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TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY has travelled to Brussels for a special meeting of the European Council today.
Joining him is Dara Murphy, TD, Minister of State for European Affairs.
The main focus of the meeting between the EU leaders will be the election of the new President of the European Council and the appointing of the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is tipped to replace Herman Van Rompuy as President, while Federica Mogherini is a favourite to take over the foreign policy role.
A longer-shot is Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, probably best known for her selfie with Obama.
Ukraine
But the Heads of State and Government will also be meeting on external relations issues, including developments in Ukraine, the Middle East and the ebola virus in West Africa.
They are meeting for talks as accusations rain down on the Kremlin that Russian combat troops are fighting inside Ukraine, with fears growing that Europe may soon face a full-scale war on its eastern borders.
It has only been five weeks since EU states toughened their sanctions against Russia, but the EU is under pressure to once again up the stakes.
“Such behaviour cannot remain without consequences,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday amid the reports by NATO that “well over” a thousand Russian soldiers were waging war in Ukraine.
British Prime Minister David Cameron urged Russia to take a different path and if it did not, “then she should be in no doubt that there will be further consequences.”
Ukraine’s embattled government has openly asked the EU to help militarily, and the plea, which has virtually no chance of being satisfied, will be relayed to the summit by Romanian President Traian Basescu.
Last minute guest
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is a last-minute guest at today’s talks, invited to share the latest developments after one-on-one meetings with Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
Juncker calls for more women
The EU is effectively led by a trio and filling out the group is the already named Jean-Claude Juncker.
The former Luxemburg premier will replace Barroso and is in the process of filling posts for the next Commission with nominees provided by each member state.
Juncker’s main problem is the lack of women. Barroso’s outgoing Commission has nine women and so far governments have sent Juncker only four, including Mogherini.
Lawmakers in European parliament, who must ratify his choices, have warned they would oppose a college of European commissioners with fewer women than today.
- Additional reporting - © AFP, 2014
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A precedence has been set with this. Well meaning as it is. Will not other survivors of state ineffectiveness want something similar.
@AnthonyK: At a risk of sounding controversial, I think this should have been dealt with under some form of compensation or redress rather than some blanket thing.
That it doesn’t preclude future settlements is an odd thing.
However, I’m more onboard with the Gov actually doing something rather than nothing for those people it’s completely failed.
maybe hold tony hoolahan to account? no, no, that would be too much to expect of this snide government.
@Niall English: What specifically should he be held to account for?
Are they going to do this for all individuals who have been failed by the state (and how is that defined)? There’s plenty of people who have suffered, including Stardust victims, people who can’t get or afford homes.
The amount of misinformation out there around what happened with cervical check is mind-blowing. The way some people talk you’d swear that the testing service actually gave people cancer.
@Jason Memail: Quite the opposite, it didn’t tell them that they had cancer so they didn’t receive the treatment they needed, in a nutshell
@Brian D’Arcy: That’s absolutely false, and part of the misinformation that’s common on this subject. 1) These women received tests from cervical check which told them that cancer cells were not present. 2) These women subsequently developed cancer, and a review of their original tests was carried out. 3) The reviews showed that the earlier tests missed what may have been cancerous cells, with these reviews aided by the fact that the reviewers knew what they were looking for, since the patients had developed cancer.
@Jason Memail: 4) The decision was made, and this is the real crux of the issue, not to go back and tell those women that the earlier tests missed the potentially cancerous cells, mainly because what good would it do? They now had cancer and knowing an earlier test missed it wouldn’t change that. 5) Overall, the suggestion that cervical check didn’t tell these people they had cancer is demonstrably false, because the only reason the reviews were carried out on the initial tests is because they had cancer, which they knew about. 6) Going back and checking original tests when something like this happens is standard practice, and the right thing to do in order to improve future testing, but
@Jason Memail: 7) you can argue whether or not it was the right decision not to inform people about what the earlier tests missed, but it would not and could not have changed the fact that they now, sadly, had cancer, and 8) Knowing that an earlier test missed something could not have allowed them to start treatment earlier, because it’s in the oast. 9) If you want to know the specifics of it, I’d suggest checking out care2much on Twitter, who has written some incredibly detailed threads on the subject.
While this is welcome and like one commentor said that it should have been done with compensation.
As a survivor of the industrial state/religious run institutions we never got compensation we were give an “Award” as if we won something, we cannot get enhanced medical cards that the survivors from the mother and baby home were afforded, we cannot get a contributary pension even though we had to work in these institutions, we now get another slap in the face by being excluded from theses tax benefits. I live in a council house and am grateful for that, I live with my ill husband and disabled totally dependant 23 year old son was told that I can purchase the house for a minimum of between 60 and 80 thousand euro, cannot get a mortgage as my husband is 70 as the cut off is 69 and we’ve have no where to go to help buy the house so our disabled son would have a roof over his head if anything happened to us.
have your say