Irish foreign policy in the United Nations and European Union: influence and participation

The United Nations has had a central place in Irish foreign policy from the state’s\ud accession in 1955. Both political discourse and public opinion polls indicate\ud widespread support for the organisation as a source of international legitimacy and\ud as the appropriate forum to make major decisions regarding peace and security;\ud international human rights; and development. The EU has an equally central role in\ud Ireland’s economic and social development in the last three decades, and while there\ud is no significant opposition to EU membership, recent referenda on the EU Treaties\ud of Nice and Lisbon were defeated on the first attempts, highlighting opposition to\ud some aspects of recent EU integration processes.\ud This chapter begins with a brief examination of the first White Paper on foreign policy\ud in the history of the state, published in 1996, as a means of looking at some of the\ud long running context for Irish Foreign policy priorities.1 It then explores Ireland’s\ud recent relationship with the EU focusing on the referenda on the Lisbon Treaty and finishes with an analysis of Ireland’s engagement with the United Nations, including\ud its last period on the security council in 2001-2