
Growing call from EU states to review EU trade deal with Israel
A proposal to review the
European Union
's trade agreement with
Israel
in light of its blockade stopping humanitarian aid getting into
Gaza
is believed to have the support of up to 10 EU states.
France, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and several other EU states support the EU reviewing its relationship with Israel, in response to growing concerns about the worsening conditions in Gaza.
Humanitarian organisations and aid agencies have warned of the dire consequences of what has been a near three-month blockade, where Israel has prevented food and other supplies getting into the Gaza Strip, sparking fears of a possible famine.
For weeks aid agencies have been warning that the enclave of more than two million Palestinians is on the verge of having food, fuel and medical supplies run out.
READ MORE
The blocking of vital supplies getting into Gaza,
which Taoiseach Micheál Martin said amounted to a war crime
, has seen renewed impetus within the EU to exert political pressure on Israel.
Foreign ministers from the 27 EU states are expected to discuss ordering a review into the EU's agreement that governs the bloc's relations with Israel, known as the 'association agreement'.
It is understood about 10 of the 27 national capitals have indicated their support for a review, to determine if Israel has breached a clause in the agreement to uphold human rights.
The governments of Ireland and Spain first called for a review of the EU's trade agreement with Israel in February 2024. At the time the proposal gained little traction.
In a letter earlier this month, Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp retabled the proposal to review the EU-Israel deal, given the aid blockade was 'exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation' in Gaza.
It is understood Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign affairs chief who chairs the meeting, will gauge support for the proposal when ministers meet in Brussels on Tuesday.
Dutch diplomats have been attempting to convince other EU states to support the proposal. Officials hope if a majority of states – at least 14 of the 27 – back the call for a review, the European Commission will be pressured to act. The commission, the EU's executive arm that proposes laws and sets trade policy, has to date resisted calls to review the association agreement.
Some around the table are expected to continue to row in behind Israel. Germany, Austria, Hungary and Czechia have been the most vocal supporters of Israel within the EU.
More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed during the bombardment and invasion of Gaza by Israel's military, according to Hamas-run health authorities. The Israeli assault followed the October 7th, 2023 attacks by Hamas militants which killed 1,200 people, according to Israelis tallies.
Under growing international pressure, Israeli prime minister
Binyamin Netanyahu
said this week a basic amount of aid would be allowed into Gaza.
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Government had to choose tenants over investors
After months of deliberation the Government seems to have finally settled on a rent control strategy . It is something of a dog's dinner and can best be seen as an attempt to reconcile two things that are fundamentally irreconcilable. The first is the need to reassure the increasing number of people in rented accommodation that their already sky-high rents are not going to be driven even higher by avaricious landlords capitalising on a severe housing shortage . The second is creating the conditions that will entice international institutional investors into the property market, which requires convincing them that they will be able to set and keep rents at a level where they can earn the sort of market-beating returns that would make investing in Ireland an attractive option relative to the myriad of other global opportunities. READ MORE Much of the emphasis is understandably being put on the measures intended to protect existing tenants, which include the extension of rent controls across the State. Rent increases will be subject to a limit – inflation or 2 per cent – and landlords will be severely restricted in their ability to reset rents to market levels when a tenancy ends. [ Why is the housing crisis Ireland's most enduring failure? Opens in new window ] There will, however, be a distinction drawn between small and large landlords. Those with fewer than three properties will be able to evict tenants and presumably put up rents. There is less emphasis or detail on the measures intended to encourage institutional investment. New builds will not be subject to rental caps and landlords will be able to increase rent to match inflation. The industry is understood to be disappointed. The Government will argue with some justification that it has done its best to balance various competing interests and that a compromise was inevitable. Doing nothing was not an option. The Government is right about that. But how this fudge will work in practice is anyone's guess and the potential for unintended consequences is high. One thing is for sure. Rents will go up. A combination of upward pressure from small landlords at the bottom and a pull from large institutional investors at the top will ensure that rents in the middle also rise. The details of the plan have not been published but the apparent decision to focus more on protecting tenants than encouraging investors may prove the right one. The inherent contradictions in trying to coax private capital seeking high returns into investing in a sector in which policy is to keep rents down is probably insurmountable. The most likely outcome is that the new measures will prove sufficient to swing the investment case for some projects already in the pipeline and a few more top-end developments will be built for rent than might have been otherwise. Every little helps of course The Government would appear to have resisted the entreaties of property developers and their backers as represented by lobby group Irish Institutional Property, which holds that 60 per cent of the funding needed to address the housing shortage must come from international investors. The State and the domestic banks will make up the rest, they believe. The fundamental problem with this argument is that we are approaching the limit in terms of people who can pay the sort of rent that international investors will be seeking without enduring significant financial pain, which in turn will have a detrimental knock-on effect for the economy. Most people are already paying rents in excess of what economists deem sustainable, which is between 20 and 35 per cent of net income. The average Irish person earns about €44,000 a year and the average rent is €1,600 a month or about €20,000 a year. The political pressure that has led to implementation of nationwide rent controls and other pro-tenant measures confirms that we are at the limits of what can be tolerated by society in terms of housing costs. Any international investor looking at investing in housing in Ireland as a long-term bet that will return more than 10 per cent a year would really want to get their head around that before committing. The ones that get in early might do okay, but the risk premium they will want is only going to push up the rent they charge. The reality is that a property market as badly broken as our one does not represent an appetising low-risk investment opportunity. The system – based around widespread home ownership and the accumulation of private wealth – worked reasonably well for a long time but now it doesn't. The reasons are a combination of factors beyond the State's control and the ball being dropped in areas that are its responsibility, such as planning and infrastructure. Housing and rental accommodation in particular are increasingly taking on the characteristics of a public good along the lines of health and education in the minds of voters: something the State regulates, provides and supports on a not-for-profit basis. Nationwide rent controls are just further evidence of this. Health and education are not services that the State looks to fund via hedge funds. They are funded by the exchequer and ultimately in the sovereign debt markets. That is where the Government should be looking for investment. It may now have no choice.


Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Many Northern nationalists doubt Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's commitment to Irish unity
Northern nationalists felt betrayed by Dublin 100 years ago, after the collapse of the Boundary Commission in December 1925. It left the border with Northern Ireland unchanged despite their hopes that it would make unification inevitable. Many of their descendants still feel that way. Most Irish nationalists believed the commission, set up as part of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, would see much of the territory of the six counties of the Northern Ireland state that was established in May 1921 being transferred to the fledging Irish Free State. The shifting of Tyrone, Fermanagh, south Armagh, south Down (including Newry) and Derry City with their Catholic majorities to the Free State, it was hoped, would leave the remainder of Northern Ireland an unviable rump. Irish unity would then be inevitable. Events, however, did not turn out as nationalists hoped, for a catalogue of reasons, including the ambiguous wording of Article 12 in the Treaty that set up the commission and allowed for multiple interpretations. READ MORE From the off, the newly-created, inexperienced Free State government was politically and diplomatically outmanoeuvring by both London and the new authorities in Stormont. And, throughout, Northern nationalists were naive. In the end, the commission ended in rancour when it proposed that only slight rectifications should be made to the original boundary lines drawn up in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, leaving the Border as it was then and remains today. Even the simple things were not handled properly by the Irish side. The commission was chaired by a British-appointed head, not by an independent chairperson, while there were lengthy delays in setting the body up. Following a largely accurate forecast of the expected final boundary recommendations published by the diehard unionist Morning Post newspaper on November 7th, 1925, WT Cosgrave 's Free State government insisted the report as a whole should be shelved. The newspaper's report had rightly claimed that the commission would propose only minimal transfers from Northern Ireland to the Free State. Crucially, the Free State would lose parts of east Donegal and north Monaghan. The furore led the commission's Free State representative Eoin MacNeill to resign from the role. Once it was revealed, however, that he had appeared to consent to the changes, or had not substantially objected, he was forced to resign as the Free State's minister for education. In a panic, Cosgrave rushed over to London to have the Boundary Commission report buried, and after a week of intense negotiations involving the Free State, British and Northern Irish governments, a tripartite agreement was signed on December 3rd, 1925. Under the agreement, Article 12 of the Treaty, which set up the commission, was revoked and Northern Ireland's boundary remained as it had been defined under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Meanwhile, Article 5, which had created a £150,000,000 bill that the fledgling State was to pay to London, was waived, with the Free State becoming liable for malicious damage incurred during the War of Independence. Under the treaty, 40 parliamentarians, 20 each from Stormont and Dublin, were to have looked after subjects of common concern, including railways, fisheries and contagious diseases of animals. Extra powers could have been added, as required. However, these were scrapped too. While the Council of Ireland was considered an 'irritant' to the Northern Ireland government, it was the Free State government that readily abandoned it. In lieu of it, the Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig 'suggested joint meetings of the two governments in Ireland 'at an early date' so that both governments could deal with charges brought by one against the other'. Cosgrave agreed but they never met again. In fact, the next meeting between the heads of both Irish governments was 40 years later, when Seán Lemass met Terence O'Neill in 1965. Instead of engaging with Ulster unionists with a view to ending or limiting partition, Irish governments of different hues preferred to preach about its evils without offering anything like practical or tangible policies that could deal with the issue. It was only from the 1960s that Irish governments promoted the merits of North-South bodies, such as the Council of Ireland, as well as bodies that exist today such as the Shared Island initiative. The fallout from the Boundary Commission has left a bitter taste in the mouths of Northern nationalists ever since 1925. Their trust in British governments (always threadbare) evaporated completely, but, perhaps more importantly, their trust in the South suffered an irrevocable blow, due to the Free State government's abandonment of the North for financial benefits. That mistrust still resonates today. Many Northern nationalists believe there is a partitionist mindset in the South and that the 'establishment' political parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are not interested in Irish unity, despite rhetoric to the contrary. There is contempt for the geo-blocking of programmes in the North by RTÉ (particularly sporting ones), the provision of weather information from Met Éireann for just the 26 counties, the naming of the 26 county state as Ireland under the Constitution, and the prohibition of citizens in the North from voting in Irish presidential elections. [ Geography and destiny – Ronan McGreevy on the Boundary Commission Opens in new window ] As prospects of a Border poll have entered public discourse since the acceptance of the Belfast Agreement of 1998, focus has shifted to an ambiguous clause in that agreement: Schedule 1 (2), which states that the British secretary of state for Northern Ireland 'shall exercise the power' to call a Border poll 'if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland'. As with the Boundary Commission, many Northern nationalists believe this clause leaves the power in the hands of the British government. Some fear that this could prevent a Border poll from occurring at all. While there appears to be a clear avenue to Irish unity now through the Belfast Agreement, people are still very wary that the way the commission imploded in 1925 could happen again through what they would see as underhand and devious methods over calling a Border poll. Cormac Moore is a historian, currently serving as historian-in-residence with Dublin City Council. His latest book, The Root of All Evil, about the Boundary Commission, is published by Irish Academic Press


Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Arts Council ‘deeply regrets' Minister's decision on director's contract
The Arts Council board has said it 'deeply regrets' that Minister for Arts Patrick O'Donovan refused to wait until the results of an external review into the spending of €6.75 million on an abandoned IT system before deciding not to appoint director Maureen Kennelly for a further five-year term. The council said the board 'are in unanimous agreement that it was essential that the decision on the director's contract be deferred until the external review is concluded and the findings are available, and had requested this. This request was subsequent to a business case that had been made by the board in December 2024, which recommended a renewal for the director for a further five years.' However, the Department of Arts confirmed that Mr O'Donovan 'would consider a proposal from the council for one further appointment of the director for up to nine months', said the council. The council was told 'there is no mechanism to defer a decision on the director's contract'. READ MORE 'The board of the Arts Council deeply regrets this situation,' it said. The council and department confirmed that, contrary to previous briefings by Government sources to The Irish Times, Ms Kennelly was not offered an extension of her existing contract, but rather a new contract of nine months duration only. Ms Kennelly did not accept the offer of a new nine-month contract. In February, the Government announced a full review into the operations of the council after hearing €6.75 million was spent on a proposed new IT system that has since been abandoned. Mr O'Donovan said an initial report commissioned by his department last year found the council was not prepared for the scale of the IT project and did not assign adequate resources to deliver it. Why Europe needs to realise the truth about America – with Helen Thompson Listen | 42:33 Tánaiste Simon Harris said he was 'furious' upon learning the news and said the matter raised serious questions about the governance and controls within the agency. Council representatives – including Ms Kennelly and chairwoman Maura McGrath – are likely to be questioned on the controversy today when they appear at the Oireachtas Arts and Media committee. Ms Kennelly will tell the committee that she 'deeply' regrets the loss of public funds. She will also tell the committee the council has 'commenced legal proceedings against two contractors and are in the pre-action stage in relation to two others. We are vigorously pursuing our cases to reduce the loss to the taxpayer.' However, it is not clear if the department supports the pursuit of potentially expensive legal actions.