I4C Trouble with Daly and Wallace

Poland is causing trouble in the EU- the Polish government is being accused of interference with the judiciary and overstepping the mark in terms of EU law. Is this the EU getting involved in the sovereign issues of member states or is it simply a case of enforcing the rules of the game? This week Mick, Clare and Damien get into the some big questions about the EU- what are the limits of EU power and where should we be drawing the line?

Damien and Clare are missing this week and Ciara, Mick’s parliamentary assistant, is taking over as presenter. Mick gets his revenge for previous “censoring” of his jokes by telling a long story he heard about a priest… lord help us.We discuss rising energy prices and gas shortages as we come into the winter- how did we get here, and what comes next? Also on the agenda- EU relations with the Sahel, China, and Ethiopia, and the killing of protesters in Lebanon this week.

Clare reports back from her mission to Bulgaria, Mick and Clare discuss the I4C position on Belarus.They also talk about tax havens, the Pandora Papers and the EU’s hypocrisy in blacklisting certain Global South countries as tax havens while countries within the Union… including our own…. continue to engage in similar practices.They look at the International Criminal Court’s decision to pursue the Taliban for war crimes committed in Afghanistan- fair enough, but why the refusal to look at the crimes of the US or Afghan armies?Finally Mick fills us in on recent developments in Tigray, Ethiopia.

So many issues, so little time. This week Clare and Mick are taking us through a whole range of recent events in the Parliament and beyond, most notably the letter that they wrote to the CEO of Portuguese bank Novo Banco calling on the bank to release Venezuelan funds for medicines and vaccines.They’re also talking about the attempted arrest of Catalan MEP Carles Puigdemont, a visit to Brussels by a group of Irish people affected by the mica building blocks scandal, last week’s elections in Russia and Germany, the persecution of journalist Algirdas Paleckis in Lithuania, and finally, how best to tackle methane emissions.

This week Mick and Clare are in Strasbourg and they’re discussing Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her speech on the “state of the union”… the absolute state of it is right.We’re talking hypocrisy, fortress Europe and “Great European Values”.

This week the Parliament is getting well and truly back into the swing of things. Mick and Clare catch us up on what has been happening in their committees. They discuss the sixth IPCC report on climate change and how its section on methane emissions is being deliberately misused by the meat and dairy lobby, corruption and organised crime in Bulgaria, working conditions in the aviation sector and finally Afghanistan.

This week Clare, Mick and Damien discuss the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the European reaction, the 20 years of US occupation and counterinsurgency during the war in Afghanistan and Irish government complicity in it, and the importance of learning the lessons. They also go back to 2010 to listen to what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks had to say about the war, and discuss how, even though the US war in Afghanistan is now over, the US war on journalism still continues. 

This summer Belgium was devastated by floods the likes of which it has never seen before, leaving 41 dead. In July, Clare and Mick met Cristophe and François two of the sound engineers in the European Parliament, to discuss what happened.The episode wasn’t published at the time but we’re releasing it now because it’s a powerful conversation about how it feels to see climate change in action, very close to home.

Things are wrapping up for the summer in the European Parliament so we’re leaving you with a big one. Mick and Clare are going deep into foreign policy, their positions on the big issues of the day- Syria, Cuba, Belarus- and the threads that tie it all together.The recent media barrage has misinterpreted Clare and Mick’s critique of the warmongering anti-China, anti-Russia rhetoric as towing the line pushed by those governments. In this episode they set the record straight - they’re not pro-China or pro-Russia, they are against the EU using Russia and China as bogeymen to justify militarisation.They’re also discussing the shrinking space for dissenting opinions and the dangerous tendency to label any view outside of the dominant pro-US one as “fake news”.Finally there's some talk about issues closer to home and the recent Disclosures Tribunal report on Garda whistleblower Nick Keogh.

This week we've got something different- we're airing an episode of  the Echo Chamber Podcast where Clare and Mick were interviewed by Tony Groves and Martin McMahon.They talk about foreign policy- particularly Syria and Iraq, the EU and recent attacks on the MEP's foreign policy positions in the Irish press.