Fianna Fáil: In the Liberals but not of the Liberals

Fianna Fail's (FF) membership of the Liberal Europarty since 2009 in the party's difficult history of finding its place in the European Union's (EU) complex of party families and groups. By 2004, contacts between the Liberals and FF through Dick Roche, Brian Cowen, and EU Commissioner David Byrne led to the party negotiating membership of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR). As the Union for Europe of the Nations continued to admit Member of European Parliaments with far-right views in the 2004–2009 European Parliament term, party leader Bertie Ahern faced criticism of FF's continued membership of the group. In 2006, he publicly expressed a preference for joining the Liberals, while in 2007 Roche assured the Liberals that FF would join. In February 2009, with Cowen as party leader, after negotiations led by Roche, and with a motion in favour of membership approved by its party conference, FF's leadership announced that it would join the ELDR.