10 Jun 2008
National Post
BY JAMES G. NEUGER Bloomberg News
U.S. OF EUROPE Those opposing accord lead in recent poll
DUBLIN • With less than 1% of the European Union’s population and just more than 1% of its economy, Ireland has 100% control over the bloc’s ambition to become a United States of Europe. Ireland is the only one of the EU’s 27 member nations to put the union’s new governing treaty to a vote. Because defeat anywhere means the treaty will fail, Irish voters will decide the political future of most of Europe.
This week, it becomes the only one of the EU’s 27 member nations to put the new governing treaty to a direct citizens’ vote. Because defeat anywhere will kill the agreement everywhere, it is up to Irish voters to decide whether the alliance will move toward the political unity envisioned by its founding fathers after the Second World War.
The parliaments of 15 EU nations have already approved the treaty and another 11 are expected to do so because their governing majorities also favour it. That leaves the Irish.
A veto in Thursday’s referendum would cripple the bloc’s long-time effort to parlay its economic might into a stronger voice in world affairs, proponents say.
Opponents point out the treaty is an expanded version of the unpopular constitution defeated in 2001 by the French and Dutch “no” votes. The new version was adopted by EU leaders in Lisbon in December and is now being pushed through various legislatures without voters getting a chance to make their wishes known.
[Why do they believe they know what is best? Why do they act in contravention to the best interests of their people as defined by the will of their people? They know that their populations do not support it, necessitating their forcing the bill through by simply ignoring the will of the people? Why? The answer is quite simple and it is also what is wrong with the liberal ideology that permeates so much of Europe and partially controls the US - THEY KNOW WHAT IS BEST for you. And they will push it down your throat whether you want it or not, they believe you will learn to appreciate it in time. Despite your opposition to it now, in the years to come you will shrug your shoulders and accept it. And some people wonder why the liberal ideology should be opposed? I believe the people should decide - they have a collective voice, and a brain. Inform them, educate them and they will make the best decision. Don't treat them like they are three year olds and tell them they will enjoy it. It makes totalitarianism and the former communists states appear democratic.]
For most of the campaign, polls showed a majority of Irish voters supported the accord. But opposition has been growing, and an Irish Times/ TNS MRBI poll published last Friday gave opponents a lead for the first time, 35% to 30%.
Supporters are concerned about a repeat of 2001, when a last-minute surge of opposition defeated the EU’s more limited governing treaty. After a concerted campaign, proEurope forces managed to win approval in a rerun of the election a year later.
With gross domestic product of ¤12.8-trillion ($19.8 trillion), the EU is the world’s largest economic bloc, with its own central bank, trade and regulatory authority, and close to 100,000 pages of laws that govern a common market from the Atlantic to the Russian border.
Still, the EU remains far less than the federal state envisioned by Jean Monnet, the French cognac salesman turned statesman who expounded the bold European visions of the 1940s and 1950s. The commercial colossus remains a geopolitical midget: EU divisions hastened the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, leaving the U.S. to halt the bloodshed. The bloc splintered when George W. Bush, the U.S. President, invaded Iraq in 2003.
The answer, backers of a higher-profile EU say, is the Lisbon treaty, a 277-page overhaul of the bloc’s founding documents that would create the post of president, strengthen the foreign-policy chief and give more power to the democratically elected European Parliament.
Irish supporters of the accord, including Brian Cowen, the Prime Minister, and the leading opposition party, are trying to neutralize claims the treaty would hand too much power to the EU, flood the Irish market with cheap foreign foods, let the EU jack up Ireland’s 12.5% business-tax rate, or even drag the country into foreign wars.
[Perhaps because other countries have experienced the onslaught of crappy goods, cheaper labor, increased taxation and people are fed up. When people trumpet the power of the EU and the seeming decline of the US, I just smile and realize human behavior will sort it all out, eventually.]
Passage of the new EU blueprint would end almost two decades of tinkering with its institutional arrangements, starting with the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 that paved the way for the common currency.
Back then, the bloc was a cluster of a dozen countries rooted in the reconciliation of France and Germany after a more than a century of war, from Napoleon to Hitler.
After expansion in 2004 into former communist nations in eastern Europe, today’s EU is closer to the instability of the Caucasus and Middle East, and the economic confidence of its welfare states has been shaken by rising powers such as China and India.
“We’re not a little club of 12 that can sit together and discuss things through,” said Sara Hagemann, an analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels.
Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said there is little evidence of a consensus for a more assertive European foreign policy.
“Whatever’s happening on treaties, I see very little sign that the major powers and even the minor powers are really willing to cede much authority,” he said.
(Beautiful country and very kind people. In the top 3 of the countries I would have a home, if I could afford another.)
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