ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the key characteristics of the European Union (EU) and the interaction between European institutions and Ireland. It introduces the assessment of the unique nature of EU membership as compared with other international affiliations, and reviews how Irish values and interests are represented within Union structures. Forces of Europeanisation and globalisation have greatly increased Ireland's interaction with the international system and have embedded the state, its economy and its society within that system. Attitudes in Ireland, like those elsewhere in the EU, are complex and multi-dimensional. Irish nationalism has, to a large extent, been successfully nested within a popular, if sometimes inchoate, European identity. Ireland's external environment is in the throes of profound change as this 'small open polity' faces considerable risk, uncertainty and turbulence in the years ahead. Public opinion in Ireland also differs significantly from that of the UK in particular.
