3 April 2016 10:45 to 11:45, École de Management Strasbourg, 61 Avenue de la Foret Noire

Good morning everybody and welcome to the beautiful and historic city of Strasbourg, a place that has played and continues to play such a profound and central role in the championing and protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in all of Europe and even beyond our borders.

I would like to begin by congratulating each and every one of you on being selected to take part in this prestigious parliamentary event. The competition, I know, was intense and to be here today you had to prove not just your intellectual capacity to take part in a challenging and demanding occasion, but also your passion for what you are about to do. You will, as young people, of course have fun but this is also a serious affair and as the event continues you will be called upon to demonstrate that you have the capacity to deal with situations you have never encountered before as you enter into a series of often complex interactions that will test you both intellectually and even emotionally.

You are all fortunate to be here but you are particularly fortunate to be here at this time in European history as the European Union faces a series of challenges that many have described as existential. No single challenge, whether migration, terrorism, Brexit, threats to the rule of law, questions over our commitment to human rights, can be solved in isolation. Each challenge impacts on the others. Human rights feed into migration which feeds into Brexit which feeds into EU stability which feeds into member state instability which feeds into populism which itself generates new challenges and makes the others even more difficult to solve.

But what everyone here today should know, as you gather to simulate EU decision making on some of these issues, is that the way in which they all play out is governed by the sort of political choices made by Governments and made by parliaments including by the increasingly powerful European Parliament. Of course neither Governments nor parliaments exist in a vacuum, all are voted into power by citizens but the choices those citizens ultimately make is often determined by how they perceive the quality of those political choices, whether those political choices have made their ordinary daily lives better or worse, or even more critically at times, how those choices have been mediated to them, what they have been made believe about those choices.

And what much of Europe is finding now is that we cannot take for granted the fact that citizens will always choose a liberal democratic model of government, or even stable government, if they feel that neither has delivered for them. The last few years have seen a move away from the mainstream big parties in many EU countries and a confused and confusing splintering of political allegiance on all sides of the traditional political divide and the increasing popularity of parties at odds with what many assumed was the now settled and agreed democratic mainstream.

And so those who champion the democratic values on which the EU was founded can never actually draw a line and believe that all is now settled, because nothing is ever settled and the world is constantly in need of people like yourselves who care not just about their own lives but who have the vision, the energy and the drive to become actors in the world, to be engaged, to think and to act to find new ways in which the world can behave to maintain and enhance the dignity and the wellbeing of all of us who share this planet and even the planet itself.

Most of you, or all of you, were born in the 1990s, when each of my five children were also born. I remember when my eldest child was born in 1990, I marvelled at what a great time it was to come into the world. The Berlin Wall had fallen, many European countries were about to emerge from under authoritarian rule, Nelson Mandela was released from 25 years in jail and my own country, Ireland, had elected its first ever female head of state. It seemed an optimistic time, a time of increasingly shared values around human rights and democracy and freedom.

But nothing, as I said, stands still. The 1990s would later witness the murderous Balkan Wars as the end game of the second world war was played out. A decade later however as many eastern and central European countries joined the EU it seemed again a time of optimism. The late Irish poet Seamus Heaney, in his poem to commemorate the 2004 accession, wrote "So on a day when newcomers appear, let this be a homecoming and let us speak the unstrange word, as it behoves us here. Move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare. Like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak, from middle sea to north sea, shining clear.'

Now, just twelve years later, we witness again deep threats to our earlier optimism and little certainty over how this so called existential crisis will play out. But play out it will and how it plays out will depend on what voices step forward, what voices are heard, whose capacity to sway, to influence, will ultimately triumph. In a few short years as you go more deeply into your professional lives you will increasingly take over those roles from this generation and your generation is the first in history to live in such a profoundly interconnected world where borders can no longer protect or defend either the good or the bad and we are forced, whether we like it or not, to find common ground'

And so, whether, today and tomorrow, you are acting as politicians, or journalists or lobbyists or interpreters, you will all be doing what the poet said. Through your own words, your own arguments, your own interventions, your own judgment, you will all be attempting to move lips, move minds, and make new meanings flare. But those skills, as we know, can we used equally to do good or do bad, and all of us who depend on good political choices also depend on the skills of people of principle and courage and commitment to the founding values of the EU to win the battle over the hearts and minds of the citizen.

But you have another important job here in Strasbourg this week. The way that the EU makes its decisions is often seen to be, and often is, both complex and incomprehensible to anyone outside what is called the EU bubble. That is partly due to the complexity of the task - trying to bring 28 member states together to achieve rational and efficient law making - and also the multicultural and multi lingual nature of the EU. But please do not get overwhelmed and intimidated by all of that, do not think you have failed because you mixed up Trilogues with comitology and or because you still can't tell the difference between the Council and European Council and the Council of Europe, or who is president of what and for how long. Just remember that this fundamentally involves the very human arts of persuasion and communication, you have an argument you want to make you want to persuade people that it is the right argument. You learn the process through which you can mediate your argument, stick to the rules, but after that it will be about the quality of your reasoning and the skill with which you communicate it. And when you get home, let people know that there is nothing , at heart, mysterious about how the EU operates. This is not to say that it cannot be more open, transparent and comprehensible, but how it does its politics is little different to what happens everywhere else.

I've no doubt that your parents or guardians are very proud that you have made it here to Strasbourg this week. And so they should be. As parents we try to bring up our children to have good lives for themselves of course, but also to bring their privileges and their talents to the benefit of others. And today marks the start for many of you of doing just that. I'd like, in conclusion, to say a special word to the young women here. Sometimes, it can be hard to make our voices heard, sometimes we have been socialised to be a little quieter, a little more conciliatory than the boys, and that can sometimes make us feel a little unsure in fora where men have in turn been socialised to do well and not to be afraid. The world however needs us to get over that, it needs more women's voices and the world needs them to be louder than they are now. In this event, and in others, do not hesitate to bring your own female values and instincts to bear on how you do your work, let your voice be as strong as everyone else's and realise that what you are doing is vitally important for all of those women throughout the world whose voices really are silenced and who rely on the strength of women like those of you here today to be a voice for them in the world until they too have finally achieved their own.