Ireland is taking its turn to facilitate meetings of the EU Council of Ministers until end-December, a chore which rotates around the 27 members, regardless of size, for six months at a time and whose significance has been exaggerated in media coverage.

Ireland’s last presidency was 13 years ago in 2013 and with the reduction in post-Brexit numbers from 28 to 27, the next spin at the wheel will be in 2040, unless there are more departures or, more likely, more accessions.

More members would mean that Ireland’s next rotating presidency would be later in the 2040s

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There is a queue of applicants, including Ukraine and several countries in southeastern Europe, with stirrings of support for membership applications in Iceland and Norway. More members would mean that Ireland’s next rotating presidency would be later in the 2040s, getting on for 20 years distant.

There are rules, not surprisingly, which limit the prerogatives of the rotating presidency, and neither Ireland nor any other small member can constrain the EU’s agenda or tilt decisions in its favour, even temporarily.

The 2009 Lisbon Treaty saw the appointment of a permanent presidency for the European Council, the periodic summits for heads of state and government, currently held by the Portuguese politician Antonio Costa who was appointed for a three-year stint in 2024.

Ireland’s six-month role is confined to chairing meetings of ministers, for example ministers for transport or for agriculture, and liaising with the European Parliament.

There is some uncertainty about the durability of the rotating presidency

The task fell to Cyprus for the second six months of 2025 while Lithuania and Greece will do the honours in 2027.

There is some uncertainty about the durability of the rotating presidency and the current arrangement is guaranteed to last only until the second half of 2030. Several think tanks and some prominent European politicians have criticised the rotation formula, in place since there were only six members back in the 1950s.

There were just nine when Ireland joined in 1973 and the larger members see rotation as unsuited to an EU with 30 or more. They favour a permanent chair and secretariat, not popular with diplomats from the smaller member states, so Ireland’s current presidency could be its last.

Press coverage of the Irish presidency has treated the six-month term as some kind of national achievement, an opportunity for Ireland to ‘lead’ Europe, or at least to fashion outcomes in a favourable direction.

A significant reality check was published on Friday 10 July in the Financial Times, a letter to the editor headed ‘Ireland should recuse itself from key EU negotiations’.

The list of signatories on its own should worry the officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The first was Mariana Mazzucato, a well-known economist at University College London who advised Britain’s outgoing prime minister Keir Starmer and has worked with his successor Andy Burnham. She was joined by 50 other signatories including Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard, author of Surveillance Capitalism, a best-selling critique of Big Tech.

There are several components in the list of European worries about Ireland

The list includes people from around Europe who are influential in the policy debate in continental member states and nervous that the Irish Government has been captured by the American multinationals. In this they reflect a less-than-rosy perception of Ireland amongst many of our 26 EU partners, including the larger ones that count most.

There are several components in the list of European worries about Ireland. Whose side are you on when it comes to friction with the USA? Ireland is one of only four EU countries which has not joined NATO. Two are small islands in the Mediterranean, leaving Ireland and Austria, the latter bound by the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 which finally saw the exit of Soviet troops from the country.

The UK has pointedly re-committed to joint European defence although outside the EU. Both Ireland and Austria, relatively wealthy countries, will be leant on to support European defence financially even if their commitment to neutrality is respected – there are already plans for joint EU borrowing to support the jump in defence spending already under way.

Aughinish Alumina is no more than the most recent irritant

Ireland’s corporation tax bonanza is seen in continental countries as partly at their expense, even though our principal benefactor is the US taxpayer, and there is lingering annoyance at the futile Irish opposition to Mercosur even when the cause was lost. Aughinish Alumina is no more than the most recent irritant.

Ireland became a net contributor to the EU budget as long ago as 2013 and the pressure is on for greater EU revenue as the medium-term financial framework is negotiated in the coming months. Ireland’s apparent budget surplus is being targeted by every sectional interest in Ireland, opposition political parties and backbenchers supposedly on the Government’s side. The list of envious supplicants will doubtless include the EU institutions.

If the surplus turns out to be transient, as many economists fear, the EU contribution will become an extra burden.