 Hello, and welcome to this IIEA webinar. My name is David O'Sullivan. I'm the Director General of the Institute. And I'm absolutely delighted to be joined today by Congressman Brendan Boyle, whom I have known from my time in Washington, who's a member of the House of Representatives, representing Pennsylvania's second congressional district. And he's been generous enough to take time out of his extremely busy schedule to talk to us today. He serves on the House Committee on Ways and Means. He's chairman of the Congressional European Union Caucus and is a member of the Friends of Ireland Caucus. And he's gonna give us some of his thoughts about the future of US-UK and EU-UK relations in the aftermath of some of the tumultuous events we've seen in the last few weeks in the UK. And he may also share with us some thoughts about the possible impact of the US midterm elections on relations for the EU and the UK. The Congressman will speak after his presentation and then we will go to Q&A with our audience. You will be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which I think we're all extremely familiar with at this point in our lives and you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once the Congressman has finished his presentation. And of course you can also participate in the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. And I would remind you that today's presentation and the question and answer are both on the record. Let me now say a few words of introduction of Congressman Brendan Boyle before I give him the floor. Congressman Boyle was born and raised in the Olney neighbourhood of Pennsylvania's second congressional district, which I've had the pleasure of visiting and meeting him there. A first generation American Congressman Boyle's father emigrated from Ireland. The first in his family to attend college, he attended the University of Notre Dame on a scholarship and later graduated from Harvard University's JF Kennedy School of Government. He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2008. He became the first Democrat to represent Pennsylvania's 170th state legislative district. And in 2014, he was sent to Washington to represent his hometown in Congress. And I know how much that means to him as I had the occasion to meet with him there. He's now in his fourth term and he proudly represents there for the second congressional district. Once again, Congressman, thank you so much for taking time out. I know this is a particularly challenging time of year for members of the House of Representatives. So we're extremely grateful. The floor is yours, sir. Well, thank you, David. It's wonderful to be with you again. I'm here from my home office in my district, which covers about one half of the city of Philadelphia, which, you know, well, David, and I have to tell for whoever is listening and on, David O'Sullivan did such a wonderful job representing the entirety of the European Union to the United States when he was based in Washington. Everyone knew him, well respected, well liked. And, you know, I would go on and say a few more nice things, but I know Stavros Lambronaitis would get a little jealous and he would accuse me of being biased in favor of the Irishman. So I will pause there and just say, David, you are very much missed in Washington. Thank you. Yeah, now I'm going to attempt to keep the remarks as brief as possible so we can maximize time for Q&A. I always find that audiences do tend to be more interested in that, but a few brief remarks. So obviously the centrality of the US-European relationship, which now is represented by US, EU and UK relationship is, I think, without question and without argument. And if there was any discussion to be had about that, the events of this year from late February on obviously show just, again, the transatlantic relationship is the backbone of world security and the promotion of our shared values. I have been very active in this space since the beginning of my congressional career now eight years ago, but really I think what has brought attention to these issues at least here in the US and elsewhere is ever since the Brexit vote of June, 2016. It's hard to believe it has now almost been six and a half years that many of us have been attempting to navigate the sometimes choppy waters that were brought about by that election result. Now, to be clear, my position, and it's shared by many of my colleagues on Capitol Hill and both parties, certainly in administration, as well as the previous administration, it is the right of the UK voters, as it is the right of any electorate in any EU nation to decide whether they want to remain a part of the European Union or not. So I respect that. In my view, the European Union is the greatest ongoing peace process in the history of the continent and is a remarkable achievement that I'm proud to support. But again, it is up to the constituents and the citizens of each and every one of those countries as to whether they join or remain. So I respect the decision of the UK voters to make the decision that they did. Our interest in the United States, though, has been to ensure that essentially the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement, which by the way, I still find it enormously frustrating that we can't even find a shared common term for a peace agreement that's perhaps a sign of, you know, other more difficult challenges, but be that as it may, whichever term you prefer, this was a major, major achievement. Certainly of US foreign policy, but not only US foreign policy, London, Dublin, and most of all, the parties and people of Northern Ireland themselves. So our interest in the United States has always been to ensure that the Good Friday Agreement was upheld, preserved, not just the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law. And that certainly extended to the open and seamless border that exists on the island of Ireland today. Indeed, if you were completely politically unaware person and you're a tourist and you're traveling from Donegal to Derry or from Dublin up to Belfast, you would frankly be unaware that you did just travel or pass through a border from one state to another. So that has been our interest. That's not the only way, by the way, in which the Good Friday Agreement could potentially be violated. There are other subtle ways, but that obviously is chief among them. So I have been active as well as a number of my colleagues, especially Speaker Pelosi. We have traveled to Ireland, to Dublin, Belfast, to London, we have met with now. I can't count how many British governments we have met with, including at Ten Downing Street. I was there and walked a portion of the border with Speaker Pelosi and a number of my colleagues to demonstrate how committed we are to this issue. When Bill Clinton wrote his autobiography some years ago now, he talked about this being the most important foreign policy achievement of his presidency and just how much time he devoted to it. And it has been also the work of successive presidential administrations. George W. Bush probably does not get as much credit as he deserves for the amount of time he spent on this issue as well, appointing David Haas as special envoy, a very well-respected diplomat. So that has been the American perspective and that has been the work that we've done, as I said now over the last six and a half years. It is in the best interests of the EU, the US, and especially the UK that we finally put a bow on this issue and enable us to move on to so many other issues that we could be and need to be discussing. Now, let me go specifically to the protocol. I was quiet and I was on a, I can't remember if it was BBC or Channel 4, but when the protocol finally was negotiated and agreed to a couple of years ago, when famously Boris Johnson and then T. Shock Leo Varikar did a walk together. And if you remember the image from that, I was enormously happy. I said that this would open the door and said in that interview, this would certainly eliminate any remaining roadblocks to the discussion of a US UK free trade agreement, which certainly presents possible opportunities, although isn't without its own challenges as any trade agreement certainly is. And that was our position. So it was quite disturbing and shocking that then in the months that followed, we started to hear quite loudly backsliding from our friends in Westminster that perhaps they weren't as committed to the protocol that they led the negotiation of and of course agreed to. And so we have been stuck in this position ever since that point. I am hopeful though, that whatever may happen this week or in the next several weeks in British politics, that finally, whether it's this government or another government that emerges, the British government would recognize it is in their best interests to move on from this to work with the EU, which has been enormously responsible, not perfect, but Mr. Sefkiewicz, the amount of blood, sweat and tears he has poured into this agreement. I think he's probably the greatest expert on Northern Ireland at this point in our lifetime. And I told him no good deed goes unpunished as he is finding out. But I wanna stress it is in all of our interests, but especially the UK's interest that we not unilaterally, but all of us resolve this issue and move forward for two reasons. First, the substance of Northern Ireland itself with a Stormont government that is still not up and running with always the potential for violence because of tensions not very far beneath the surface while I don't think we will ever go back to the bad old days of the 70s and 80s, there is, as we've seen from time to time, still the potential for violence and the potential for others to exploit that and to go to dawn. So it's best that we really close the bottle at the lid on that genie, but then even beyond the substance of Northern Ireland itself and the issue, continuing to endlessly discuss and debate this issue is frankly a luxury we can't afford. We have now war in Europe, one nation state invading another for the first time since World War II. That war between Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine frankly has the potential as we all know to get even worse and to get more dangerous. That is something that we should be focusing on. We also have a worldwide inflation crisis. We have our midterm elections exactly three weeks from today. The most dominant issue in this campaign has been the inflation crisis here in the US. And I know that frankly our inflation rate as high as it is, it's at a 40 year high that pales in comparison to some parts of the world and some parts of Europe. We should be instead discussing and talking about ways that we can work together collaboratively to solve this challenge. And of course there are so many others. So I will pause it there. I'm looking at the clock it looks like I kept within the parameters. There's obviously much more to discuss, but I'm happy to be with you and have the opportunity to talk about these important issues. Thank you.