier. I hear this all the time, whether it's a farmer, whether it's somebody setting up their own business, whether it's an entrepreneur, We've put in perhaps too much bureaucracy. So we have a whole agenda as to how we simplify things.
How will the EU presidency benefit ordinary Irish citizens?
We also want to make it easier if you are a business here in Ireland and you want to set up in Spain. At the moment, you have to duplicate everything. You do all the processes here. You then have to do the same in Spain. How do we remove that duplication? And we have a very clear target and an agenda as to how we do that. But also, if you think of our students, who I hope most of whom are off on holidays or enjoying themselves, you know, we have fantastic Erasmus programmes. We have money that we invest in Horizon that goes to our students, that focuses on how we can support young people to grow, to innovate, to invest in their own businesses. We don't have enough access to capital for young people in that regard.
We have a plan as to how we could provide greater access to capital. There's trillions of euros sitting in savings accounts that are not being touched or not being used.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What does Ireland's presidency of the Council of the European Union entail?
0:00–0:43
2
How does geopolitical strain affect Ireland's presidency?
0:43–1:00
3
What are Ireland's main priorities during its EU presidency?
1:00–2:36
4
How will the EU presidency benefit ordinary Irish citizens?
2:36–14:11