Irish, EU & international politics & economics
By Ruairí Creaney. Irish unity is on the agenda. Across Ireland, it is being discussed in the media, at dinner tables and workplaces on a daily basis. While the endless calamity of a Brexit led by hard-right Tories, and the possibility of a hard border being imposed on our country […]
By Damien Thomson. On Tuesday 16 April, Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the Environment Committee in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, calling for “Cathedral Thinking” on climate action – a reference to the huge and immediate mobilisation of empathy, panic and money at the sight of the Notre […]
By Emma Clancy. In his open letter to Europeans last month, French President Emmanuel Macron revealed that he feared Europe “has become a soulless market” in the eyes of its citizens. Twenty years after the introduction of the common currency, and more than a decade after the global financial crisis, […]
By Andy Storey. Trawling through the website of the Irish Freedom Party (IFP) – the group calling for Irish exit (Irexit) from the European Union (EU) – is a strange experience. Amidst the xenophobia and often crude and puerile attacks on left-wingers, there are moments where those same left-wingers might […]
By Emma Clancy. Barely a word has been said in the Irish media to date about an extremely important new proposal from the European Union (EU) Commission – to develop a so-called ‘secondary market’ for non-performing loans. If implemented, this package of policies will directly cause an increase in evictions […]
By Cillian Doyle. Consider this scenario: the year is 2020, Britain has left the European Union and signed a free trade deal with the United States, and the Irish poultry industry now faces stiff competition in its chief export market from highly subsidised US producers. Now ask yourself, how much […]
By Verónica Grondona. Examples of massive corporate tax avoidance by multinational technology giants active in the digital economy have been widely covered in the media, prompting outrage among people across the world. So how do they get away with it? Google, Facebook, Amazon and Uber are all large enough companies […]
By Vicky Cann. Do you know why the banks got their way after the financial crisis, while you shouldered the impacts of austerity? Or why our food will still be exposed to the dangerous pesticide glyphosate in the coming years? Or why the EU’s climate targets are much weaker than […]
By Emma Clancy. This week the European Parliament voted to ratify the EU-Singapore free trade agreement, and voted separately to ratify the EU-Singapore Investment Protection Agreement. The investment agreement includes an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which is why it was voted on separately. Irish MEPs from Fine Gael were […]
Guest post by Dr John Falzon. “From ancient Greece, we have a name for the intrusion of the Excluded into the socio-political space: democracy.” – Slavoj Zizek She wasn’t asking for somewhere to live. She was just asking for enough money to buy some breakfast. But everyone just kept walking […]