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Minister for European Affairs and Data Protection, Dara Murphy TD, today met with fellow Europe Ministers at a meeting of the General Affairs Council in Brussels, ahead of the December European Council, which begins on Thursday. 

At today’s meeting, Ministers prepared the way for EU leaders’ discussions later in the week on the strategic issues on the agenda at European level, namely: migration, EU-UK relations, counter-terrorism, completion of the internal market, Energy Union and climate policy, and Economic and Monetary Union.
Europe Ministers also considered: the final version of an agreement between the three main EU institutions on Better Regulation; the eighteen month programme for the next three Presidencies of the Council (Netherlands, Slovakia and Malta); and the Commission’s recently-published Annual Growth Survey, which launched the European Semester process of economic policy coordination among Member States for 2016. In addition, Ministers discussed the state of play on EU enlargement, reviewing the progress of candidate and potential candidate countries over the past year.
Speaking in Brussels, Minister Murphy said:
“The busy agendas for today’s meeting of the General Affairs Council and the European Council later this week reflect the heavy workload at European level across a range of issues of strategic importance to Ireland and our EU partners.”
“At this week’s summit, EU leaders will hold a political discussion on the EU-UK question. Ireland very much wants the UK to remain a member of the EU and I have made it clear that we intend to be helpful and constructive in the negotiations. I hope that the discussions at this week’s European Council will be substantive and will pave the way for agreement on a package early next year.”
“Leaders will also consider the new Single Market Strategy and I think it’s important that we see a high level of ambition on this front this week. Next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Single European Act, the basis for the single market. Since then, great progress has been made in removing barriers to intra-EU trade in goods. It’s now time for a renewed push at EU level to deliver comparable and measurable progress in relation to services and the Digital Single Market.”
“Most new jobs in Europe will be created by new and existing small and medium sized businesses, so that is where we must concentrate our efforts. Ireland is supportive of EU level initiatives to boost SME access to competitive financing and to develop a Capital Markets Union, but we also need to see a follow through on the Better Regulation agenda, which would make a really big difference to small businesses across the continent.”
ENDS