Summits of the EU‘s 27 national leaders take place every few months and usually kick off on a Thursday. When Leo Varadkar was attending as taoiseach he was always happier when they started earlier in the week.
“It was great on the rare occasion that you had to be away on a Tuesday or Wednesday, because then you got to avoid Leaders’ Questions [in the Dáil],” the former Fine Gael leader tells me.
Very few heads of government take questions from the Opposition “twice a week for several hours”, he says. “It’s mostly just theatre, I didn’t particularly like it.”
More than a year on from his political exit, Varadkar sat down to chat about European politics. We spoke last week, the day after the European Union agreed to a review of its trade agreement with Israel, following growing concern over the war in Gaza.
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This review was something that Varadkar and Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez first called for in February 2024. At the time they were ignored.
“I feel more angry than vindicated, because Pedro and I went out on a limb on that and we had very few supporters at the time,” Varadkar says. It was depressing that so many Palestinians had to be killed before other European governments came around to Ireland’s position, he says.
“The time has come for the European Union to grow a bit of backbone. I hope this is the start of it.”
The EU-Israel association agreement, which includes a free trade deal, is seen as a key piece of leverage with which to exert pressure on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu‘s government.
The EU should suspend the accord even if a fresh ceasefire is negotiated between Israel and Hamas militants, according to Varadkar. Israel portrays itself as a western liberal democracy, but is “none of those things”, the former Fine Gael leader says.
Varadkar feels European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen gets too hard a time in Ireland over the misstep she made in the days after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. Comments by the German politician were seen as offering unqualified support for how Israel saw fit to respond.
“I spoke to her about it and I told her: ‘This isn’t going to go down well in large parts of Europe’,” Varadkar recalls.
“I think since then she’s been much more circumspect and careful ... She’s a friend of Ireland, and Ireland has done well by the position she’s taken on Brexit,” he says.
Brexit comes up several times. The negotiations to sort out the UK’s exit from the EU were a big part of Varadkar’s first term as taoiseach.
It influenced a lot of his thinking during summits of EU leaders, including how he handled Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orban and Poland’s then-hard-right government.
“There was an attempt by the British to seek support from Poland and Hungary ... I was kind of limited in my scope for righteousness, given that I needed Hungary and Poland not to be a problem on Brexit, and they weren’t,” he says.
What’s it like inside the room during those summits? “It’s just you in there, there’s no officials,” Varadkar says. Leaders still message their entourage of advisers and officials waiting outside the room, though sometimes mobile phones have to stay outside as well.
The legwork to tee up a policy shift is done by diplomats in the weeks leading up to a summit. “The good thing is that it’s often just the big decisions and the final calls that are left to the leaders,” he says.
The need to unanimously agree on foreign policy decisions means one rogue leader – such as Orban – can hold everything up. The Hungarian leader has repeatedly used this veto power to block financial and military support for Kyiv in the Ukraine war.
Varadkar does not believe the solution is to just take more decisions by majority vote. “Maybe make it so that one country can’t block something, or two countries can’t block something,” he says.
We’re talking in the cafe of the Sofitel, a five-star Brussels hotel down the road from the EU institutions. National leaders in the European People’s Party (EPP), the centre-right grouping that includes Fine Gael, all breakfast here on the morning of a summit.
Varadkar, who stepped down as taoiseach in April last year, says these European political groupings are much more influential than many people realise, even politicians in his own party.
“Any time people talked about Fine Gael becoming too liberal or too left-leaning for the EPP, I took a very contrary view. This is the most influential group, the biggest bloc, it’s good for Fine Gael and good for Ireland to be in it,” he says.
It’s hard to tell whether Varadkar secretly misses being in the thick of it all. He definitely doesn’t miss Leaders’ Questions.
