The Berlaymont Schism: How Ireland Ended Up on the Wrong Side of EU Fragmentation
Comitology and Liberal Europe’s Politburo
Does the name Magnus Brunner mean anything to you?
How about Teresa Ribera?
Whilst unlikely to be recognised by scarcely 2% of even educated Irish voters on Grafton Street, the above luminaries, along with twenty-five others, are poised to shortly pick up the mantle as de facto Irish legislators from their perch at the European Commission headquarters.
The College of Commissioners, the EU's driving technocratic body, is shuffling the deck this month, and while Irish commentators are square-eyed focusing on the boreens and four-seaters in the homeland, consequential politics is being played in the cafes and political consultancies of Brussels.
To recap, you'd be forgiven for not caring, the College (27 strong in total) is the effective Cabinet of the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU with legislative supremacy over anything your TD does at the level of the Oireachtas.
More than we might admit, the Directives formulated by key penpushers in downtown Brussels shape determine the conduct of Irish governments, regardless of which parish pump suit ends up on the winning side of a ministerial desk after November 29th.
More importantly, the Commission is where liberalism is entrenching itself institutionally as right-wing populists assail national parliaments across Europe. Even when populists get into power they are running against rock-hard resistance in the form of a Commission more than willing to weaponise fiscal dependencies, trade, and even markets against fledgling nationalist states.
Earlier this month, I witnessed this process first hand during the parliamentary screenings of Commission candidates.
From commanding the EU's floundering green transition, setting terms of engagement with Silicon Valley, to rearming the bloc as a whole, the European Commission is the primary legislative mover and shaker between Lisbon and Warsaw.
More politburo than popular democracy, the previous College saw left-wing ideologues such as Swedish open border fanatic Ylva Johansson rig the deck on migration control behind her desk in Brussels — Bretton's censorship dirty war against Musk is equally demonstrative.
Each member state is granted a portfolio depending on their obedience to the Commission's Christian Democrat President, Ursula von der Leyen. Ireland’s noticeably downgraded role likely owes to our errant stance on Gaza.
Hungary has been dropped to legislating for dog food after a rather longsighted Fidesz laid the foundations for Georgia, Serbia, and even Armenia to enter the EU through their control of the enlargement portfolio since 2019. Suffice to say, the Hungarian-induced preparation for their entry has abided Orbanist, rather than Europhilic, lines.
Our designated man in Brussels for the next five years is the Rebel County’s “finest”, Michael McGrath, who takes up the lapdog role of enforcing the rule of law within the bloc and weaponising funding to those who oppose the liberal centre on the key contested question of Ukraine, migration, and social policy.
With his assignment, you glean the sense that Dublin is seen as trustworthy, albeit unimportant dependant - irrespective of the instrumentalisation of the border during the Brexit era. McGrath is expected to hound member states such as Hungary or Slovakia that rebel against the status quo.
Roaming the European Parliament cements that genuine power operates and resides amongst a select few with the forethought and genuine patience to master Brussel’s technocracy - the glass laden megaliths, irrespective of their formal appellations, which plaster the city’s Euro-bubble merely serve as a domain within which the real power-brokers machinate.
In one room the Estonian nominee for the foreign policy role was outlining the necessity of catalysing the finalisation of the Mercosur free trade agreement, without regard to Fine Gael commitments to domestic beef farmers at home. Said nominee before proceeded to hammer home the need to suspend the right of member states to veto legislation.
A proposal that will undoubtedly not make it onto the doorsteps in Rathfarnham or Cobh during the election rat-race.
Across the atrium, a menopausal-looking Spanish communist was hedging bets on economic protectionism against Beijing, while the Austrian nominee later that evening was juggling questions regarding the EU’s answer to the Rwanda Plan.
In contrast, Leinster House is a mere county council office in the face of such technocratic prowess, wherein meagre MEP input cannot obfuscate the genuine post-democratic nature of the entire EU project.
Traditionally, these Commissioner hearings throw up as many surprises as their politburo equivalents back in the USSR, but this time there was a slight divergence from the script — a sign that even in the disconnected backrooms of Brussels populism is indeed having an impact.
The Centre Returns
With a fire lit under them by populist advances across the board, the sleeping giant of EU politics, the centrist EPP faction, began turning its back on the green-left political partners which it had sided with since the effective formation of the Parliament itself.
Consisting of fossilised Christian Democratic parties, including our very own Fine Gael to the all-important German CDU, the EPP are the centrist machine which keeps the lights running in Brussels.
Pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, and fanatically pro-whatever keeps the EU ticking, the EPP made the reasonable calculation that the era of siding with green and ultra-left parties was over; it was now feasible to side with right-wingers on day-to-day decisions in the European Parliament.
While it may not sound like much, the fallout of the decision has essentially brought the European Parliament and Commission appointment process to a standstill and bodes badly for the liberal consensus in Brussels going forward.
A decade of cordoning off right-wingers in the EU Parliament had given left and green parties ludicrous control of the legislative calendar in Brussels, culminating in edicts banning new petrol engines from 2035 onwards.
The changing of the guard caused by the last European election was enough, however slight, to change the dial and break this status quo ante.
Committees on foreign policy to economics which had a thumping left-liberal-centrist supermajority are now blown wide open — this vacillation was spearheaded by the CDU, which shortly faces elections in Germany. It is transparent that Europe’s centre-right is pivoting to populism.
While not agreeing on much, a centre-right MEP can now vote on the side with an AfDer or Le Pennite, so shattered is the once mighty cordon sanitare.
With the waning of left-liberal hegemony in the EU, Ireland, having embraced progressivism, may find itself on the wrong side of a more fragmented, less liberal EU.
Paddy-last: Has Ireland's Golden Era in Brussels Come to an End?
Ireland (26) has a variety of very natural advantages which it has leveraged since its accession in the 1970s.
Anglophone and Atlantic orientated, and lacking bad blood with the Continentals, the post-Brexit period conferred to Ireland unprecedented strategic importance.
As tempting as it is to rebuke the underlying Europhilia of the Windsor Framework, the call for an Irish Sea Border was a defining success for Irish foreign policy, achieved via our ability to bring European interests on our side and by the internationalisation of the border issue.
Irish MEPs have succeeded by adapting domestic clientelism to EU almsgiving with green jersey politics, which means MEPs act on national lines across ideological lines — something the European Parliament was set up expressly to counter.
The punctuation of the left-liberal consensus in Ireland leaves our influence in Brussels heavily undermined. We are now effectively locked out of the new axis of power in the European Parliament, with Fine Gael regarded as ill-suited to the EPP due to their left-wing stances and pro-Palestine posturing.
Indeed, much beyond the parliamentary chamber bodes badly for Irish interests in Europe over the coming decade.
The decline of Germany and France, the departure of the UK, and war in the East means the bloc is shifting in power from West to East, mutating into a defensive and dirgist protectionist union.
Jack Lynch signed his name to, and Irish voters reaffirmed their backing (with some reluctances), to a Franco-German trading bloc instead of a militarised NATO-Slavic defensive union at loggerheads with Silicon Valley.
Contrary to any opinion, NATO and the EU are permanently intertwined following the end of Swedish and Finnish neutrality, with Ireland even pulling away from its UN duties in favour of European rapid response battlegroups in the face of the new multipolar era.
Whatever about platitudes given on the plinth this election time, the EU is looking to put Europeans back in uniform in the face of Trumpian isolation as Poland and the post-Soviet world prepare for impending military confrontation against Russia.
The hackneyed issue of tax policy looks set to be on the agenda following the Apple ruling, with impending EU attempts to centralise foreign policy decisions likely to rattle the cage of any Palestinian supporter at home who has not been paying attention to the punishment of Hungary for their Ukraine stance.
Since the pummelling of Greece during the eurozone crisis by means of a politicised ECB, Ireland has not sensed the growth in centralised EU power mainly because we were shooting in the same direction during the Brexit years.
Crisis after crisis has built up the defence mechanism of the Eurocrat project, with Brussels in a now-or-never pursuit to complete federalisation lest it be cast into the shadows by the multipolar world forever.
Sometime between the Maastricht Treaty and the Ukraine War, Ireland hit the figurative Europhile threshold, triggering diminishing returns for its European relationship, with only an atrophied and spineless national parliament to fall back on as the Euro-machine prepares to show its teeth.
The tectonics are moving on the Continent after a 30 year hiatus, and our sluggish national politics, combined with our inability to realise the nature of the federalist project we have gotten into, means we may well fall in line once the guns start blaring across Europe.