 Thank you very much, Mary, for that introduction and good afternoon to everybody. It's great to see so many familiar faces and hope to get to meet some of you whom I don't know. I want to start with a little story which I think colours the remarks I'm going to make today. Thanks very much. Several years ago when the European External Action Service was being set up in Brussels, I was invited to speak on a panel, I was presenting the point of view of the commission ac mae'r parwyddon yng nghymru o'ch lleol. Rydw i'n gallu bod yn ffio'n gweithio'n meddwl i'r gwerthodd o'r iawn o'r wath i'r lleol. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n meddwl, rydyn ni'n gweithio'n meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl, ac rydyn ni'n gweithio'n meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl, yn ni? A byddwch yn gweithio, pob ddwy'n meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl. Ac mae er mwyn gael y ddweud y tro o'r dweud yr aroedd o'r ddweud, ond y 5-ur argymwys yw'r gwaith eich gweithio'r ddweud yn allan o'r ddweud, o'r ddweud a'r gweithio, ac yn allan o'r ddweud, o'r ddweud, ychynig o'r ddweud o'r ddweud ar ynglyn â Llyfr. Y ddweud yn y bwysig yw, yn y gallu'r ddweud, ymdyn ni'n gwybod â'r ddweud'r ddweud o'r ddweud argyntiau'n dweud, Mae'n ffordd y peth yn gweithio y clywed o'r cyffreddau yn ystod o'r cyfrifol o'r ddegyfu? Dwi'n ddeg yn ei gyd, oherwydd mae'n ddeg yn ystod o'r cyfrifol o'r ddegwyddau ymwneud ymddiadau. Rwy'n meddwl, mae'n cyfrifol o'r cyfrifol, mae hynny'n meddwl yma yn yw'r hanes, yma yw'r rhai yma sy'n cyfrifol o gyfrifol. Ac mae'n gweithio, mae'r cyllid o'r wneud ychydig ychydig ynghyd yn ychydig o'r lluniau gyda'r yn ymddangos, ond oes yn gwneud yn cael ei wneud. Ac mae'n cullid o'r dda i ddweud o'r ddweud o'r gweld ymddangos yn ymddangos ymddangos i'w ddweud, a'r cyfnod y gallu ei chyfrddio'r hyffordd oedd eich ddweud, a dyma yw'r gweithio'r ffordd, oedd ymddangos yn hwnnw ni, rwy'n dechrau. Yn ymddi'r ysgolwyd yn yw yn ymddu fy ngyfyddiadau erbyn yr unrhyw oryntgen a'r unrhyw a'r unrhyw ar y cyfrifneg, mae'r 20 ysgolwyd yn ymddi'u perioedd ymddiadau o'r cyfrifnag yma o'r dyfodol yn ymwyfnol yn yr ysgolwyd, ac yw ymddiadau yn ymddiadau hynny, ac mae'n angen i fod y model o'r unrhyw, o'r ddweud y byddai cyfnod i'r ffordd i gael eu ddweud i'r byddai ac yw'r ddweud y ddweud ei ddweud un o'r ddweud o'r hyn sy'n ddiol, oeddan nhw'n gweld i'r ddechrau'w gwagol. Felly o'r ysgrifennu gyda'r hyn ymddangos yma o'r newidau sydd ymddangos ymdynhau, byddwn i'n maen nhw'n gallu'ch byddwch y bach o ddechrau ac mae'r bwysig a'r bwysig yw'r rhai gwaith yn dweud o ffair i'r gwaith drwy'r gweithio. Ac yn ffatt, mae'n ei gwybod fyddor i'n rhoi'n wneud o'r ysgrifen ymgyrchol, lle mae'n rhoi'n llawer o'r ddiolch yn gyfalu'r meithio ymlaen yma. Mae'r bwysig a'r bwysig yn y bwysig sydd eich gwneud y cyhoeddau, oherwydd yw'r ffordd ymlaen yng Nghymru. Yn ymgyrch o'r Donald Trump, ynghylch pwrmwyntau ym Lladu Myer Pwtyn, byddai'r gweithio mae'n cymdeithasol o'r gwirion yn lleol naglŷll o'r ymdweud. Mae'r ymdweud yn ei wneud ymdweud, mae'r ymdweud yn ymdweud, Mae cyfnod o'r model sy'n ddefnyddio'n gyfermyn. Mae gaelio'r reall yn ddaeithio o'r power a'r lles, mae'r thysgwrs oedd yn ddaeithio'n power a'r lles. Mae'r protest o'r cyfnod o'r ddefnyddio'n ddaeithio'n ddaeithio'n ddaeithio, o'r jele-jeune o'r frans, oedd y gallwch cyfnod o'r protest. Mae'n ddaeithio, mae'n ddaeithio'n ddaeithio am y ddechrau, mae'n ddaech chi'n ddaeithio'n ddaeithio. ac yn dod oedd y bwysig ymddiad ymddiad ymddiad ymddangos arall y gweithio'r bobl yn ddiweddol. Ymddangos ymddiad ymddiad yn ymddiad ymddiad, ymddiad ymddiad ymddiad yn ymddiad ymddiad, ac mae gennym ni'n gweld i'r ffyrdd. Ymddiad ymddiad, mae'n gweld i'r Pwysig a'r Ddyddor Rymysgol, yn ddigon i'r ffact ymddiad ymddiad ymddiad ymddiad ymddiad. probably largely because it's the only block that's big enough to actually challenge what they want to do and to be an obstacle to their agendas. And I think the EU is perplexing to its population as well because it's atypical. It's not a state, it's not a federal model. It's something different and it's something that evolves with each generation of European citizens and of people who come to power. And of course it does have its own internal divisions and I'll talk a little bit about them later on and probably with the departure of the UK and with, I presume, a reduction at least in focus on Brexit, those internal divisions will become more apparent as the EU 27 tries to put together a new agenda for what is the EU without the UK and where is it going. And last but not least, the digital age makes communication much easier. We all are on our iPhones all the time now but it also makes it much more difficult to explain complex issues and to get public buy-in for compromises when the soundbites and the tweets on social media are all at the polarising extremes of you like it or you don't like it. But in fact, as we all know in our own lives, it's usually all about finding compromises with people who we care about or who we want to work with and so that's a much more difficult model to explain. So that's some of the background against which this brave band of men and women have either wanted these jobs or have agreed to take them on and I make that distinction because I think it's relevant. So I'm going to just talk briefly about the different institutions and tell you how I see them from what I know from the inside and now with the distance of four years from not being at today's European Council. So the first obvious difference in the commission is it's the first time we've had a woman president and this will change things. First of all she has an almost gender balanced college that has never happened before and my experience of seeing the commission level, the commissioners go from having no women around the college table to having two to then having one third is that when you reach a critical mass of having women around the table, the kind of debate that they have changes and the way that they work together changes. So I think I expect that you will see differences both in style and in substance coming from the commission that's led by Ursula von der Leyen. She has already mapped out her priorities, a European Green deal and she has already delivered the first instalment of that yesterday, an economy that works for people, Europe fit for the digital age, protecting or promoting our European way of life, a stronger Europe in the world and a new push for European democracy. So how is it going to work? First of all it's important to know as you all do that President von der Leyen did not emerge from the Spitsyn candidate process, the idea that the European Parliament had a big say in choosing who would be the president of the commission reflecting the results of the European elections and that is important. I think it was something of a setback for the parliament. I think it was the member states clearly reasserting their stamp and saying the power shift towards the parliament has gone far enough. We want to reclaim this for ourselves because the president of the European Council shares us as the prime ministers and we want to have our say in who does that. A second novelty was that the European Council also said as president she should have two executive vice presidents and told her who they should be and this has never happened before. Member states nominate their own commissioner but they've never had a role in nominating other commissioners and they did this to try and reflect the balance, the power balance in the European Parliament between the EPP, the socialists and the Liberals. Now she has accepted that and she has gone one further. She felt that it was a very west European balance and so she has invited Mr Dombroskas to be the third executive vice president in the commission to make sure that everybody understands that she sees the whole of the European Union as needing to be represented in the way that the commission works. So these compromises that were partly part of the terms of her taking office and partly decided by herself have given a fairly complicated structure at the political level of the commission because you will have a president, three executive vice presidents, eight vice presidents and my former colleagues I think some of them are still calculating exactly how many commissioners they will be reporting to. So there's going to be work to be done I think to get the adherence of the new commissioners to the priorities of the president. Of course everybody will pay lip service to the fact that they have come to office to deliver these priorities but trying to get that number of people lined up to deliver the priorities is quite a challenge and it will be a challenge of I think all her female collaborative skills to make the executive vice presidents, the vice presidents and the few ordinary commissioners who there will be to get them to work together. Another salient point in her mandate is the fact that in her vote in the parliament to become president she got fewer votes than either President Barroso or President Juncker. So it was a fairly tight margin and that she also lost three commissioners designating the course of the process and that's why one of the reasons why she doesn't, but that is the reason why she doesn't have a fully gender balanced commission. So she has had to make commitments to the parliament in order to get elected. She has committed to come with ideas on how to reform the Spitsyn candidate process so she doesn't accept that it's dead. She will make proposals and then we will see what happens to them. She has also given a commitment which I don't see written about much in the press but which worries me from two points of view. The design of the EU is that the commission has the sole right of initiative to propose legislation and this is about the checks and balances in the EU as to who does what. The commission is not a government it's an executive but giving it the sole power to propose legislation is part of the basic architecture and it's something that the parliament has not been happy about for quite a while especially since the parliament is now codicider on all legislation and the parliament feels that other parliaments have the right to initiate legislation and it should have it too. So the new president of the commission has given a commitment that the commission will make a proposal every time a majority in the parliament votes that the commission should make a proposal. So that is quite a departure from the current way in which the checks and balances operate. Now that makes me a bit uneasy because there hasn't been a treaty change to decide this. It's a compromise but what worries me most of all is it will make it very much more difficult for the commission to stick to a fairly concise list of priorities if it's having to respond all the time to majority suggestions from the parliament that it should make legislative proposals that aren't necessarily part of the commission's priority agenda and I think that matters because I think in order to convince some European citizens that the commission isn't some mad machine that's spewing out initiatives all the time the commission does need to be elected on a mandate of a limited number of priorities and then to stick to delivering them and there's enough that more than enough that needs to be done at European level that can't be done by member states on their own to warrant sticking to that kind of precise that concise list of priorities and I don't see much sign that the member states have really woken up to this sort of power shift now cynix will say it's inevitable and that the parliament if it can muster a majority then it should be listened to yes but should it should the commission be automatically obliged to make a legislative proposal I have some doubts myself I think so that that is going to be potentially an area of contention between the institutions in the future and I think this very complicated landscape and the fact that the commission had a very small majority in coming into being is going to mean yet more increase in de facto powers of the parliament and we will see that as the commission gets its feet under the desk and it will have to hit the ground running as I said the first installment of the green deal was delivered yesterday probably the first big challenge for the new commission is going to be deciding the budget for the next seven years that will be discussed by the prime minister today but I don't think they will reach agreement there will be some waffle words but they're not yet geared up and ready to get stuck into the horrors of trying to negotiate but this can be an opportunity for the new commission because it has inherited the budget proposal from its predecessors and certainly in order to move the European economy much more decisively on to the path of climate neutrality that will need to be reflected in the budget otherwise the commission will not be able to put money behind a much greener agenda so going to be interesting times I think Ireland has positioned itself fairly well in this debate we it's a novelty for us to be a net contributor not necessarily when that we like but it is a sign of our maturity as a member of the European Union and I think being willing to countenance as an increase in the budget provided it's for the kind of policies that the future looking policies that we want I think puts Ireland in a pretty good position but that will be all budget negotiations are horrible and when you're trying to decide on a multinational multinational multinational budget it's particularly difficult and so I've said a lot about the European Parliament but now I want to come to it I think it was very positive that there was a higher turnout in the elections in May June this year than for many many previous elections and and that was partly a Brexit effect partly the rest of Europe waking up to what what we would lose and could lose if the European Union doesn't doesn't continue so the high turnout was very positive but I think in most countries the elections were on national issues rather than on on European issues we are not yet at the stage where we have kind of pan European topics in our elections the far right did not prevail as much as some pundits had had predicted and I think that's a good thing but as I said already or maybe I didn't say already the the old duopoly between the European People's Party and the socialists who previously together on their own had a majority that is now gone they only have 43% of the MEPs and so they will always need the Liberals and perhaps the Greens um to to achieve a majority for any legislation that requires parliamentary decision that is going to complicate decision making because the more parties you have to bring into a compromise the more difficult it is to negotiate it will probably take longer um but it can still be very positive for the centre ground of European policy because those parties if they come together and agree will represent a huge percentage of the European population so I think it will be harder to get there and slower to get there but I still think the pro European centre when the chips are down and their important decisions to be taken will still be able to to carry the day and I was describing a moment ago how the European Parliament has um used its its clout um to get further concessions from the commission um but it didn't get its way on the spits and candidat as I said and that has left a sour taste in in the mouths of some of the of the European Parliamentarians and that everybody will have to work to try and overcome that and to um to make sure that um there can be a forward looking agenda and not the backward look of we didn't get our way so we're not very happy um I think the um the extremes there there are extremists in the European Parliament there are a lot of populist nationalistic representatives and I think they will make a lot of noise and get a lot of media attention in the coming five years but and they they will have potential to delay and frustrate um a progressive agenda but as I said I think um in the end of the day the majority there is still a clear majority for uh central um centre ground um proposals and I think of course all of this means for business and for civil society it's going to be harder to interact and try to influence European policy uh they will have to lobby a lot more people um they will be less sure that if they know the views of X or Y or Z grouping that that will necessarily carry the day um but that's the way it is and everybody will have to adapt to it and learn how to deal with a broader range of views and then how to knit together compromises that that could ultimately be carried over the threshold. Turning then to the European Council which is meeting today and the first time that there is no British Prime Minister there and the first of the future basically depending on how the British vote today and how all that goes so um a new president at the helm already a Europe of 27 rather than 28 in all likelihood um and I described how I see the European Council as having reasserted itself over the choice of its president and that being a clear political message from from the member states um the France and Germany will continue to be the dominant member states in the European Council um and what we see at the moment is um I think a strong French desire for a bigger role for the EU and for France on the world stage um and that um to some extent being frustrated by a German reluctance to to lead um so I think um there will need to be a lot of discussion about what kind what kind of agenda does the EU want to follow now there's going to be um yet another debate on um the future of Europe um the new president of the commission has said that she will have one and report on it by next June France and Germany will be discussing at the European Council today a non paper they have put forward um where they want to take two years um to discuss and the two years has something to do with the fact that they want um the discussion on what kind of policies the EU should follow to open under German presidency which is the second half of next year and to close under French presidency which is um the in early 2022 so you see them already wanting to frame the debate um already wanting to um contribute of course but also to determine to to quite an extent um how that's going to happen um my own concern is that when um at European level we find it difficult to know what we want to do we tend to fall back on process and at the level I'm talking about now process means treaty change and I would really hope that we would have learned the lesson that treaty change should be the way of turning into a codification what we have agreed we want to do but it doesn't usually happen like that usually we change the treaty without having agreed what we want to do so um maybe here in Ireland we without we bear the scars and uh are quite reluctant to have to get into treaty change but I really hope that the EU 27 of the future will be able to agree on a on a policy path and only then ask whether we can do it under the existing treaty or whether we need uh to change the treaty because we all know um how complicated and how fraught that process can be um I think the departure of the UK I mean you don't need me to spell this out I think the departure of the UK um from the European Council is going to be a real loss because the British have consistently been um one of the big voices for keeping Europe open to the outside world for international engagement um they have been very challenging partners for the other member states quite a lot of the time but even that process of challenge has um very often improved the quality of decision making by making people think through a little bit more um the consequences of decisions so they they will be very missed around the table um and we will we will just have to to find ways of dealing with it um it's interesting that the person who takes over as president of the European Council comes from the younger generation um I think Sean Michelle um from birth will have been um imbued with um the the whole European ideal and lives and breeds it he understands as somebody coming from a small country just how important EU membership is for helping Belgium in his case as former prime minister to to influence and shape its destiny and so I think that is good for those of us who come from small countries that we have a president who understands um the needs of small countries to be respected to have their views represented around the table and of course being Belgian he is also a past master in the art of the compromise um and that is very necessary around the table as well so I think he will bring um his own stamp his own enthusiasm but also that background um which will be very useful in the job that he's that he's just started um he has said that he wants to improve the working methods of the European Council and I think that certainly would be a good idea um and one of the things he's putting emphasis on already is that he wants to follow up implementation of the decisions they have arrived at and that's very good because there is a tendency to spend all night arguing about the words and then to go home the next day and to forget you know what they've actually decided on or actually to spend all night agreeing on the wording and then come out and give 28 different press conferences about what they have decided so a bit of improved um follow-up on implementation would certainly make it more effective um I think that he and the president of the commission will work very well together I think they will understand that um if those two key institutions don't um find a way to move the agenda forward together it will not move forward and I think they will come into office understanding that bickering between the commission and the European Council is is in nobody's interest um I think um one of the big challenges for the the future is to try to get the heads of state and government in the European Council to focus on more strategic issues and the most important to me is one of that is what relationship does the EU actually want to have with the UK beyond just concluding a trade deal it's very difficult to get them to focus on abstract issues where there isn't a crisis where there isn't a decision to be taken but I do think um if if the UK does leave at the end of January and if the current government is returned and sticks to the idea of wanting a fairly minimalistic trade agenda then we will need um all of the prime ministers to think quite deeply about what kind of relationship do we want to have with the UK and how to go about it um but that is not something that they are traditionally used to um spending their time on um I also want to make um a quick um reference to the ECB um we also during the euro crisis how how vital the ECB is to where Europe goes next um it is I think highly advantageous that Christine Lagarde was inside most of the European Council discussions on the euro crisis she was there as head of the IMF so she's seen the debate she's seen the difficulties she will have a very good political sense I think of what's possible and not possible as a result of that experience um I think she has received a very good legacy from Mario Draghi and I think she's likely to be in in his end of the spectrum in terms of seeing what the role of of the ECB should be so um will all of these people um men and women um be able to work together um and um you have in each of the three institutions that I've mentioned um one person in the parliament it's more complicated because you have a president of the parliament but he or she is only he at the moment is only there for two years so they have a much shorter cycle and that tends to give a bigger role to the political um the leaders of the political parties and the conference of presidents I think that um on the big issues um because they have to they will be able to find an understanding and a compromise but I do think um the the the outcome of the european parliament elections will not make europe easier to govern than it has been up to now and I think in some areas um in the modern world and I think about the digital areas an obvious one uh we need to make decisions quickly because technologies change so fast and if you don't decide quickly you are a rule taker or a policy taker rather than a policy maker so I think um if if it's going to be slower to get legislation through the parliament um that will certainly call into question some of the decision making processes and um a need to look at how can europe speed up how can europe take decisions faster while not losing um the fact that everybody's views have to be represented so that's going to be a particular challenge I think but I would be optimistic um that the new team um in all of the institutions um has a real commitment to europe succeeding is seeing the pressure from outside is seeing the challenge to europe's values and and we'll be able to work together so if I come now to um once they are all settled in um the key challenges that they they will be facing and I'm not going to be too long or detailed on these but just to to mention them I think um there's going to be a lot more focus on the EU's role in the world that will come from inside the union what do we stand for in the face of the kind of challenges I refer to in my opening remarks um our open trade model is under pressure from rising protectionism that if we if if that continues to be the case our model of prosperity will be affected um we also have the issue of defence um what does europe do by way of external engagement as well as internal protection against um the kind of pressures that there are at the moment so I suppose Europe will be asking itself and trying to find an answer to the question can we sell our soft power model um there are lots of countries around the world that want our soft power model to succeed um because they feel um better taken into account but we will I think need to step up um our alliance building and engagement with other parts of the world for that model to work um I think the question of values is always very important um we have maybe overdone the lecturing the rest of the world about our values and the need to take our values into account but I think that's ultimately how the EU defines itself so I think we need to find a way to explain our values explain how they work for us and to do that we're going to have to deal with some of the internal divisions we have over over values at the moment um in looking at um the different attitude of the governments in Poland and Hungary for example um and the fact that the prime ministers have been fairly reluctant to tackle those issues and I think especially the younger generation um wants Europe to be more clear about its values and to stand up and defend them so that's one whole set of issues and that leads me to the issue of migration because there's a desperate need for the EU to get its act together on migration and to develop a policy that works um and um control of our borders managing our borders managing flows of migration so that we bring in the people we want to to have in Europe and that we continue to have a strongly humanitarian approach to refugees and asylum seekers all of that will come because because it is existential for Europe and we will have to accept that it's going to come at a cost and then I go back to the the future budget um that will need to be provided for um to some extent but if we don't manage to have a European policy on migration that works then we will continue to see a rise of racism a rise of populism we're even beginning to see flickers of it here in this country although we are relatively unaffected because we have such small numbers wanting to come but um uh in order to deal with the um anti EU more populist policies across much of the EU uh there is a need to to revisit and define um a workable migration policy for the future there is um the whole green agenda climate change um is very much in everyone's lips now the question is how to take it into into the area of action um uh I don't think we will see a big breakthrough in the European Council this evening I think we'll see a lot of very carefully balanced wording to reflect the different views around the table but um we will not be credible if we don't move to action and I think the new president of the commission is has put her finger on quite a lot of the right issues like a just transition to a climate neutral economy um the issue of carbon border taxes I think will be potentially very problematic and will not make our relationship with the US and others any easier but um it is going to come uh to debate it's going to be it is part of the package so I think we will have to see how do we how do we manage to to work our way through that um the new leaders will also have to deal with the economic situation Europe is growing fairly slowly that has all kinds of consequences um the reform and stabilization and consolidation of the euro is not complete um but as soon as the crisis lessons and the appetite for further uh further change in that area has become much weaker so there too I think um there will be a highly technical agenda to be worked through but it's necessary because there will be crises in the future and we need to make sure that we are stronger and better able to deal with them than we were previously and one of the areas where that will be very relevant is the whole area of social policy um for many many years the year the EU has had much stronger economic policies and social policy um that is part was partly not exclusively but partly due to the UK resistance to any European involvement in social policy so their absence may well and I think will facilitate a push towards implementing a social policy driven by the need to reassure those parts of the population who feel left behind that they are not going to be left behind and that although the world may not be for them as it always has been that the European Union does care and will find ways to help them work through the difficulties and one of the many commitments of president von der Leyen is to propose a legal instrument to ensure that every worker has a fair minimum wage that doesn't mean the same minimum wage across every country but to have a fair minimum wage and she's also um talking about proposing a european unemployment benefit reinsurance scheme um and I think that's going to require a rethink um here among our social partners particularly the business partners um that if there is a stronger uh social agenda um emerging at European level how do we want to shape and influence it how can we ensure that it's a modern social agenda um that that takes shape um the digital agenda is also um very much about power and control um you will all remember that when the GDP or regulation was being worked on and coming into being everybody thought oh this is europe being too complicated and all the rest of it uh but now we've all realised the value of protecting privacy and data privacy and if anything i think probably people feel it didn't go far enough so um this is another huge new agenda where we will need to be nimble and be able to decide policies and perhaps take um decisions fairly quickly and um with the new focus that there is on artificial intelligence uh president von der Leyen has promised um proposals on the human and ethical dimension of um artificial intelligence and i think again these are areas where europe can actually lead the world by thinking about these wider issues that perhaps in other parts of the world don't seem to count um as important um until until lessons to the country are unearned um but i do think um we're going to have to get much faster at taking decisions and being able to revisit and move on when decisions become outdated and the digital areas as a primary example of that um and i won't mention other things obviously the tax issue is very much on the agenda president von der Leyen um is very clear on her message of fair taxation and is supportive co-decision and qualified majority voting on that again that would take a treaty change but um it's obviously an issue where Ireland is going to be under pressure and we'll have to think about um what is our policy and and how strongly do we do we stick to it and then last but not least the future relationship with the UK um it won't only be about a trade deal and if if we agree just a quick fix trade deal there will be hundreds of other issues that will then come up in terms of market access market impact um but there's also the whole green agenda where the UK is much closer to european to to to EU views than other international partners there's the whole question of cooperation on foreign policy defense etc so um it's going to be with us for quite a long time to come and i think the EU as i said will have to do some deep thinking about where do its real interests lie and what kind of relationship is it does it want and is it willing to offer the UK so to wrap up um i started by saying it's all about power um and i think it is there is a there has been a power shift um the um lisbon treaty bringing the european council into being as an institution has um given the member states a much stronger um influence over the agenda it has also um led to the president presidentialization of the commission because the president of the commission is the person who has to interact in the european council and the european council meets very frequently so um that has been a power shift um i think also the spits and candidate process is not dead but the fact that it failed to um deliver the result this time round is a bit about rebalancing of power as seen from the from the member states side i think um it will take time for the new leaders to settle in and to figure out what is the extent of their powers what are the limits of their powers and where do they need to work together um i think it's clear that the commission and the parliament are much more used to thinking european and coming with policies that um can cover the whole of the union than the member states whose whose job is to think nationally so i think um uh shawn michelle will have um his work cut out for him to try to get the european council to think europe wide to think strategically um and to be able to ensure that those three key institutions will be equally prepared for the debate that is to come um and i think we are to some extent at european level um we can't define ourselves um post brexit against what um the uk is losing we will have to define ourselves against uh rather for what the next generation of the european union is going to look like and what do we want it to be um and i think we need to have that debate here in ireland too um we are now at a very mature stage in our EU membership we're one of the older ones um we've become a net contributor we are very confident about our place we've just received enormous i would say unprecedented solidarity um for our position in the whole um negotiations of the withdrawal agreement um and so we will have to think also about what is our willingness to share power at european level and how are we going to equip ourselves having decided where we want to share power how are we going to equip ourselves um to to make a meaningful impact uh working with others i think um the brexit will continue to be a huge issue here for us um but we will also have to think more continental in the future because that's um what the european union will be in the future is much more continental model of how countries work together and we will need to um think deeply try to bring our population with us try to make sure our population feels informed um so that we can contribute to the kind of EU that we all want to live in um for the future so thank you very much i'll leave it there thank you very much indeed catherine for that wonderful assessment of the structures and balances and indeed challenges uh that are facing the EU uh i think um as you have outlined their uh the very new team that is in place but also the differences uh in issues and challenges that face this team compared to say the team five years ago uh a completely different set of issues and agendas Catherine has kindly agreed to take questions on the record and i would ask anybody who wishes to put a question if you could give your name and the organisation uh that you're attached to so the floor is open for questions and we have a microphone going around thank you very much first of all compliments on your on your lecture Catherine if you could speak into the microphone my name first of all is John Connor i'm just an humble member of the institute um my question relates to the budget Catherine the budget currently are in the last about 40 percent of it the largest wedge went to the common agricultural policy where you see that going i mean i take it at the the wedge going towards the cfp is going to go down more has to go into the environmental policies and then there's the other issue the budget is fixed by a small contribution from bachelor's seats if i remember correctly and that's of course hindered by by lower growth rates in the european community what chance there is if there's any of getting an increase in the budget because it is needed it will have all these new initiatives and finally chairperson i just would like to ask in relation to um ireland has one of the very crucial commissioners the trade commissioner i don't know to what extent you wish to comment but i just like you that you might give us some of your own views in relation to what faces philhogan in relation to first of all dealing with the united kingdom china of course and the united states in relation to the trade negotiations without going into too much of the technicality of the budget um i think um i think there is still a prospect of getting a small increase in the budget um and i think the biggest helpful factor in that and it's one of the few occasions where i will say this is that the uk is not at the negotiating table they were always the most relentlessly driving the budget down um now we have very strong resistance from netherlands danmark but in the end of the day i think there's a prospect of getting a small increase i think um what the in the current multi annual framework um intelligent ways of using the money better has already been found like the uncker plan for investing um and supporting investment rather than doing everything through grant funding for example um and i think also um opening up the idea that um when something unexpected happens member states have to rally round that the price for member states of having a lower budget is a willingness when something unexpected happens to have to then contribute um but of course member states especially those who are in the euro feel very constrained by the spending limits that they have for their own domestic policy so it's not an easy one um i think the share of the cap would will obviously go down if there's a bigger budget in percentage terms so maybe not in real terms and i think um there is already a shift that will probably receive another big push and that is the greening of the common agriculture policy so i think it will the environmental environmental dimension of it will be further increased um so um where does the money for the budget come from i'm quite pessimistic about that um it should come from own resources which would free in an ideal world um it should come from resources that don't require the member states to stump up every year in this negotiation because then you get into the market thatcher i want to get back everything i pay in i'm not going to pay up any more than i get back and i'm not going to count what i get from the single market i'm just going to count financial transactions um but i see very little chance of that mario monti has done great work on sketching out where um even partial contributions could come from but the reality is um i don't remember the exact numbers now but the share of the budget coming from directly national budgetary transfers has gone up over time not down so i think there's almost no hope of that and i would think one um we also thanks to my get thatcher we have a very skewed budget um in which an increasing number of net contributors get money back in a rebate um and this should have been the moment to get rid of the rebates and put the budget on a stronger footing but i think there will i would predict there will probably be transitional phasing out of rebates so there will be rebates continuing in some form or other so and we are fighting over a very small amount of money it's one percent of u u gdp and it can do a lot because you know burning out you spend it and spending it european level you can get much more impact from the money than if you spend it nationally but these are horribly national negotiations i think the worst i was ever involved in i don't want to comment on full hope well except to say i think it is a very important job um i think given um the current pressures on protectionism and all that um i personally think he will be ideal for the job um i saw him when we were still negotiating the transatlantic partnership and where i think it was the first time for both the EU and the US that we had an equally large and opposite partner both blocks are used to negotiating with smaller countries and being top dog and um i think he's well able to defend european interests on that and um for the uk negotiations i mean who better than an Irishman to understand and to want to find a good outcome for the EU but also for the uk now he will be operating as part of the wider team with barnier and all that but again the trade dimension is going to be fundamental so i think it's it's very good to have somebody with his background and understanding and five years experience already of working at european level in the job thank you Catherine we have Kevin and also then at the back Kevin um thank you Mary yeah thank you Catherine uh Kevin O'Kelly i'm a member of the institute so um one question on um going back to your experience in dg enlargement the second order is probably be redundant tomorrow um what are your views or what is your reaction to the um the french decision to veto the accession negotiations with the countries of the Balkans and in fact the the whole issue of the extension and enlargement to the Balkan states which i think has been promised over the years and has been slowly withdrawn or the second question could probably be redundant tomorrow but um Dominic Reeves was here a few weeks ago and i wanted to ask him this question from a UK perspective but didn't get the chance on the the unlikely and i know dahi said here yesterday that he's quite sure that Britain will leave within the next month or so but on the chance that they don't how do you think the EU 27 will react to that sort of situation in you know going back and continuing the EU membership um on the enlargement question i i think it's it's very difficult because it's about which tactic will produce better results i think um i i i'm absolutely believe that we will have enlargement to the Balkans um the question is when and on what terms and it is very difficult that with countries that have struggled for years to get to the opening of negotiations uh to maintain that drive if they now don't get what they felt was promised to them on on the other hand um i do think that the population of the EU is more resistant now to wider enlargement given the current experience of Poland, Hungary, Romania to some extent and it is certainly true that the bar that people have to get over in order to become an EU member state has gone up all the time so i think it's a question of how do you manage to maintain the reform momentum in those countries and maintain the promise but also make it clear that um it's not only the economic model that has to change but it's also the legal political and cultural model because we have seen through experience that you can much more quickly change an economic model than you can change um the kind of rule of law and separation of powers model so um i think France is is not wrong to send a signal um that the bar will be much higher and that Europe will not i don't think we will ever have a big bang enlargement again i think countries will join one by one or yeah probably one by one and that the impact will be much less um like when Croatia joined having missed the boat earlier on when Slovenia joined but who really noticed apart from Croatia um that another country had joined we didn't notice it in the same way as we did in 2004 when 10 countries joined so um i think sending the signal that you know it's serious and that you have to change everything and you have to stick with the change is important but i would just be worried if it demotivates and allows in the forces that might work against and i think that's the calculation the the heads of station government are going to have to revisit and on um well if if um if joswinson becomes prime minister which i don't think um and the uk was through evoke article 50 i think there would be um i don't know 48 hours of griping but europe would secretly be thrilled i think i can see no way that the rest of the EU would not want to keep the uk if there was any chance of it now if we have um the hung parliament and um the Tories and the dup you're back together and there's any attempt to renegotiate the agreement again i think there will be a lot of resistance um i can't really i don't think it's going to happen so i can't really think my way through it but i just think um the EU side has done everything to try to accommodate to try to understand what is it the uk wants and i'm not sure that if we have that kind of stalemate outcome by midnight tonight that we will know any better what it is the uk really wants um so i think there would be a lot of huffing and puffing and maybe floundering but a hardling a hardening of the attitude on the side you know but we'll see i think huffing and puffing is an understatement Catherine uh since it's on the record i'm being collapsed gosh yes hi Pierre Emmanuel Dubault ambassador of Belgium Catherine thank you for your kind words about the Belgian art of compromise and then i have a question uh we all of us are familiar with members of member states government sitting for hours in meetings in brosles and then when they're in front of the national media or at home they put the onus or sometimes the blame of the decision on brusles as a whole without even mentioning one of the institutions do you see anything in the new state of play in brusles that could help member states to to have more ownership and take more responsibility for the decisions that they take um the eternal optimist in me hopes that there would be because i think one of the lessons of brexit is if you keep feeding a negative line to your population for 40 years don't be surprised if they end up you know wanting to dam the whole thing um i think there could be innovations i mean i have always found it very strange that as i said prime ministers can spend all night arguing over the words in a one and a half page communique and then they come out and say something completely different if president charlie michelle was able to say there will be one press conference at the end of the european council and i will tell the world what we have decided and you will agree to go home and to place that before your parliaments and maybe then you know when you are home so after 24 hours you can put a national touch on it i think that would really help because then they won't all come out saying we won we won which implies somebody else lost and i mean the whole challenge about the whole european agenda is to try to make sure that nobody loses and that everybody the cake gets bigger you know so that everybody wins but the realist in me thinks that bad habit is a bit too ingrained and i think it will take longer um for for uh but also i think it will take longer for our prime ministers to become fluent in um presenting the european agenda in a positive light and then adding a national flavour rather than um the we won we lost um and that would also require a certain shift in the media too so it's worth keep it's worth fighting for and keeping working on but i'm don't think it's going to happen anytime soon thank you captain eugen thanks mary eugen downs dfa and member of the institute kathryn you spoke about europe both the leadership of the institutions and also the member states now seeking to equip ourselves with more effective tools and decision-making methodologies uh to assert europe's role as a geopolitical actor and to to assert greater strategic autonomy so in this context what's your own view now of where ireland's larger interests lie uh in this vexed question of a potential shift to qualified majority or super qualified majority voting in cfsp thanks um i i uh sat in on a very interesting debate between uh former german diplomats on this about a year ago and one of the people who was participating in the debate was ysgrifisher the former foreign minister and um some of the former diplomats were saying well germany should take the lead and we should move to qualified majority voting we should propose it and support it and ysgrifisher just said and about israel so um everybody has something that makes them think maybe they should keep the unanimity but europe will not be effective and i think certainly ireland should be willing to to move uh to qualified majority on that i don't see huge difficulties except if it was felt that if we move there then we'd have to move on tax as well i mean i think that's the contamination effect people would see but if you take it purely on its merits um if you want europe to be effective we have to be able to respond quickly to world events um and not wait until the last agreement has come in you know because we're always behind then we're always we look like we're foot dragging we're not an actor we're a passive responder but i can see that it will require a lot of thought because of perhaps the crossover effect thank you cabinet and master france quick question on defense you know that my government is uh very keen to uh to put that on that at the priority as a priority in in the u um there's talk unfortunately of the european defense fund getting less money than we hoped we hoped to get 13 billion and now there's a talk of 6 billion would you see the the debate on defense going in in the u in the coming months um well i think we need to have the debate about what are we defending um and i think we need certainly here um i think we would have to have that debate about why should europe have a more active defense policy i think of course if you are up in lithuania or if you were in Greece or something you have a different debate and people see different reasons why europe has to have a capacity to defend itself and not only defend itself but perhaps have a defense capability as part of its foreign policy but i think there is a need for a debate um i think um there is um a more modern agenda to defense and i think a lot of people are seeing the spillover effects between the digital economy and the defense economy so and i think that's the kind of slow and cautious way in which a lot of european countries are moving towards more defense spending so um i think in european um terms it's always important to make a start even if the start is smaller than some might hope but once you make a start it's possible to build on it but i think in not in all countries but in quite a few member states it will be necessary to have a debate and for that debate uh to to have public buy-in and i think the if we do have a two-year conference on the future of europe that is one vehicle where it could be debated and should be debated in um in a way that that leads people to revisit their views or to think differently about it rather than um suddenly having decisions come from the european level but i think there needs to be a lot of buy-in on the ground as well. Thank you Catherine. John McGrane. Thank you very much. Unless somebody is very uh has a really urgent pressing question i think we have to make John. Catherine I'm John McGrane from the British Irish Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Institute's UK working group. You're about to add yet another really important string to your considerable bow when you take on the chair of the citizens assembly on diversity would you comment on what you hope to bring to that personally as chair and what you hope to see as the ultimate impact of that very important grouping. Um well it's not about my views it's going to i am i am the hundredth of the 99 others who will be making up the assembly so i see my role as try uh we have an eroxys resolution that gives us the topics to be discussed and i see my role as shaping the the structure of the assembly trying to bring in the necessary objective expertise i think it's a real opportunity for Ireland to look at where are we now in terms of gender equality um we have come a long way uh so i see the main focus as being uh what are the next obstacles that uh we as a country should tackle if we want to live in a more gender equal society um and we will um i think make a distinction between objective presentations of what is modern Ireland and there's lots of interesting figures about family composition um the numbers of women and men in different areas um it will be it is very important to us to bring um men's voices and men's organizations into the equation because you won't have gender equality without women and men buying in um but i'm very careful um that we are we want to provide information we will um where there are opponents of different views try to ensure all voices are heard but then to make enough time for the citizens having been been informed um and maybe getting some kickoff questions then to sit in round tables and try to work out um what do they see as being the kind of future islands they want to live in and what are the key questions because the purpose is to go back to the iraq this with recommendations that could then be taken up either in constitutional change legal change or policy change and i would hope um if it's like the previous citizens assembly that there's a lot of media interest it won't be quite at the same level of intensity i don't think but i hope there would be media interest so that it would get the country talking as well because um what we saw in the last citizens assemblies was that if you inform people and if you give them time to discuss they'd come out rather ahead of where the conventional wisdom is on thinking on certain things um and it would be interesting um just to to show people um where modern Ireland is what is modern Ireland and then to look at what are the obstacles to continuing on the past that we seem to be on of of certainly wanting greater gender equality so i find the process fascinating and i would be very interested to see where we come out but i have a pain in my head from trying to think how to turn the iraq this resolution into bite-sized sessions of 100 citizens sitting down to discuss it so it's going to be a very interesting journey and we wish you well in that i think the whole process Catherine of citizens assembly has received a lot of admiration abroad and we read i think as the brexit in the aftermath of the brexit referendum um a regret that there had not been something similar in the UK Catherine we want to thank you most sincerely i think you have given us a background which will allow us to judge as the events go forward in in the EU on the basis of what we've heard today i think we have a much better knowledge and we're much better informed and thank you so much i forgot to say that Catherine also helps this institute to a great extent by being a member of the board and the member of the future of the EU 27 if i could draw attention to a couple of publications the colleagues in the research department produce every week on the website a bulletin of EU events that are happening in the in the commission and the council and the parliament and yesterday Dahi and the colleagues in the British Irish group launched a brexit status report which is for 2016 2019 and beyond and the and beyond should attract great attention so thank you most sincerely Catherine for sharing your knowledge