Europe Day: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-07 ============================================================ Sharon Keogan (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel I am pleased to be speaking on Europe Day today, which is technically not until Saturday, but it is something I am glad we are marking in this Chamber. While I am sure everyone has different opinions on the specifics of what the European Union is doing right or wrong - I certainly have plenty - I think I speak for all when I say that the European project is ultimately a good thing. To bring the nations of our Continent together in co-ordination and co-operation in order to ensure lasting peace, mutual prosperity and even our own independence and security; all of this is a worthy goal. Even if we were totally disbanded in the morning, we would have to reassemble the EU tomorrow evening. Trucks would still need to be shipped from Warsaw to Madrid. Transfers would still be made from Sofia to Dublin and some supranational European body would have to exist to organise and oversee all of that. That is what Robert Schuman first saw when he made his declaration in 1950. In the spirit of Europe Day, I have some criticisms of the current situation, direction and state of the EU because what is more European than to constructively criticise something in order to make it better? We debated the International Protection Bill and the migration pact in this Chamber a few weeks ago. I, and several of my colleagues, raised the point that we are seeing an alarming level of centralisation and competence-creep coming out of Brussels these days. We see alarmingly little being done by our own or other European national governments to counter this. This is underpinned in turn by a certain argument that more EU centralisation is better and because we are in a more unstable world where big powers like India, China or Russia are on the rise, the only chance we have is to federalise Europe. This is very simplistic thinking. If more centralised power is always unquestionably better, then North Korea would be paradise and the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War. On top of this, we are really seeing a worrying calibre of leadership being put in charge of this increasingly centralised Europe. It would be one thing if our national power was being eroded but was in turn being taken over by the unquestionably best of the best of our Continent. Instead, if we look at the EU's top three positions, there are former ministers and prime ministers whose parties have collapsed in popularity among their own people and who all have made an exit from politics due to scandals. As Commission Vice President and High Representative of the EU foreign service, former Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, was effectively forced out of the latter role by a scandal involving her husband's business ties to Russia and a loan she reportedly made to her husband's business while Prime Minister. President of the European Council and former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa had to resign due to corruption scandals in his party, not least including the alleged involvement of his chief of staff in nepotism concessions over lithium mines and data centres. Last but not least, we have the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who left her previous role as Germany's defence minister amidst a raft of scandals that included overpaid consultants, improper procurement, ministry phones that had been wiped before investigators could access them and a military that had been left in tatters. To be frank, we have not seen much different now that she is in the Commission, where she is alleged to have organised our €35 billion Covid vaccination procurement deal over text messages with the Pfizer CEO, has refused to be questioned by the European Parliament and will not show the text messages, despite the EU court ruling against her. I get that scandals happen in politics, but three out of three of the EU's top leadership shows a pattern and a worrying one at that. In light of all this, we cannot simply shrug our shoulders. The European Union is not some distant or uncomfortable force. It is a political system in which Ireland has both a voice and a vote. We have the means, through this House and our Government, to demand higher standards, greater transparency and stronger accountability at the very top of the EU institutions. If the EU project is to keep the trust of its citizens, it must respect the balance between Brussels and the nation states. It must be led by people with full openness to scrutiny. Therefore, I call on everyone to engage in a greater debate over how we can better structure the EU with more respect for national governments. I call on the Government to use every avenue available to us to push for reform, strengthen oversight and insist that leadership within the EU is held to the highest possible standard and a better EU can be established because that is what the European project deserves. That is what our citizens deserve. I wish the Minister of State well over the next six months as he takes on the role here in Ireland. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-07