Ireland should lose some of its rights as the national president of the European Council as the country “can’t be trusted” to properly operate some of the included roles, a senior figure within the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) NGO has claimed.
Johnny Ryan, the head of the NGO’s ‘Enforce’ division which promotes digital regulation, has joined a public pressure campaign demanding that Ireland recuse itself from leading any negotiations on tech issues.
In an open letter published this week, Ryan — along with over 50 other academics — described Ireland as having a “questionable track record regarding the protection of EU digital rights”.
“Ireland’s reliance upon giant non-EU firms creates insurmountable conflicts of interest, as evidenced by the country’s track record in the area of data regulation and taxation,” it reads, adding that they all now “expect” the country to voluntarily surrender its powers under the EU presidency.
In a separate article for The Guardian, Ryan went so far as to accuse Ireland of having “sabotaged” the EU’s ambitions to regulate big tech, telling readers that it “can’t be trusted” on the issue.
He added that if the country fails to voluntarily surrender its presidential powers, foreign governments should use similar methods employed during the banking crisis to force its hand.
“Irish ministers can’t be trusted to chair vital European digital sovereignty talks,” the article reads.
“There was a time when Europe looked like the world’s answer to the worst excesses of big tech. Ireland has sabotaged that dream for a massive payoff.”
“If it will not recuse itself from all tech discussions during its six-month presidency, then Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Madrid and Brussels should pile the same kind of pressure on Ireland some of them did after the banking crisis.”
Ryan has meanwhile been encouraging other EU capitals to use the Irish presidency “as a lever to apply pressure” to US tech in a piece published by German business outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In the German-language article, he insisted that Chancellor Friedrich Merz could and should use the presidency to help separate Europe from the American tech ecosystem and “lay the foundation for European digital sovereignty”.
“Unready for a direct confrontation with Trump and US Tech, Berlin can use Ireland as a lever to apply pressure from a distance,” he wrote regarding the piece on BlueSky.
As Gript has previously reported, the ICCL is overwhelmingly funded by foreign actors, with up to 95 per cent of its wealth being sourced from abroad.
The three largest sources of funding over that period were the Luminate Group, set up by the French-American billionaire Pierre Omidyar; the Open Society Foundation, set up by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros; and the Sigrid Rausing Trust, set up by Sigrid Rausing of the Swedish Rausing family.
Other major donors during the period included The Rowan Trust, a British organisation which gave €418,328, the Minderoo Foundation, set up by the Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, which gave €349,761; and the Swiss-based International Network for Civil Liberties Organisation, which gave €378,526.
