From August 29 through
September 1, 2026, the G20 met in North Carolina in the U.S.; the E.U. was
represented by one of its states, Ireland, because it was charged with chairing
the sessions of the European Council of Ministers, which in turn plays a
legislative role, as does the European Parliament, whereas the European
Commission is the E.U.’s executive branch. Such international meetings as those
of the G20 are attended by officials from executive rather than legislative
branches of government. Accordingly, the economy commissioner, Valdis
Dombrovskis, along with President von der Leyen should have been representing
the E.U. at the meeting.
To label Ireland as holding
the presidency of the E.U. for the second half of 2026 is utterly misleading.
In actuality, state-level ministers of Ireland were chairing sessions of the
European Council of Ministers, which is just one of several federal
institutions of the European Union. The president of the E.U.’s executive
branch could more accurately be referred to as the president of the E.U.
itself, just as the head of the U.S.’s executive branch is styled as the
president of the United States. Unlike the U.S., the E.U. went to excess in
coining presidents throughout the federal level.
Within the false label of the
Irish presidency of the E.U., even though Tánaiste Harris was the finance
minister of the E.U. state of Ireland, his role at the federal level was
legislative in chairing sessions of the Council of Ministers in which federal
laws, rules, and directives were formulated and voted on. Because executive rather
than legislative officials attend the G20, Dombrovskis, along with Von der
Leyen, should have taken Harris’s place.
The oversight in sending a
federal legislative official to the G20 meeting stems from the broader problem
of the over-emphasis of the states at the federal level. In the U.S., the member-states
are represented in the U.S. Senate, and even so only indirectly through
popularly-elected delegates, which are called senators, rather than directly by
state officials from the states’ respective executive branches. Whereas the U.S.
states are only represented at the federal level in the U.S. Senate, E.U.
states are represented at the E.U. level in both the European Council and the
Council of Ministers. The most obvious reason for the additional role for the
states is fear of encroachment by the E.U. on the prerogatives of the states,
and all the Europeans had to do was to look over at the consolidating power
over decades of the U.S. at the expense of its states. The concern is thus
justified, but the founders of the E.U. may have gone too far.
For one thing, the economic and geopolitical interests of a state are not necessarily the same as those of the union that includes the state. So, a conflict of interest was possible in that, besides representing the E.U., Harris was scheduled to “hold bilateral meetings” with officials from the G20 countries (which are not “member states” as the G20 does not have a federal governmental system).[1] The word bilateral signals that the discussions were between Ireland, which is not in the G20, and the executive-branch officials of the G20 countries, so Harris would be pursuing Irish rather than European interests in those discussions. Aside from the fact that his presence at the G20 was to represent the E.U., it was not fair to other countries not in the G20 that Ireland was able to have bilateral talks at the meeting. It would be much simpler were the E.U. represented at international meetings by federal officials in the Commission. In short, the influence of the state governments at the federal level in the E.U. had become excessive.
1. “Simon Harris to Represent EU at G20
Finance Meeting in North Carolina,” Europe Says, 31 August, 2026.
