GJIA/The Europe Desk: Talk to us about your work preparing for Brexit within the Irish government and your role specifically in that process. How has that work looked for you throughout the last few years, and how is it shaping up as we move closer towards a likely Brexit deal?
HM: This has been a lengthy process, something that started before the referendum took place. My predecessor Dara Murphy, who was our State Minister for European Affairs, as well as the team highlighted very early on the massive challenges that we as a country would face if there were to be a Brexit, particularly a difficult Brexit that did not look forward to a close relationship with the United Kingdom. Our teams within our government buildings and departments started working very early on to identify what we needed to set down as our priorities. Very early on, we identified protecting the Good Friday Agreement and preventing any kind of a border from emerging, given how the removal of the border plays such a significant part in bringing about peace on our island.
Linked with that is the development of our own economy, which has evolved since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. However, as did our European colleagues, we recognized that we needed to protect citizens’ rights. Irish people living in the United Kingdom, UK citizens living throughout Europe, and indeed if you were Polish, Spanish, or Italian living in the UK, your rights need to be protected. The third priority for the European Union as a whole, then, was to make sure that the current European budget in particular, as well as payment commitments that have been made by the U.K. to various different programs—be it the Erasmus, our students, or agricultural communities through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—were committed to and essentially paid for by the rest of the European Union’s Budget. All of these were discussed and talked through. In Phase One of the negotiations, we identified that Northern Ireland, citizens’ rights, and financial settlement would be the three key areas that had to be resolved before the U.K. left. In other words, this is the only way that we can allow it, in order to start to talk about some other issues.
How did your relationship with Michel Barnier, the Chief Negotiator, contribute to the process? Was it clear from the beginning that Ireland was going to be the priority? Or was it something that you had to work on from the early days of the negotiation? How did that relationship play out both for the government as a whole and for your work on Brexit?
Well, it is something that we had to work on. I came into the process about two and a half years ago, still very early on in the Brexit negotiations. I met with, engaged in, and developed relationships with my European colleagues much quicker than I would have ordinarily. I spent a huge amount of time traveling to member states, traveling to other capital cities, welcoming colleagues to Ireland, traveling to the border with them, and making sure that they understood why this is such a significant issue for us. Michel Barnier did the same; he spent a lot of time working with those on his teams and traveling to Ireland. They met with communities and met with people who would be impacted more than anyone else. In terms of citizens’ rights and financial settlement, those issues were resolved much sooner. I think the reason is that the United Kingdom’s approach to those issues was slightly different than their approach to Northern Ireland. There was a sense that Ireland was overplaying the hands, that the concerns that we had were not as serious as we were portraying them to be, but you have to go back to the very foundation of the European Union and why it was established in the first place. First and foremost, it is a peace project. There are so many of our colleagues who have lived through that and understand this. To jeopardize the peace process in Northern Ireland—one underpinned by an international peace treaty—is not something that anybody is willing to do. I think there are colleagues in the United Kingdom who did not see or understand this in the same way that our European colleagues have.
Part of the future for you is to serve as a Vice President of the European People’s Party (EPP). Tell us a bit about that work in light of how the EPP is part of the European Parliament while you are a politician in Ireland. How does that work play out? How do you see that fitting into the broader global Ireland strategy that you talked about earlier today?
Well, you have to go back to the fact that I am an elected representative. I have a constituency. Since I am directly accountable to them, I have a huge amount of constituency work that I have to undertake. As the Minister for European Affairs, that is obviously a role in which I represent not just my constituency but also our country. Now as one of the ten Vice Presidents of the EPP, I am looking at representation on a much larger scale. There are seventy political parties across [from] at least forty countries represented by the EPP. One of the reasons that made me want to run for this position, firstly, is that we are moving into an even more difficult phase in the Brexit negotiations. I wanted to make sure that Ireland’s voice was still around the table. Some of our lead negotiators include Michel Barnier, Jean-Claude Juncker, Ursula von der Leyen, and Angela Merkel, so we have a very strong family who has been key and instrumental to the Brexit negotiations. We wanted to ensure that we still had that Irish voice—working with Donald Tusk who has been very supportive and instrumental for Ireland in the Brexit negotiations, and who is now President of the EPP.
From a personal point of view, and I suppose as a young woman, we see the change in the dynamic of politics in the European Union. There is a rise in populism. In contrast to many member states, Ireland’s support for the European Union has increased, experiencing the opposite effect to what many thought it would have. However, that is not the case in other member states, where support is fifty to sixty percent. You also have challenges coming down the line that can easily divide us. What I want to see and what we need to see happening in the EEP is a newer approach towards our younger people. We see in the most recent European elections that more younger people voted. However, they did not necessarily look towards the EEP. Why is that? What are our policies? How do we make sure that our policies are those that are important to younger people, those that take into account their concerns? Look at climate or the issue of migration. Having spent the last two years traveling around Ireland and talking about Europe and what it means to them, migration is a concern for young Irish people. They want us to put measures in place to support people from other countries and make sure that they are not drowning in our seas or finding themselves having to flee their own countries because they don’t have the opportunities that we have. Also, how can we create opportunities for young people? Jobs. How can we make sure that they are able to continue to live, to study, to work, to travel, to avail of all these opportunities within the European Union?
Looking at America, as our ambassador refers to in our discussions earlier, we have an increasingly complex relationship with the United States. From an Irish point of view, we have quite a traditional link—something that goes to the very core of who we are in terms of our historical links. We have to be able to use that relationship in a positive way, to try and build the EU-US relationship to ensure that we can work together to overcome the challenges facing us at the moment. I suppose in Ireland, we see ourselves as the stepping stone because of geography but also cultural, linguistic, and historical ties. The fact that we are very similar. I am Irish, I am European, and I also see myself with a very strong affinity to the United States. I think most Irish people see it in that way as well.
In your view, what are the top three policy areas that Ireland should focus on to place itself as an even more important partner of the United States?
I think the obvious one, first, would be trade. Given the fact that the new European Commissioner for Trade is now Phil Hogan, who was Ireland’s Minister for the Environment and from the Fine Gael Party, I think he will have the strong will to prevent what can possibly progress towards a trade war between the European Union and the United States. We don’t want to see that happening. The only people who suffer are businesses and citizens [on] either side of the Atlantic. We want to make sure that we can get around the table, encourage both sides to come around, and try to resolve this because there are much greater challenges that we need to focus on. Climate is something that we need to be working on much more closely together. There are obviously differences among the administrations as to how we approach that. I think Europe, while we only account for nine to ten percent of the world’s emissions, can set a very strong and positive example. Ireland accounts for an even smaller amount within that. However, by setting a good example, putting policies into place, achieving our own targets, and engaging with the issue, I think it is an area that we can work together on and one that we have not before.
Directly linked with the issue of migration is [another] one that we need to work together on. If we look at the continent of Africa by itself, hundreds of millions of young people in the coming years will have nowhere to look towards, both outside and in their own countries. This is because they don’t have the opportunities, functioning democracies in some places, or the economic progress that we see in Europe and the United States. How do we work to ensure that we don’t just support migrants who come to our countries, but also help them to provide opportunities in their own countries? For us, this is a huge focus. From the European and US perspective, we should be able to work together to create opportunities for people in their own countries and try to become a peace broker, given Ireland’s proud tradition of peacekeeping. That is part of the whole process as well.
An important theme in the conference has been America’s renewed role in the peace process. What does the future hold for this? From an Irish point of view, what do you think is the role that the United States can and should play to help build upon the Good Friday Agreement and foster reconciliation on the island of Ireland?
Americans, particularly our friends in Washington, played a huge role in brokering the Good Friday Agreement in the first place twenty-one years ago, particularly within the first year or two. Their role in being outspoken, the ad hoc committee to protect the Good Friday Agreement, [and] the Friends of Ireland caucus have all made it very clear that any kind of an agreement or Brexit deal that in any way damages or disrupts the Good Friday Agreement would have a damaging impact on the future of US-UK relations. That has been extremely helpful. How can the United States help us moving forward? We are in a very difficult position at the moment in that we do not have a functioning executive in Northern Ireland. It is coming up in three years now. This has created huge problems, not least with Brexit, but the uncertainty and difficulty that this creates are also issues. If we are to get some certainty in the next week with the UK elections, if there is a majority government that passes the current withdrawal agreement that is passed by the European Parliament, this allows us to move on towards the next stage.
I think that’s when we need to see a very intensive renewed focus on Northern Ireland with the political parties. We have been engaging with them—the United Kingdom—for two and a half years now, but that has been unsuccessful. I think it has been unsuccessful because of the uncertainty. Political parties are not willing to reach an agreement until they know the direction in which Brexit is moving. I think when we have clarity on Brexit, there is a need to bring everyone around the table again. For the United States to be that broker in the same way that they were twenty-one years ago would be extremely helpful.
To continue to support us in developing programs that encourage and foster reconciliation, of course supporting us financially through the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), and making sure that this funding sustains would be extremely important. This is because if Brexit has highlighted anything, it is that while the peace process has been extremely successful, it is still extremely fragile. It still has children going to different schools and communities living apart. We have seen this year how a vacuum of three years with no executive has allowed a minority of people who do not want peace and who do want to bring back the actions of the past. This has a significant impact. We have a lot to do in the same way that our US friends and colleagues have helped in the past. Their help is going to be needed again in the future.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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Helen McEntee is the Republic of Ireland’s Minister of State for European Affairs. Appointed in 2017, she is responsible for leading Ireland’s engagement with the European Union and coordinating its strategic response to Brexit. She works alongside the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Leo Varadkar, and Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Simon Coveney. Prior to this, Minister McEntee served as Ireland’s Minister for Mental Health and Older People at the Department of Health. She has been a Teachta Dála (Member of Parliament) for the Meath East constituency since 2013. In November 2019, McEntee was elected as Vice President of the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest party in the European Parliament.
