{"id":486454,"date":"2026-05-15T18:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486454\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:44:10","slug":"ireland-must-surrender-foreign-policy-powers-to-europe-mep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486454\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland Must Surrender Foreign Policy Powers to Europe &#8211; MEP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ireland must surrender some of its foreign policy powers to Europe so that the bloc can sanction Israel, a Fine Gael MEP has said.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking on Thursday, Se\u00e1n Kelly said that the bloc had failed so far to level sanctions on Israel due to a requirement that any foreign policy decision in the European Council be made unanimously, with every EU country holding a veto in the body.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the last five years in particular, Viktor Orb\u00e1n of Hungary abused this veto, holding up aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia to gain concessions on completely unrelated things,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly argued that this ability for member-state leaders to block foreign policy decisions should be abolished, and that Ireland and all other countries should abandon their council vetoes on multiple foreign policy issues.<\/p>\n<p>He emphasised this change would allow Ireland to achieve its goal of sanctioning Israel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsrael has shown they are happy to ignore even the strongest words of condemnation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe best tool we have to apply pressure is the suspension of the EU-Israel trade agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIreland will hold the presidency of the European Council in the second half of this year, and exploring a move away from unanimity is the single most impactful thing we could add to the agenda right now,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Both Ireland and Socialist-run Spain have been at the forefront of an ongoing EU push to sanction Israel, with senior leadership from both countries demanding the bloc provide more support for the disputed state of Palestine.<\/p>\n<p>This has been met with a lukewarm reception in Brussels, with Germany in particular being hesitant to take any actions against the Benjamin Netanyahu government.<\/p>\n<p>Ireland\u2019s policy on the matter has alienated Fine Gael from many of its counterparts in Brussels, with the majority of its European People\u2019s Party partners \u2014 including Ursula von der Leyen\u2019s German Christian Democratic Union \u2014 advocating for a much softer approach regarding Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland must surrender some of its foreign policy powers to Europe so that the bloc can sanction Israel,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,47466,2219,13,14,6,17,71,11,12,15,16,5,13485,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-486454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-european-council","tag-european-union","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-sanctions","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}