It's difficult to generalise across so many countries and political views but I don't get the sense in Ireland that people have wildly unrealistic expectations of what the EU can and can't do. It was the Brexiteers that wildly inflated its powers and all pervasive influence, to bolster their own case that it was an undemocratic dictatorship.

Here, people tend to look at their own government with some destain and distrust and are glad the EU has some powers to mitigate it's worst excesses. They would be aware of the ECB's role in ensuring the availability of cheap money for borrowing, and of the EU role in attempting to keep economies afloat with some structural spending.

The EU is seen mostly as a sensible attempt by 27 countries to cooperate and coordinate their responses to global problems too big for any one country to fix by itself. People are proud that Ireland, as a small country, has a seat at the table with some much bigger countries.

They are happy that it helped sustain Irish agriculture and develop the Irish economy by making it attractive for MNCs to locate here to access the single market. They value the EU's contribution to the peace process and ensuring Brexit wasn't allowed to jeopardize it completely.

The snafu over article 16 and the failures in vaccine procurement would be seen as the main mistakes but there is a recognition there were a lot of factors involved and perhaps an openness to greater cooperation and coordination in the future. I don't get the sense of a huge alienation from the EU as you got with Brexiteers and amongst many in the US towards the Federal government.

So overall, its not too bad a place to be in, even ifit can be infuriatingly slow to get a consensus on any issue.

Index of Frank's Diaries