In Ballina, Ireland, more American flags have been flown in recent days than Irish ones. Joe Biden, 80, first visited Ballina in 2016 to honor his Irish heritage, but it will be his first visit as US president.

The President of the United States is visiting Ireland and Northern Ireland April 11-14 for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement on one side of the Irish border and is visiting his home country on the other side of the border.

25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement

Joe Biden wants to use his visit to “mark the significant progress made since the signing of the agreement” and to remind “the desire of the United States to support the great economic potential Northern Ireland,” the White House said in a statement.

Following a ceasefire declared by the Irish Democratic Army (IRA) and EU paramilitaries, politicians in the region reached the so-called Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The peace agreement ended three decades of violence between mostly Catholic nationalists who fought for a united Ireland and Protestant unionists or fundamentalists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Tony Blair and former US Senator George Mitchell persuaded sworn enemies to sit down together at the negotiating table. The peace process lasted 20 years.

In 2007, local self-government was re-established with the participation of the two main factions. “Democratic Unionist Party” (DUP) and Sinn Féin, the largest nationalist party.

However, this year’s anniversary is overshadowed by the fact that the Northern Ireland Unionist Party (DUP) is not joining the ruling coalition that played a central role in the 1998 deal. The DUP is protesting post-Brexit trade rules that treat the province differently from the rest of the United Kingdoms.

“Son of Ireland”

The president, who often speaks proudly of his Irish roots, will visit Ireland from 12 to 14 April, where he will spend some time in Dublin and his home areas.

In his book Promise Me Dad, he states: “We Irish are the only people in the world who really miss the future.”

The American president boasts ten of his sixteen great-great-grandparents who were born in Ireland. Great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt had seven children, including Patrick Pius, the great-great-grandfather of the American president, who immigrated at the age of 18 in 1850 to Scranton, Pennsylvania, today’s sister city with the “salmon capital”. “Balina.

Then came Edward Francis, son of Patrick Pius, an engineer in America, Biden’s great-grandfather, and the first Irish-American senator from Pennsylvania in 1907. 1909, originally from the Cooley Peninsula. Their daughter Katherine Eugenia married Joseph Robinette Biden in 1941, and on November 20 of the following year, Joe Biden was born in Scranton.

Two centuries after his ancestors left for the US, Joe Biden still has distant relatives in Ireland, Lorita and Joseph “Joe” Blewitt, second cousins ​​of the President of the United States. Joseph, 43, is a plumber and recently dined at the White House with his distinguished namesake cousin on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day.

He will not attend the coronation of Charles

In contrast to the strong focus on the visit to Ireland, the White House announced that Biden would not attend the coronation of King Charles III next month and that First Lady Jill Biden would represent the US.

Back in March, a White House official told Time that the coronation “doesn’t look like an event that the president will attend.” Recall, however, that Biden attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth last September.

long tradition

However, there is a long tradition that US presidents enjoy traveling to Ireland more than doing many of their other official duties.

Enthusiastic crowds greeted Bill Clinton in 1995 when he became the first US President to visit Northern Ireland as well as Ireland. The New York Times reported that “the Irish gave Bill Clinton the best two days of his presidency.”

Sixty years ago, John F. Kennedy called his trip to Ireland in 1963 the best four days of his life. Since then, Presidents Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have made trips to the Emerald Isle, much to the envy of many other underserved European countries.

BBC, Reuters, Guardian