The Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed an ongoing contradiction in the attitude of the Irish electorate to the European Union. On the one hand there is overwhelming support in this country for the strongest possible EU response to Russia yet some of our most prominent MEPs made no secret of their past support for Vladimir Putin.
The most recent Eurobarometer survey carried out across the 27 member states shows that the vast majority of Irish citizens support the EU action against Russia. In fact they are significantly happier with the EU’s strong response to the invasion than people in many other EU countries.
People across the EU were asked if they approved or disapproved of the different actions taken by the EU to support Ukraine since the start of the war such as sanctions against the Russian government and financial, military or humanitarian support.
The survey found that the response of Irish voters was unambiguous with 91 per cent of people approving of the EU response. This was far higher than the EU average with the attitude in some countries distinctly lukewarm about the level of support to Ukraine being offered by the EU.
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Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Daly and Wallace have expressed strong criticism of the approach taken by the EU and Nato
The EU’s support for Ukraine is more popular in Ireland, the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and Portugal, where it is approved by more than 90 per cent of the population. On the other end of the spectrum, less than half of respondents in Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Cyprus said they approved of the EU’s actions towards Ukraine.
The Irish attitude to Ukraine tallies with the positive image the people of this country have of the EU in general. A total of 70 per cent of people in Ireland told the pollsters the EU conjured up a positive image for them compared with a considerably lower average response of 47 per cent across the union.
All of this begs the question as to why the Irish electorate has consistently elected a significant minority of MEPs who are strongly critical of the EU and some of them have consistently supported Russia, China, Iran and other actors on the international stage who are utterly opposed to the values that underpin the union.
In the last European election three years ago the parties that make up the current Government won nine seats with Fine Gael taking five and Fianna Fáil and the Greens two each. All three parties are members of mainstream political groupings in the European Parliament.
The other four MEPs, socialists Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, Sinn Féin’s Chris MacManus and Independent Luke “Ming” Flanagan are members of the GUE/NGL group in the Parliament made up of former communists, socialists and a variety of Eurosceptics.
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Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Daly and Wallace have expressed strong criticism of the approach taken by the EU and Nato. While they have moderated their earlier support for Putin, Wallace engaged in further controversy in recent months by expressing support for the Iranian government and condemning the forces opposed to it.
The Nice and Lisbon treaties were rejected by a majority of voters on the entirely spurious grounds that they would undermine the constitutional ban on abortion and the country’s military neutrality
Tánaiste Micheál Martin recently expressed the view that it was important not to take for granted the pro-EU consensus shared by the democratic centre parties of government and the majority of the population.
“The fact is that Ireland has one of the strongest anti-EU factions in its membership of the European Parliament – voices who [are] absolutely consistent in their willingness to attack everything the union does and to blame it for anything negative in the world. I think it is long past time for the public sphere in Ireland to acknowledge that there are important choices to be made in relation to our position in Europe and that there are very clear differences between parties who are instinctively positive towards the union and those who have spent 50 years attacking it,” he said.
The Tánaiste’s warning is appropriate as it is not just in the elections to the European Parliament that an ambivalent attitude to the EU and what it stands for is manifested by the Irish electorate.
It should not be forgotten that twice in the first decade of this century voters rejected treaties that were designed to improve the workings of the EU and speed up its decision-making process. The Nice and Lisbon treaties were rejected by a majority of voters on the entirely spurious grounds that they would undermine the constitutional ban on abortion and the country’s military neutrality.
A rerun of both referendums was required, with protocols spelling out what was not in them, causing considerable international embarrassment and raising serious questions about the level of political debate in this country. They also raised the question of whether our attachment to the EU is actually as strong as it appears.
Our half-century of EU membership was marked at the beginning of the year with considerable media coverage extolling the benefits membership has brought. However, referendum outcomes and recent European Parliament election results demonstrate that our mainstream parties and the media need to do much more to educate the public about the policy choices pursued by our Government and MEPs in Brussels and Strasbourg.