Sir, – It was heartening to note from Jack Power’s recent article (“Mario Draghi is not going to save Europe”, February 12th, 2026) that some in the Irish media are waking up to the reality of what is going on in Brussels: the EU is rapidly progressing the most significant race to the bottom on standards that will include reducing protections against toxic chemicals, deforestation, labour exploitation and human rights abuses.
The fuel in the tank for the past 18 months has been the holy scripture known as the Draghi report. But as the article says: “Draghi isn’t going to save Europe. Cutting back chunks of the union’s landmark laws and regulations won’t do the job either.”
As we in Trócaire and our allies have long argued, this mania for “cutting red tape” causes real harms, peeling away key rights and protections from people in Europe and around the world, including some of the poorest and most fragile countries in the world. The result is to make us all more vulnerable to predatory corporate profit-making.
As EU leaders gather in a 16th-century castle in the Belgian countryside to discuss the future of EU “competitiveness”, it is time for the Irish Government to state clearly if it stands for citizens’ rights or corporate profits. – Yours, etc,
CHRIS O’CONNELL,
Policy and advocacy adviser,
Trócaire,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.