President Michael D Higgins has strongly criticized the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen for comments on the Middle East conflict which she made on a visit to Israel last Friday, reports RTE.
Ms von der Leyen did not call for Israeli retaliation to be consistent with international law.
President Higgins said he agreed with those who criticized the European Commission president’s intervention.
He said: “I don’t know where the source of those decisions was. I don’t know where the legitimation for it was and I don’t know where the authority for it is and I don’t think it was helpful,” reports RTE.
He added: “It may not have been meant to have malevolent consequences but certainly we need a better performance in relation to European Union diplomacy and practice,” reports RTE.
President Higgins warned that the world could be on “the verge of an abyss” by rejecting multilateralism.
In his address to the conference at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the President said we must tackle food speculations in crops, especially in wheat production.
“While recent volatile prices for crops are certainly a result of geopolitical movements as well as weather forecasts, these variations have been exacerbated, as studies of recent famines show, by excessive financial speculation, a speculation that is also affecting transparency as to reserves.”
World Food Day is marked on Monday, which is observed to underline the challenges of food insecurity and hunger.
Later this week, President Higgins will meet the Italian President Sergio Mattarella and will also lay a wreath to honour the late Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who saved thousands of Jews in World War II.
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