EU AND US citizens have very different expectations of government, former taoiseach and EU ambassador to the US John Bruton said yesterday.
Mr Bruton made the comments in an address to 60 US politicians from the State Legislative Leadership Foundation, a body that provides educational programmes for leaders of US state legislatures, which took place in the Dáil chamber yesterday.
Mr Bruton said that with America’s history of rebellion, its citizens were “often suspicious of government and feel that individual liberty should be kept to a maximum.” He said in the EU however, citizens were more likely to ask “what is the government going to do about this?”
Attendees at the event included representatives from more than 20 US states as well as EU and Irish government members.
Describing EU-US relations, Mr Bruton said former president Bush had been “very attentive to the relationship with the EU”. However, he said he was “disappointed” President Obama did not have the experience of attending the joint summit which had been scheduled for Madrid in May but was cancelled at the US president’s behest. Prof John FitzGerald of the ESRI, who also addressed the group, said “in the past, visitors came to discover Ireland’s elixir of eternal growth” but he said now they come to look at how we were dealing with crisis. Asked how the Irish Government managed to introduce taxes and cuts when other countries found it difficult, he said, “the fact that we thought we’d go bust if we didn’t deal with the problem ourselves meant we did deal with the problem.” He said: “We didn’t think the German and French cavalry would ride to rescue us.
Prof FitzGerald told the group that Ireland’s position differed from Spain and Greece because our balance of payments would make a surplus this year.
