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‘Reflecting on the future of Europe: A perspective after 40 years of Membership’ Address by President Higgins

University of Zagreb, Croatia, 6th June 2013

President

Rector

Honourable guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

In the words of the Irish language, is mór an áthas orm agus ar mo bhean chéile Sabina bheith anseo libh inniu ar an cuairt speisialta agus an ócáid stairiúil seo.

My wife Sabina and I warmly welcome this opportunity to be here with you all today on this second day of our State visit to Croatia and in this renowned University of Zagreb, which I know to be the oldest university in Croatia and also the oldest university in South East Europe, dating back to the mid 17th Century (1669). I congratulate you on that proud tradition and the extent of your academic reach and accomplishment which are impressive by any measure.

I was impressed in preparing for this address to read that you educate seventy thousand or almost half of all third level students in Croatia, have near to 5,000 academic staff and count for 78% of all PhD graduates at Croatian universities.

I am particularly glad to see that the Irish Studies Programme developed some years ago within the English Department at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences is still very active and in the care of Dr. Aidan O’Malley.

I thank you for honouring me with your presence today and have chosen in my address to look to the future of our Europe through the prism of Croatia’s accession to the European Union, the lessons learned from Ireland’s four decades of membership and the challenges we will face together as partners in the cause of achieving the best future for our citizens.

On 1 July Croatia will join the family of members of the European Union. Ireland, a member of forty years standing and a keen supporter of EU enlargement, is waiting to welcome Croatia with genuine warmth.

The arrival of a new Member is an opportune time to both reflect on the vision of the founders of the Union, their values and hopes, and also on the future of the Union as a part of an ever more interdependent global community; a community with challenges that can only be faced through international co-operation and institutions that are purposeful and effective. The European Union, while drawing on its founding values, and building on its achievements, is an unfinished project. Its relationship to the global community is one which is open to the influence of the cultures and experience of all of its members, founding and new.

The space that is the European Union is one where one can envisage the future, depart from old conflicts, create such an amnesty in memory with old protagonists, as will enable a shared future to be constructed that is of benefit to both and far beyond.

The road that your country has travelled since applying for membership in 2003, has been a long one. For many involved in the process it may, no doubt, have often seemed arduous, perhaps at times unending.

At any event, that journey now ends and we in Ireland hope that the Croatian people, individually and collectively, will benefit from the new prospects for greater stability and prosperity that membership will hopefully confer. We will remain interested in hearing of and share in your achievements and we look forward to co-operating with you in creating an inclusive, sustainable, and above all, cohesive future for the Union whose membership we share.

Your journey to membership has been challenging. Aspiring member states are required to undergo a rigorous process of change; including assurances as to the stability and sustainability of democratic institutions, the rule of law, human rights, as the founding treaties require, as well as a functioning market economy, as the Copenhagen Principles seek. The debate you will participate in now as full members may well be one that concentrates to an even more urgent degree on such forms of social economy as can adequately address the challenges of unemployment, the increasing threat of poverty and issues of inequalities within the Union.

The EU is both, of course, a political union and an economic union.

It is a Union that is not without its problems, some created within the Union, others from outside, from the international consequences of deregulation in ever more speculative markets.

The blight of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment which is at alarming levels in some member states, is the greatest challenge and carries a danger of delegitimising democratic institutions. But let us not forget one fundamental point that has not changed; that at its very heart, this European Union, our Union, is first and foremost a Union of values. Those values were put into the founding treaties as values for the benefit of all citizens. Their evolution must be for the value of all citizens within our common European space.

The founders of the European Union recognized the appalling human cost of war. They saw the value of peaceful co-operation. From working together, they saw that they could build a future on shared values. The values upon which the Union is founded are set out clearly in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. Values such as human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities, are powerful and compelling. Such values are essential to achieving, not only a just society, but a flourishing society, whether that society is confined by national borders or comprises the half a billion people that form the society that is the European Union.

Values provide the bedrock of the Union itself. Irrespective of whatever economic, political or environmental challenges present themselves, they must remain at the heart of that Union if it is to remain true to the vision and aspirations of its founding fathers; and for it to provide a space for regional adjustment and for ridding Europe of the old enmities that dominated much of the last century, enmities both between and within nations and peoples, including in my own country.

As societies emerge from conflict, dealing with the painful legacies of the past is never easy – especially where those memories are contested. None of those involved are properly required to affect a bogus amnesia as to such conflicts, only to consider the value of putting oneself in the place of the other so as to achieve, as it were, an amnesty of narratives, so as to be able to live in peace and flourish together in a shared future.

We look to brighter days for Europe as the family of nations becomes 28. We also look to Croatia to offer guidance and assistance to its Balkan neighbours with the accession process. Croatia has already provided that lead with its translation of the European acquis. Making that translation available for neighbouring applicants has made a significant gesture to regional co-operation and, in the process, has helped all who favour enlargement across the Union, including Ireland which has been a consistent supporter of enlargement.

The Croatia that will join the European Union as a full member on 1 July has changed in many ways over the past ten years and it is set to change again in the years ahead. Real and startling change at international level has taken place over the last decade and continues at a rapid pace.

In the world of business, Croatian companies are now better prepared for full participation in the internal market with direct access to over 500 million people, offering potential for more jobs and better living standards. Croatian citizens will also enjoy greater possibilities to study and work in the EU. I am delighted that Ireland is playing its part as the Irish Government has committed to allow full access for Croatian people to our labour market.

In addition to these domestic benefits, I believe your successful completion of accession negotiations will also send broader signals to the whole of the Western Balkans region – namely, that the EU delivers on its commitments undertaken in relation to enlargement. Within the Union itself, the message is that its enlargement policy remains an effective and transformative tool in promoting greater political stability and creating new economic opportunities for the world. Croatian accession also affirms that the EU is a formidable political force based on values, as well as being a competitive and cohesive entity in a globalised age.

Croatia was faced with the task of building a sovereign state. Holding the aspiration of achieving full European Union membership, that state had to be built on the common values that the Union represents. I have no doubt that aspiring towards full membership of the EU was a force for good in that regard; providing a fixed point on the horizon to guide your efforts; and offering advice and support in reaching your goals; goals that you have chosen as a benefit to your own people now and into the future.

Croatia has walked the path towards European Union membership for the past decade and has been deeply engaged with the Union through the accession process. Yet it is worth reflecting on the question as to why public support for EU membership is apparently still tentative here? Is it that Croatian citizens feel removed from the process; unable to fully accept that EU membership can be of benefit to their lives, and the futures of their children?

These are legitimate questions at any end point of such a significant transition. The decision to share sovereignty comes soon after its acquisition. This pursuit of understanding a complex process of pooled sovereignty and a perception of blocks to full participation in decision-making is not confined to Croation citizens.

In this the European Year of Citizens, we are all challenged by the knowledge that so many people throughout member states feel more and more disconnected, feel that they are not participating in the decision-making of an economic kind that shapes and governs our lives.

Speculative markets, even rating agencies, appear at times to be more frequently quoted as the source of ultimate, even enforced decision-making as to economic options for the future, rather than the elected parliaments. It is to parliaments citizens look for the expression of the debate and the articulation of the choice of options which might be made available in public policy. It is something that must give us all cause for concern as leaders.

When I recently spoke in the European Parliament, I warned of the threat of an unconscious drift to disharmony, of a loss of social cohesion, of a recurrence of racism and an increasing deficit of democratic accountability. These are issues that we cannot afford to ignore or to hide from, however uncomfortable acknowledging them might be. We have a duty to confront them if we are to stay true to the values on which the unity of Europe has been built. We have to achieve a discourse that puts the values of the Union, its cohesive ambition, at the top of our mutual agenda.

In the face of a deep economic challenge, we need to hold fast to the idea of a human Europe – one that esteems the personal and celebrates the human spirit and achievement – not a dry technocratic order with a very limited moral and intellectual base. We need a Europe that, in responding to economic challenges, is conscious of the social consequences of its actions. We need a Europe that shows solidarity with the most vulnerable among us – that throws real energy and determination behind efforts to create the sustainable growth and jobs so vital to their well-being. That is what the Irish Presidency of the Council during our six months’ term is working for.

If we are to do this we must draw on all the inherited wisdom of our past and our imaginative versions of a future flourishing life together. To achieve this we need inter-disciplinary scholarship and a pluralism of policies.

We need to remember always that we do not exist in the abstract, theoretical world of speculative markets and computer algorithms that determine value and apportion wealth. Rather, we live in the real world of flesh and blood people, with real needs and real contributions to make. The Union, after all, draws its legitimacy from the support of its people. As I said in the European Parliament, we cannot allow a crisis in one paradigm of economics to lead to a crisis of political legitimacy. We must believe in our intellectual capacities to bring into being a suite of proposals, macro and micro in their economic scope, that will serve as effective instruments for our political and social purposes. We need a pluralism of policies based on all of our disciplines in the inherited tradition and the imaginative capacity of all our Europeans.

I repeat again that our Union is fundamentally founded on enduring values – personal dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights. These values must give us strength now as we face some of the most testing times. They are the yardsticks against which we must measure everything we do, and they are values by which we must chart our course in our dealings with the peoples of our neighbourhood and the wider world.

Croatians and their neighbours rightly see themselves as Europeans from ancient times, even if new members of the European Union; they are new members who share these values and seek to uphold them. The question remains then as to why there is an apparent lack of enthusiasm, in some sectors, to join a Union founded on these values? It is not for me to hypothesise as to the motivation of the Croatian people or any of its neighbours. I can however offer some reflections drawn from the experience of Ireland and those of our existing EU partners.

One concern perhaps held by many new entrants is the fear that EU membership may actually result in a worsening of their economic situation – the fear that Croatians will be paying EU prices while living on Croatian salaries. There are also concerns about cuts in subsidies and in state support. Many other European nations have shared similar worries prior to joining the EU. However, experience tells us that the biggest beneficiaries of the last enlargement of the Union were the 12 new Member States. The accession process boosted economic growth in the new Member States by an average of 1.75% per year from 2000 to 2008. Living standards rose; incomes increased; unemployment declined.

The Union of course is not immune from global changes. Neither is there a single version of the political context in which economic paradigms are chosen. As the pendulum has swung in political choices, so has the economic policy swung from modified Keynesianism to lightly regulated speculative markets. With elections all over Europe it can swing again in another direction. That is democracy. After all, in economic theory change also is taking place. Neo-institutionalists are now successfully challenging the neo-liberals and the ordo-liberals within the neo-classical school.

As to Ireland – that my country has witnessed a transformation over the past 40 years is undeniable. In 1973, Irish GDP was 60% of the European average. Then we were, far and away, the poorest of the then nine Member States. Now, notwithstanding our current economic difficulties, our GDP remains well above the European average.

Then, we were a country of structural emigration with a workforce of less than one million. Now, there are a little under two million at work, largely the result of women entering the labour force in real numbers.

In 1973, our foreign trade was largely with our nearest neighbour – 55% of our exports went to the UK. Now, even though our trade with Britain has grown many-fold as a proportion, that figure is under 17%, and our external trade is much larger, more diversified and balanced, with exports accounting for over €90 billion, leading our economic recovery.

Then our agricultural sector was underdeveloped and not modernised. Now it is at the cutting-edge and a major feature in our economic recovery. The Common Agriculture Policy was and remains vital to Europe and to Ireland. The Single Market of 500 million people has been opened to our businesses and we are stronger negotiating the terms of our trade beyond the EU’s borders when we do so as part of the world’s largest trading bloc.

Of particular interest in this academic setting may be third level education in Ireland. In 1973, only 4% of Irish students went on to third level education. Last year’s figures show that 48% of the population aged 25-34 in Ireland had third level education – the highest proportion of that age cohort in the EU.

And if I may enlarge slightly on that theme, recognizing our academic surroundings, today Ireland’s universities and the Dublin Institute of Technology are all ranked in the top 5% globally. The International Student Barometer ranks Ireland ahead of all other English-speaking countries and Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands for international student satisfaction.

Our capital city, Dublin, is ranked as one of the 10 best places in the world to be a student and we are one of the safest countries.

Most importantly of all, an Irish education provides students with flexible employment skills. In 2010, a European survey found that Irish-educated graduates were the most sought-after by global employers.

These aspects of education, social environment, flexibility, friendliness, humour are often mentioned in academic work as key influencing factors on decisions regarding foreign investment and the location of industry. Along with our highly educated workforce, membership of the Union has made Ireland a more attractive place for foreign direct investment because of participation in an internal market of some 500 million people.

This flow of foreign direct investment from outside of the EU has been a significant factor in our economic development as a country. EU structural funding was also of great benefit; it allowed us to invest in our infrastructure which was an important step in modernising our economy and a very practical consideration in getting our exports to market.

If our economy has been transformed by EU membership, so also has our society. When we joined the European Union, women did not earn the same pay as their male counterparts and women working in the Irish public service who married were forced to resign from their posts. Now rights to equality and opportunity in the workplace are protected for all.

Irish workers have better conditions of employment, better protections, whether in occupational safety or in the length of working hours. These improved conditions include, for example, providing Maternity leave and Parental leave. The quality of life for the Irish people has changed for the better. We are healthier – we can expect to live longer – and we enjoy a better environment, not least because of decisions we have taken together in Europe. We are better travelled, with all the enrichment of culture that it brings. We have welcomed those who have travelled to our shores and we benefit from their cultural influences. Correspondingly, we have increasingly introduced others to our culture and heritage, including our literature, music, theatre, film, national games, dance.

In Ireland in recent years we have had to come to terms with a sharp reversal in our economic fortunes. International consequences that flowed from the relaxation of the conditions of the Glass Steagall Act, and the flood of derivatives into the global financial system led to a banking crisis. The pressure of a combination of banking and sovereign debt forced harsh consequences on Ireland.

Unemployment grew dramatically and we again witness too many of our young people leaving our shores in search of opportunity elsewhere. Those who now leave Ireland are, in the main, the highly creative, educated young people that will have a real contribution to make to their country of destination. Our wish is to stay connected to them and welcome back as many as wish to come home at some point in the future.

This experience of diaspora is, of course, something we share with Croatia. Diasporic communities can also be a great resource for their homelands. In recent years, we have invested considerable effort in developing networks of contact and outreach across the global Irish communities. The results have been very encouraging and have benefitted both the Irish communities abroad, who feel more connected and cherished, and the State, which has a valuable overseas resource on which it can draw.

The news from the EU itself overall has been dominated by narratives of high unemployment, under-performing economies and a currency zone under pressure. To address that, I repeat, we need a scholarship that enables a pluralism of policies, with micro and macro flexibility to address unemployment and stimulate sustainable growth.

In Ireland we took the view at a very early stage that the only path to recovery, both for us nationally and for Europe as a whole, lay through a stabilisation of the currency and by making it clear that our commitment to the Euro was irreversible. At the same time, we recognised the need for both greater solidarity and deeper integration within the Union and this is the path that has been followed. After all, cohesion as a concept shares parity of esteem with competitiveness in our European discourse – for example, at the time of the debate on the Lisbon Treaty or the proposals for a European Constitution.

Together with our European partners and others, we have in the short term sought to strengthen the rules underpinning the Euro and our ability to enforce them. We are working towards integration in banking – both in how banks are supervised and in how the consequences of their failure will be handled in the future.

Stability, while it is important, is not enough. Stability must be the platform for what comes next. Europe must now intensify its focus on growth and employment creation. As I mentioned earlier, too many Europeans are without jobs, and too many young Europeans are without prospects and opportunity. Ireland’s sponsorship of a Youth Guarantee was adopted in the Union and will be helpful in addressing unemployment among the young. This needs to be accompanied across the Union by macro measures which could, for example, create more credit streams for the development of the real economy – including small, medium and new enterprises.

As academics we are also challenged to address the definition of ‘employment’ and ‘work’. The challenge may be to recognize, in the economic sense, so much of what is obviously valuable work but not recognized in the formal labour markets.

That is why, while we still have important work to do in moving ahead beyond financial reform, including banking union, Ireland has identified its Presidency priorities as Stability, Jobs and Growth.

In Europe we must accept the challenge of promoting sustainable growth and job creation not only in the short-term, but also in the medium and longer term. The recent report of the European Commission Employment and Social Situation is a description of what the European Union would wish to be in 2020 but it is in the current political realm and the public discourse now that the options must be debated and chosen.

In Ireland we have learnt from historical experience that both our economy and our society have prospered since we opened up to the world. Today, we are the second most globalised economy in the world, and while we have our share of problems, particularly unemployment, we retain the capacity to create a prosperous future as a trading nation.

Ireland’s membership of an EU that has weathered the storms of recent years and begun to emerge from economic crisis remains a critical platform for achieving fairness and prosperity for all our people. Similarly, we in Ireland hope that Croatia’s membership of the EU will enhance your capacity to address current economic challenges and enhance the prospects for all Croatian people.

Let us agree then that the European Union is not just an Economic Union. When discussing and assessing the challenges facing the Union, and the benefits that membership can bring, it is important to keep the bigger picture in view. After all, the European Union is the most successful peace process the world has ever seen. The EU’s enlargement policy is one of its most successful policies; tangibly contributing to the over-arching political aims and ambitions of the Union. Robert Schuman’s vision was of a supra-national community that would share strategic resources in order to ‘make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible’ and to build a lasting peace in Europe.

Achievements in that respect were recognized last year when the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize goes to whoever “shall have done the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”. The European Union has created a level of cooperation between countries that is without parallel – a cooperation that has allowed the EU to become a successful force for democratisation and peace in the world today.

It also strives to be a force for positive action in relation to many major global issues – life or death issues for so much of the world’s populations – including in the areas of hunger and food security, human rights, nutrition, disease eradication, climate change, poverty and development. In terms of tackling these global challenges, the members of the European Union working together can influence objectives and set priorities in the relevant multilateral agencies.

I come from a country where civil war politics dominated for decades after the end of our struggle for independence in the 1920s. This was ultimately to the detriment of the country. Past grievances were continually played out as energy and effort were distracted from the task of securing a more prosperous future. Failure to deal with the legacy of the past contributed to the violent conflict that erupted in Northern Ireland in the 1960’s and continued for decades.

It also affected our relations with our nearest neighbour. We were challenged, as were our neighbours, to confront the legacies of history in a way that respected what we might call an ethics of memory – allowing for an acknowledgement of the conflicting allegiances and identities and the consequent loss of lives that should not have occurred.

Facing up to the legacies of the past, and finding ways to build a shared future, are critical to ensuring stability and lasting peace.

While Croatia is the first of the Western Balkans states to accede, the others have all been given a European perspective. For Ireland, EU membership has allowed us, and our neighbours, to place our history in a wider context. Ireland and Great Britain’s common membership of a European Union that regarded itself as a space of co-operation and cohesiveness, to be achieved in a peaceful future, inevitably altered our mutual perspectives of and attitudes to each other.

It is very apt that both Ireland and the UK joined the EEC, as it then was, on the same date. Within the Union we have worked together as equals. The relationship between our countries has matured and strengthened into a partnership based on recognition and pursuit of mostly shared, but occasionally different, objectives with mutual respect and deep friendship.

It is sometimes difficult to fully appreciate how far we have come.

It was less than 100 years ago that Ireland won its independence from Britain, after a War of Independence, and previous decades and centuries of often deep antagonism. As our ever closer relations in recent times attest, the ghosts of those past conflicts have been laid to rest.

I do not believe that this could have been achieved as easily in the absence of our common membership of the Union. Since our accession, the UK and Ireland have worked closely together within the EU on matters of mutual interest across a vast range of policy areas. I should mention also that this has included matters related to Northern Ireland and I want to acknowledge the key role played by the Union in facilitating and practically supporting the Peace Process on the island of Ireland.

I firmly believe that this national experience of ours offers a striking example of how the heavy burdens of history, which can seem unbearable on whom they most directly weigh, can be transcended through interaction in a wider context and framework. This speaks to the importance both of regional cooperation in the Balkans and of the shared destiny and perspective of all countries in the region within the European Union. The European Union, which embraces diversity, can provide a platform on which to build mature, strong relationships that both acknowledge the past, while recognizing the rich promise of a shared future.

In conclusion, let me recall again what the EU can mean and should mean. A generous vision of Europe is one that can contribute most, at home and abroad. Europe has been and must remain a beacon of peace and democracy. It must encourage and it must lead – speaking with a unified voice on issues such as climate change, recognizing that those least contributing to our shared problem should not be asked to pay the highest price. Europe is already the largest donor in the fight against hunger and in efforts to scale up nutrition. This is something on which we can build.

How we deal with such global challenges is a major test of the future and of the authority and credibility of the EU in the present. One we cannot fail. Despite the economic challenges we as Member States individually face, we must reaffirm the generous idealism that lies at the heart of the collective European vision, placing ourselves at the service of our citizens and those who strive daily for peace, justice and human rights throughout the world.

The moral voice of the EU will be all the stronger after the 1st of July when Croatia becomes our new partner. I look forward to that partnership and congratulate Croatia on becoming the 28th member of the Union.

Thank you.