Ireland's Foreign Relations in 2019

Abstract

Author’s e-mail: donnacha.obeachain@dcu.ie Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 31 (2020), 255–294 doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/ISIA.2020.31.16 INTRODUCTION This article examines aspects of Ireland’s foreign relations in 2019. It begins with a synopsis of elections to the European Parliament, which took place in May, assessing the broad European trends and how the elections played out in Ireland. We then examine the Brexit negotiations process, particularly the impact of Boris Johnson’s rise to the British premiership. The article also assesses the significance of the Westminster election vote in Northern Ireland, which many considered a proxy for a referendum on Irish unity and which produced for the first time a greater number of nationalist than unionist MPs. The review then appraises relations between Scotland and Ireland as a bilateral review was launched to examine how the two countries might cooperate over the succeeding five years. Relations between Ireland and Russia are then surveyed, particularly Tánaiste Simon Coveney’s visit to Russia, the first bilateral meeting between foreign ministers since Ireland chaired the OSCE in 2012 and coming one year after both countries expelled each other’s diplomats as a result of the poisoning of military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Subsequent sections are devoted to relations with Armenia and Turkey while the visits of Donald Trump and Mike Pence provide opportunities to reflect on the rapidly changing interactions between Ireland and the United States. Before concluding, the article contains a brief section devoted to those significant figures in Irish and international affairs who died during the year. ELECTIONS TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT On 24 May 2019 Ireland, along with twenty other EU member states, voted in elections to the European Parliament, the ninth such occasion since a direct vote Ireland’s Foreign Relations in 2019 Donnacha Ó Beacháin School of Law and Government, Dublin City University 256 Irish Studies in International Affairs to the assembly was introduced in 1979.1 Different visions of Europe competed in this election. After the Second World War, catch-all parties had helped move Europe from the extremes to the centre and created strong welfare states. Globalisation had eroded the guarantees and expectations of what the state could provide and produced a large cohort of economically vulnerable citizens susceptible to those offering easy solutions. In recent years populists had taken votes from the left and the right. UKIP and the Brexit Party in Britain were examples of this phenomenon, as they succeeded in attracting supporters from both the Conservatives and Labour. To accommodate the Brexit vote, the European Parliament voted in February 2018 to decrease the number of MEPs from 751 to 705 on the basis that the UK would withdraw from the EU as planned on 29 March 2019, two years after triggering Article 50. However, as the British government had sought an extension of Article 50 to 31 October 2019 the allocation of seats between the member states and the total number of MEPs remained as it had been in 2014. Ireland’s allocated number of seats in the European Parliament would increase from 11 to 13 but two of these MEPs would be able to take their seats only after Britain had left the EU. Despite being an election to one parliament, there remained major differences in how each member state conducted its affairs. In ten member states, including Ireland, candidates had to be at least twenty-one but for the majority (fifteen) the minimum age was eighteen. In Romania the requirement was 23, while in Greece and Italy one needed to have reached the relatively elderly age of twenty-five before being eligible to run. Ireland was one of four members (Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic being the others) that did not allow citizens to vote outside the state while in Estonia one could e-vote from­ anywhere in the world. Most member states voted for the EU parliament as single entities but five mapped out regional constituencies. Belgium had three constituencies, defined along language lines. The others were all geographical: thirteen in Poland, twelve in Britain, five in Italy and three in Ireland. Given that...