Michael McGrath was in Brussels this week to lobby for a serious portfolio in the next European Commission but his prospects have been undermined by the decision of the four Fianna Fáil MEPs to vote against the reappointment of Ursula von der Leyen.
For sheer political stupidity it would be hard to beat the behaviour of the Fianna Fáil four – Billy Kelleher, Barry Andrews, Barry Cowen and Cynthia Ní Mhurchú – for publicly announcing in advance of the secret ballot in the European Parliament last week that they were going to vote against von der Leyen’s bid to win a second term as commission president.
The MEPs went against the decision of their own Liberal group in the parliament to back von der Leyen. They also defied the wishes of Taoiseach Simon Harris and their own party leader, Micheál Martin, who had pleaded with them to support a second term for the outgoing president.
In advance of the contest it appeared that von der Leyen might struggle to win the vote. That prompted her to undertake an intensive campaign across the political spectrum in the European Parliament, and she also contacted political leaders in national capitals to drum up support.
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As members of the same political family as von der Leyen the four Fine Gael MEPs were onside from the beginning but the question was whether the Fianna Fáil TDs would back her in what appeared to be a very tight contest.
Von der Leyen phoned Tánaiste Micheál Martin, who then tried to persuade his MEPs to back down from their publicly-declared commitments to oppose her. As it was a secret ballot they could, at the very least, have stayed quiet but instead they doubled down on their public commitment to oppose her.
In the event she won by a comfortable margin thanks to the support of the Greens, who were not part of the formal coalition backing her re-election. Unlike the Fianna Fáil MEPs, the Greens had the political nous to get onside with the winner to ensure that their priorities would remain top of the EU political agenda.
The ostensible reason for the stance adopted by the Fianna Fáil MEPs was that they took exception to von der Leyen’s supportive comments about Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas massacre last October. Aside from the fact that she subsequently made a number of more balanced statements about the war in Gaza, the bottom line was that voting against the commission president could make no meaningful difference to the situation in the Middle East. However, it had the potential to damage Irish national interests.
Another important consideration was that von der Leyen went out of her way to be supportive of Ireland during the interminable negotiations on the Protocol. After the UK formally left the EU, almost all the member states were happy that Brexit was done and they had little or no interest in Ireland’s ongoing problems about the implementation of the Protocol.
With the backing of von der Leyen, Slovak commissioner Maros Sefcovic put a huge effort into the negotiations. The outcome was a revised deal, the Windsor Framework, which was unveiled theatrically by von der Leyen and Rishi Sunak in February of last year and paved the way for the restoration of Stormont 12 months later.
The thanks she received for her trouble was that the Fianna Fáil four and another six of Ireland’s 14 MEPs voted against her reappointment. The notion that she will forgive and forget and go out of her way to give McGrath a senior position beggars belief given that so many Irish MEPs voted against her.
Fianna Fáil’s Cynthia Ní Mhurchú announced cheerfully after the vote that she had congratulated von der Leyen on her win and put in a good word for McGrath. The idea that the steely German would be impressed by that kind of plámás reveals a breathtaking combination of naivety and arrogance which will have done McGrath more harm than good.
The shame for McGrath is that he could have been a contender for a serious post. Von der Leyen and her team were anxious to get experienced and motivated politicians for the commission rather than end-of-career figures or national embarrassments who need to be shunted off to Brussels and McGrath fitted the bill. Given his record as minister for finance and public expenditure McGrath was in a potentially strong position in spite of the fact that the Government in Dublin failed to comply with the president’s request to send two names, one of them a woman.
Von der Leyen might have been prepared to overlook the absence of a woman candidate from Ireland but with all the big states now jostling for an economic portfolio, it is another reason to give the Irish nominee a bottom-of-the-barrel job. And McGrath’s problems might not even end there. Once the commission team is assembled and the portfolios handed out, each commissioner will face a grilling from the relevant parliamentary committees in the autumn. MEPs have a habit of flexing their muscles and rejecting one or two commissioners, forcing the countries in question to send someone else. McGrath will need to tread warily.