THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY IS IRELAND'S LEADING BODY OF EXPERTS IN THE SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

The Royal Irish Academy/Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann champions research. We identify and recognise Ireland’s world class researchers. We support scholarship and promote awareness of how science and the humanities enrich our lives and benefit society. We believe that good research needs to be promoted, sustained and communicated. The Academy is run by a Council of its members. Membership is by election and considered the highest academic honour in Ireland.

Read more about the RIA

Ireland’s decisive choice for Europe

06 November 2019

Listen to Professor Brigid Laffan MRIA discuss how membership of the EU has become Ireland’s geopolitical anchor.

About the discourse

The texture of Ireland’s membership of the EU was transformed by shifts and shocks in Europe and the wider international system.  Ireland’s traditional preference was to straddle different geopolitical arenas, the European, the UK, the US and the global without having to choose either Berlin or Boston. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US President unsettled Ireland’s external environment and its geopolitical anchors.  

In response, Ireland made a decisive choice for Europe. Membership of the European Union (EU) has become Ireland’s geopolitical anchor, its primary mooring in a world of rapid change. When faced with the UK’s choice to exit the EU, the reflex was to cleave to the political and economic framework of a rules based, sovereignty sharing political order.

Dáithí O'Ceallaigh MRIA was the respondent.

About the speaker

Brigid Laffan is Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, an inter-disciplinary research centre at the European University Institute. The Centre’s mission is to contribute to research on the major issues facing contemporary European society. Previously she was Vice-President of UCD and Principal of the College of Human Sciences from 2004 to 2011.


Brigid Laffan is recipient of numerous awards: in 2005 she was elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy and in 2010 received the Ordre nationale du Mérite from the President of the French Republic. Her scholarship has been recognised by the THESEUS Award for Outstanding Research on European Integration in 2012 and the Lifetime Achievement Award for contribution to the development of European Studies in 2014 by UACES.

Brigid’s research focuses on the dynamic of European integration. Recent major publications include her co-edited book Core-periphery Relations in the European Union (London: Routledge, 2016, 311pp) and ‘Europe’s Union in Crisis: Tested and Contested’, Special Issue, West European Politics, 2016, 39:5.

Stay up to date with the Royal Irish Academy newsletter

Sign up now