Bobby McDonagh, Former Ambassador to the EU and UK,  has developed a series of blogs, to explain what the European Union is and how it works. The publication of this blog series by the IIEA will be phased over 12 weeks, each dealing with one of the 12 Objects. Find out more here. 

The first object that I have chosen to explain the European Union is a mirror. Europe is largely about identity and who we are.

The EU, of its very nature, reflects the complexity of identity.  It illustrates perfectly that the reality of who we are, as individuals, is more rich and subtle than today’s simplistic populists and right-wing nationalists would have us believe.

The mirror I have chosen as the first symbol of Europe is the mirror that allows us to see and understand who we are.

The European Union is founded on a simple truth, namely that it is possible to be comfortable with more than a single identity and to be proud of several identities at once. The philosophical bedrock of Europe is that there is no contradiction between being, say, Irish and European; the same applies equally, of course, to the citizens of each of the EU’s 27 Member States. On the contrary, Europe is part of Ireland’s identity and Ireland is part of Europe’s identity. We are enriched rather than diminished when we recognize that truth and act on the basis of it.

The reality of identity is usually complex. Almost all of us as individuals have rich composite identities, as we may discover especially when we explore our ancestry. A simple and clear example of that was a former French Ambassador to Ireland who told me that his two grandfathers had fought in the First World War, one in French uniform and the other in German.

The politics of identity, on the other hand, are often savagely simple. When it comes to conflict and confrontation, the underlying complexities are swept aside. Once we choose to man the political barricades, we find ourselves obliged to wear our chosen uniform and wave our chosen flag.

The European continent has been devastated many times over by crude nationalism. We know all too well on the island of Ireland the tragedy to which the oversimplification of identity can lead.

It is no coincidence that the European Union was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, to create a new community “among peoples long divided by bloody conflicts”, as the original European treaty put it. Nor is it a coincidence, on our own island, that membership of the EU helped to create a wider shared European context in which the nationalist and unionist traditions in Northern Ireland could begin to sit more comfortably together.

Photo taken as the Northern Ireland Executive took office in 2007. (Left to Right) First Minister of Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley; the President of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso; and the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness.

How Identity Works in the European Union

The most important point to understand about how identity works in EU negotiations is that recognition of the necessary European dimension does not diminish the pursuit of national interests. Rather it enhances it. All Member State negotiators must recognize that their national identity includes a European identity and that their real national interests include an important, sometimes vital, European dimension.

During my many years as an Irish negotiator in the EU, never once did I, or any of my colleagues from across the Irish civil service, find ourselves pursuing  some vague “European” interest rather than Irish interests. Our sole aim was to advance Irish interests, as the representatives of other Member States pursued their national interests.

Rather the ongoing challenge was to understand and pursue Irish interests in their full and therefore true context. All of us around the negotiating table started out with narrowly-defined national negotiating objectives on each issue, but we also had a profound shared interest in reaching balanced, necessarily imperfect, compromises in which no Member State could achieve all of its narrowly-defined national objectives but which worked to the overall benefit of all. It isn’t possible to achieve narrow national objectives by clinging to them uncompromisingly. If that were the case, all Member States would do the same and nobody would ever budge. Nothing would ever be agreed.

Ireland has many specific interests in the EU which it rightly pursues vigorously, as do other Member States. However, Ireland’s most profound European interest, like that of our partners, in a ferociously competitive and increasingly threatening world, is in a European Union that can reach agreement, that functions effectively for the common good and that can assert itself collectively in the wider world.   

I will explain the different EU institutions in relation to other “Objects” in later blogs. However, it would be useful to note at this stage a certain subtle but important distinction. Whereas the representatives of Member States in the Council pursue national interests while taking strong account of the European dimension, the supranational European Commission and European Parliament primarily pursue European interests while taking strong account of national perspectives, interests and sensitivities.

The EU is not limited to two layers of identity, national and European. Europe also validates and supports regional identities. It is entirely possible, even the norm, for someone to be comfortable not only with, say, German and European identity, but at the same time with Bavarian identity.

Many regions, both within Member States and across national borders, have been strongly supported by the European Union’s Regional and Cohesion Funds and by its other regional policies. Many of the less wealthy regions in Europe have often found recognition and practical support easier to obtain from Brussels than from their national capitals. The EU’s specific prioritisation of cross border and interregional development has proved its importance  both on this island and across the continent.

Ireland has been one of the Member States to benefit most from the EU’s regional policies. EU support, through the Regional Fund, the Social Fund, the Agricultural Guidance Fund and the Cohesion Fund, was a major factor in enabling Ireland to move from being one of the poorest Member States a few decades ago, with amongst the largest per capita EU receipts,  to being one of the richest Member States today. That Ireland’s share of EU regional funding has dwindled, and that Ireland has become a net contributor to the EU’s budget, represents not something to regret but rather a remarkable success to be celebrated.

Prime Minister Theresa May told the British Conservative Party Conference in 2016, shortly after the Brexit referendum that “if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” This controversial pronouncement represented an explicit rejection of the important reality, the fundamental European principle, that it is possible to be comfortable with, and to celebrate, more than a single identity.  May’s comment was understandably condemned by the half of the United Kingdom’s population which continued to value its additional European identity. The depth of their anger reflected their awareness that nothing could better sum up the foolishness of the advocates of Brexit than May’s stunted vision of human identity.   

Flags have a particular capacity to touch people’s hearts and to stir up emotions. We in Ireland, like many others, are rightly and deeply proud of our national flag. It is sad, here and elsewhere, that it is often those who do most to dishonour their country - by their extremism, xenophobia or racism - who are the first to wave their national flags in a parody of patriotism.

It is no small thing  that the Irish flag and the European flag fly side by side in Ireland outside public buildings and at official events, as similarly national and European flags fly alongside each other in the 26 other Member States. Our Tricolour is not diminished in the slightest by appearing alongside the European flag.  On the contrary, our sense of Irishness is enriched by the symbolic confirmation that Ireland, as Robert Emmet would have wished, has taken its place “among the nations of the earth”.

It is also important, in a world in which many political leaders proclaim the sole and dangerous aim of making their own nation “great again”, that the twenty-seven national flags the EU Member States, including the Irish flag, fly so comfortably beside each other in a European context. 

The citizens of each European country owe primary allegiance to their national flag, in Ireland’s case to the Tricolour. However, we also owe appropriate allegiance to Europe’s flag.

In the “mirror” in which we see and understand ourselves as a nation, the Green White and Orange flag and the Blue flag with its twelve yellow stars fly comfortably side by side.