Canada brings the energy – why an associate EU member could be Ireland’s next great opportunity

Ire­land needs to re-ima­gine its pos­i­tion within the world. There are two pro­found devel­op­ments on our hori­zon. The EU is strength­en­ing its defence an d secur­ity, and its AI sov­er­eign archi­tec­ture, and if any small nation wishes to stand a chance of avoid­ing becom­ing a vas­sal to China or Amer­ica, then they will need to get involved in these projects.

The war in Ukraine has forced those cent­ral European states that sought to apply the eco­nomic logic of the EU to Rus­sia to appre­ci­ate that this was a mis­take. The geo­pol­it­ical divi­sions between Ger­many and Rus­sia will not be ameli­or­ated by the AfD’s pro-Rus­sian stance, and Europe is destined to con­tinue to define itself in con­tra­dis­tinc­tion to Rus­sia.

The nat­ural tend­ency will be for Europe to reach out, as it has, to like-minded nations.

Last week, EU Com­mis­sion pres­id­ent Ursula von der Leyen invited Canada to become the EU’s first asso­ciate mem­ber, and Canada’s prime min­is­ter Mark Car­ney addressed the European Par­lia­ment the fol­low­ing day.

He doesn’t come empty-handed. Cana­dian LNG, hydro­gen at scale, depos­its of many crit­ical min­er­als, some of the deep­est pen­sion cap­ital in the world, and priv­ileged access to the Arc­tic and Pacific Rim makes Canada a poten­tially valu­able part­ner.