EU and US citizens have very different expectations of government, former Taoiseach and EU ambassador to the US, John Bruton said today.
Mr Bruton made the comments in an address to 60 US politicians from the State Legislative Leadership Foundation, a body that provides educational programmes for leaders of US state legislatures, which took place in the Dáil chamber today.
Mr Bruton said that with the United States's history of rebellion, its citizens are “often suspicious of government and feel that individual liberty should be kept to a maximum.” He said in the EU however, citizens were more likely to ask “what is the government going to do about this?”
Attendees at the event, who were welcomed by Ceann Comhairle Séamus Kirk, included representatives from over 20 US states as well as EU and Irish government members.
Responding to a question about Iraq, he said if Americans are “impatient with the EU’s contribution to sort out Iraq by military force, it’s not to do with a particular issue, it’s not a question of what’s right or wrong, it’s just that Europe has less confidence in the capacity military force to achieve things.”
He said there was a need to “demonstrate to those who feel we have interfered that we want to co-operate, that we have no ambitions to resource ourselves at their expense”.
Asked for his views on US immigration laws, Mr Bruton said “if you know you can’t go home, then you won’t go home; you’ll never bring back the ideas or experience that could regenerate your country.”
Describing EU-US relations, Mr Bruton said President Bush was “very attentive to the relationship with the EU”. However, he said he was “disappointed” that President Obama did not attend the joint summit scheduled for Madrid in May.
Prof John Fitzgerald of the ESRI, who also addressed the group, said: “In the past visitors came to discover Ireland’s elixir of eternal growth”, but he said now they come to look at how we are dealing with crisis.
Asked how the Irish Government introduced taxes and cuts when other countries found it difficult, he said: “The fact that we thought we’d go bust if we didn’t deal with the problem ourselves meant that we did deal with the problem.”
He said: “We didn’t think that the German and French cavalry would ride to our rescue. We felt the only people who could dig us out was us.”
Prof Fitzgerald told the group that Ireland’s position differs from Spain and Greece because our balance of payments will make a surplus this year. While predicting that Ireland would be “off the ECB life support” by 2013, he said it wasn’t commitments made to the EU that would force us to get the economy in shape but “fear of bond market vigilantes”.
He also cautioned: “Until we have a banking system that will lend to Irish businesses, we can’t recover.”
Former president of the Bundesbank Ernst Welteke, who also addressed the group, said the G20 leaders "need to agree to a global regulation of banking standards to avoid a future crisis”.
