The Tánaiste will tonight urge the EU to adopt the Government's low-tax, liberal economic policies, both to create jobs and win back popular support for the Union.
In a major speech designed in part to reject suggestions that hers is a "Eurosceptic" party, Ms Harney will urge Europe to become a low-tax economy with job creation top of its agenda.
Ms Harney's speech is part of a concerted Government effort to show it is engaged in the debate on the future of Europe currently taking place in Brussels.
It follows Mr Brian Cowen's major speech on Europe on Wednesday, and precedes a substantial European speech by the Taoiseach next week.
This follows opposition claims over the last two years that the Government had taken a more detached and sceptical view of the EU than in the past.
In her speech to the Insurance Institute of Cork, Ms Harney will adopt a positive, pro-European tone while saying the diversity of taxation and other economic policies in the EU is healthy.
She will urge the EU to produce a new blueprint for job creation in parallel with negotiations on a new EU treaty, to begin later this year.
The Convention on the Future of Europe, currently debating Europe's future, gives the EU an opportunity to recommit itself "to policies that lead to an employment-rich, dynamic and competitive economy in Europe".
She will put low taxes at the centre of her prescription for the creation of such an economy.
"If we don't have low taxes on capital, foreign capital will not flow in and domestic capital and the knowledge we create in Europe will flow out . . . The tax burden on enterprise must also be low if we are to achieve the dynamic, enterprise economy throughout Europe that we deserve and the people deserve."
Some of Ms Harney's comments will not find favour with some other EU member-states with higher taxes and higher public spending. However, she will insist that Ireland's low 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate - resented by some member-states for its ability to draw foreign investment and jobs away from higher-tax economies - is here to stay and has been a proven success in creating jobs.
But she will also state opposition to a "race to the bottom" - a reference to fears in some states that competition to reduce taxes will compromise their ability to fund social programmes.
She will also strongly restate opposition to any harmonisation of direct taxes, saying the public wants such decisions to be taken at local or national rather than European level.
Advocating the liberal economic policies favoured by the PDs and other European liberal parties, she will urge the EU to "harness the power of competition to deliver a dynamic, fair and productive economy for all our citizens".
Referring to the growing difficulty faced by many EU member-states in "selling" new European treaties to their peoples, she said putting employment creation at the heart of the next phase of development would win public support.
Noting that this year marks the 10th anniversary of the Delors White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment, she will call for "a Delors II for the new Union . . . a blueprint for jobs and growth".
The Delors document identified the tax burden on jobs as the central problem of the tax system. "The tax burden on labour must be low to encourage employment. In Ireland we followed this agenda and it worked."