Gaps between the European Union’s advocacy of ambitious policy goals and its ability to implement them matter greatly in a world changed from market integration through globalisation to one dominated by power politics and growing security threats. Such incoherence risks losing the public support vital to EU success, according to influential EU policy experts.

Ireland’s six-month EU presidency sits squarely astride these contradictory imperatives. Securing an EU budget deal for 2028-2034 is a priority made more difficult by the political contest between states supporting more resources for the EU and those who prefer a relatively smaller financial commitment. Ireland’s commitment to more market-driven integration along the lines of the 2024 Draghi and Letta reports now has to confront the reality of a more troubled and fragmented world.

Ireland’s existing economic and political model – based on an open transatlantic economy, multilateralism and global human rights – is sorely tested in this new world environment. It needs renewal based on far more critical public debate about its durability, realism and appropriateness. Can the model be renewed through alternative pathways involving Canada, a UK newly convergent with the EU and a pragmatically enlarged and re-empowered internal EU market? Is that pathway made more difficult by the emerging........

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