{"id":544058,"date":"2026-07-11T07:03:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/544058\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T07:03:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:03:28","slug":"simon-harris-channels-father-ted-in-search-for-elusive-eu-deal-on-financial-reforms-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/544058\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Harris channels Father Ted in search for elusive EU deal on financial reforms \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten days into Ireland\u2019s Council of the EU presidency<\/a> and we\u2019ve had the first Father Ted reference in Brussels. Simon Harris<\/a> was the culprit. <\/p>\n

\u201cIs there anything to be said for another paper? Is there anything to be said for another meeting? Is there anything to be said for another discussion? No, there\u2019s something to be said for making a decision,\u201d the Minister for Finance said on Friday. <\/p>\n

Harris was talking about efforts to overhaul the European Union\u2019s disconnected market for capital and investment. A deal to knit national systems closer together has eluded politicians for more than a decade. <\/p>\n

The Fine Gael leader wants EU governments to clinch an agreement on the complex bundle of internal financial reforms by October, a very ambitious timeline. <\/p>\n

The idea is to make it easier for capital and investment financing to flow across national borders inside the union, by reducing the administrative hassle for, say, a German pension fund to throw money behind a company in Ireland or Estonia, or making it handier for a start-up in Denmark to raise cash from backers across the bloc.<\/p>\n

To do that, European governments need to harmonise some rules around insolvency and tax and agree how to regulate more activity at EU-level. <\/p>\n

The capital market reforms have died a death on previous occasions after getting bogged down in fights over who will be the winners and losers from any changes. <\/p>\n

Ireland, in particular, has traditionally been very sceptical about the Central Bank<\/a> handing over more power to the Paris<\/a>-based European Securities and Markets Authority.<\/p>\n

The fear has long been that an expanded, single EU supervisory authority would draw financial services firms to set up their shop in the French capital, at the expense of the existing hubs in Dublin and Luxembourg<\/a> city. <\/p>\n

Harris chaired a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels on Friday, his first since Ireland\u2019s Council of the EU presidency began. The six-month role involves corralling the other 26 governments towards a common EU position. <\/p>\n

The T\u00e1naiste said he wants to piece together an agreement on one of the trickiest parts of the capital market reforms by October: how much decision-making power should transfer to the European supervisory authority? <\/p>\n

Continuing to split market oversight across 27 \u201cdistinct national lenses\u201d who had different regulatory interpretations would not deliver the big economic bang Europe is looking for, Irish officials wrote in a paper sent around before finance ministers sat down together. <\/p>\n

The internal paper to tee-up the debate, seen by The Irish Times, said everyone\u2019s focus had to shift towards \u201ccompromise-building\u201d. <\/p>\n

It was a point repeated by Harris. \u201cNot to bring Father Ted to the Irish presidency but if there\u2019s anything to be said for another meeting, at some point \u2013 to butcher that phrase \u2013 at some point you have to actually try and bring this to a conclusion,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Finance ministers did agree to task their officials to go off and get properly stuck into the weeds of the technical work. <\/p>\n

Harris must play the role of neutral chairman while Ireland holds the EU presidency, but Luxembourg will argue the case for small EU member states which host big financial services hubs. Their finance minister, Gilles Roth, said he didn\u2019t see how centralising powers and oversight was justified. <\/p>\n

In Brussels, the final deal is usually one that nobody loves but everyone can stomach. <\/p>\n

Convincing Luxembourg to drop their reservations will be tricky and, given the Government shared many of the same concerns about the reforms not too long ago, it\u2019s a quirk of the EU\u2019s rotating presidency that Ireland will be the one doing the convincing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten days into Ireland\u2019s Council of the EU presidency and we\u2019ve had the first Father Ted reference in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,230867,61,60],"class_list":["post-544058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-european-securities-and-markets-authority","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}