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CounterPunch
October
5, 2002
The Nice
Treaty Up for a Vote Again
Ireland Rattles the Foundations of the New Europe
by HARRY BROWNE
While international election-junkies get their
fix analysing polls and results in Germany, Brazil and the US,
they're only now beginning to notice the referendum due to take
place on October 19th here on Europe's offshore isle. At the
risk of appearing parochial: what's at stake here in Ireland
is perhaps more fundamentally important than any of those other
electoral spats--it's the institutional future of the world's
nascent superpower, the European Union (EU). And Ireland's position,
as it prepares to vote for a second time on the EU's Nice Treaty,
is putting that future very much in doubt.
The reasons this vote has turned out
to be so fraught, unique and important are fluky and contingent.
As anyone who has travelled around the single-currency continent
lately can testify, the union, comprising at present 15 member
states, has been politically "integrating" in stages--leaving
behind its old status as the European Economic Community--with
a new treaty every few years to spell out the evolving arrangements.
The Treaty of Nice, agreed in 2000 at a meeting in the French
resort, is just the latest stage: it sets things up for a dramatic
expansion of the EU to the east--in part by giving more decision-making
weight to the bigger west-European powers and removing the requirement
of unanimity for more Euro-decisions.
Successive Irish governments have been
enthusiastic participants in the EU's evolution, not least because
what used to be called "cohesion funds" (i.e. pork)
could be poured into poorer countries like this one to bring
the infrastructure up to Euro-standard. However, since 1987,
when a court case established that EU treaties, inasmuch as they
diluted sovereignty, required amendment to Eamonn DeValera's
1937 Constitution, governments have had to put every treaty to
a referendum of the Irish people. Mostly over the last 15 years
the Irish people have said "Sure, why not?" But last
year the government, rushing to be among the first in Europe
to ratify Nice, got sucker-punched in the referendum by a loose
alliance of traditional nationalists, fine-print critics and
a reinvigorated anti-militarist left that voiced concerns about
European security policy and the implications for Irish neutrality.
Voices from the small but noisy far left also cogently argued
that the EU was building a "bosses' Europe", geared
toward privatisation and tight budgets, poised to exploit the
12 potential applicant countries.
Shame-faced at the solid "No"
majority in that referendum, the government ran off to Brussels
to promise that it would arrange a re-run just soon as it could
ensure the right result. In the meantime, the other 14 member
states, without Ireland's constitutional quirk, have all ratified
the treaty with votes in their own legislatures.
A parliamentary vote in Ireland would
be a piece of cake. The four parties that generally make up the
main government and opposition here in varying combinations--Fianna
Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and the Progressive Democrats--are all
"enthusiastic Europeans", as they like to put it. Same
goes for the main trade unions and the bosses' and farmers' organisations.
The trouble lies with the electorate--and for all we know the
same trouble would bedevil other governments if they were forced
into Irish-style exercises in democracy. Indeed, while the Irish
political and media establishment reacted with embarrassment
to last year's No vote, many other European pols were heard to
murmur: "There but for the grace of God"
The Government's efforts to soften up
the electorate and make it second-time-lucky have included a
travelling road-show, aka "Forum", for shooting the
breeze about the wonders or otherwise of Europe; and a quite
brilliant PR stroke on neutrality. The latter involved getting
an EU summit in Seville to issue a "declaration" purporting
to respect Ireland's right to opt-out of any "common defense"
arrangements, and adding another little Constitutional tidbit
to the referendum itself, along similar lines. Now, voters who
want to ensure constitutionally that Ireland stays out of defense
pacts will have to vote Yes.
In one sense this misses the point. A
Yes vote might ensure that Ireland can't rush to Italy's aid
if Sicily is invaded by Tunisia. But it won't stop the Irish
Army from taking part in EU "Rapid Reaction Force"
actions in more far-flung parts of the globe; in fact, Army brass
are excitedly acquiring the toys to do just that sort of thing.
The only restrictions the government says it is placing on such
actions would be a requirement of its own approval of such an
action--not a problem, evidently--and some form of UN figleaf--plenty
of room for ambiguity and manoeuvre there too, as Serbia, Iraq
and Afghanistan can testify.
Nonetheless, this twist on neutrality
is a sharp one: the government, understanding that it can't defeat
neutrality as a core value of Irish voters, has instead simply
enlisted it to the Yes cause. The latest poster: "Vote YES
for Neutrality". (Just what constitutes Irish neutrality
is another day's debate: the state's muted but definite pro-US
tilt during the Cold War turned into an out-and-out servile relationship
through the 1990s, when Bill Clinton's involvement in the Northern
Ireland "peace process" and a "Celtic Tiger"
economy built on US investment were the dominant foreign-policy
factors. Last year the government spoke up early and often to
support the "war on terror" as waged in Afghanistan.)
Anyway, opinion polls suggest the government's
strategy is on target--Yes leads by roughly three to two. However,
with about a third of voters undecided, the government has a
fight on its hands, and its political vision is being blurred
by a series of mishaps, scandals and public-service cuts that
have hit the headlines since the Fianna Fail-led government was
returned in May's general election.
The Taioseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern looks frankly punch-drunk,
as the interim findings of a tribunal investigating planning
corruption have hit too close for comfort. Dublin buzzes with
speculation that a disgraced former minister, Ray Burke, "knows
where the bodies are buried" and has little to lose if he
helps disinter a few. His Fianna Fail party, still by far the
most popular in the state, has lost some support; on the other
hand, the media's insistence that the referendum now constitutes
a "make or break" test for the government, an "uphill
battle", may actually work to rally even the more disaffected
troops.
And lucky for Bertie, the rest of the
political establishment is taking up the running on Nice as Fianna
Fail stumbles. Some of the effects are risible, e.g. the billboard
from the employers' confederation, showing two grim-faced children
and the caption "Vote Yes to jobs for them"--which
looks more like a brave plea from the bosses for a return to
child labour than a promise of a full-employment future within
an expanded EU.
Fine Gael, Fianna Fail's main opposition
for three-quarters of a century, is no less ridiculous. The party
had a disastrous election and is said to be in desperate need
of "rebranding"; so on the sex-sells principle, the
party has allowed its youth wing to publish a poster showing
scantily-clad totty of both genders and the leering words: "It's
better to be in than out." Since a No vote would by no means
take Ireland out of Europe, this constitutes no more than a pointless
attempt to associate nubile and willing young flesh with the
sad old souls of Fine Gael.
A No vote would simply mean the Nice
Treaty falls, not just for Ireland--with just over 1 per cent
of the union's population--but for the whole EU. Institutional
Europe, which indulges itself in periodic bouts of public breast-beating
about sorting out its "democratic deficit", would have
failed its only true democratic test, not once but twice. If
it happens, you'll hear a little about Ireland's crisis-ridden
government and lot about Irish greed and selfishness--depriving
eastern Europe of the benefits from which we've reputedly gained.
You might even hear about the more right-wing No campaigners
who have tried to exploit anti-immigrant sentiment by warning
of a potential "flood" of workers from the would-be
member-states to the east.
But keep in mind that Europe as a political
phenomenon is being built over the heads of its people, and give
the fighting Irish some credit for taking a kick at the foundations.
Harry Browne
is a lecturer in journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology
and a columnist with The Irish Times.
Contact him at harrybrowne@eircom.net.
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2002
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