Ireland and the Nice Treaty after the election

Ireland and the Nice Treaty after the election

In the light of recent Irish elections, Paul Gillespie, analyses the sombre prospects for ratification of the Nice Treaty later this year.

The Irish general election has strongly renewed the mandate of the outgoing coalition parties, Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats, both of which increased their share of the votes and seats in the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament. It is not yet known whether Fianna Fail will form a government on its own, with the support of Independents, or renew its coalition with the Progressive Democrats; on balance, the latter option is more likely.

The most striking result of the election was the collapse of the main opposition party, which lost 42% of its seats on a smaller reduction of 16.5% of its share of the popular vote compared to the last general election in 1997. Such are the vagaries of Ireland’s distinctive proportional representation system using the single transferable vote in multi-seat constituencies. The main beneficiaries are Sinn Fein, the Greens and a host of Independents, in addition to the outgoing coalition parties. The Labour Party has barely held its position.

Both outgoing parties are committed to hold another referendum on the Nice Treaty, in the belief that the other Member States would not agree to change the treaty and that the vote should not hold up enlargement. The treaty was rejected by the Irish electorate in June 2001 by a margin of 54% to 46%, on a very low turnout of 35%. In fact the No vote declined as a proportion of the electorate from 21% in the 1998 referendum on the Amsterdam Treaty (which was passed), to 18% on Nice. The referendum was effectively decided by those who did not vote because a significantly higher proportion of past Yes voters than No ones stayed at home. This failure to deal comprehensively and seriously with such a vital issue has convinced leaders of the mainstream parties it is necessary to bring it before the people again.

The election campaign revealed few explicit clues about whether the treaty is more likely to be passed in a second referendum, because the issue hardly surfaced in political debates between the parties and leaders. This may seem surprising, given that so much potentially hangs on the issue. But it seems to confirm a wider trend in recent European politics whereby political leaders go into denial about EU issues during election campaigns. They are either excluded as intrusively foreign, or domesticated as if they were decided at national level.

As European Commissioner Antonio Vitorino put it in a recent speech to European journalists in Lisbon, it is therefore “extremely difficult to launch a European debate.” He related this phenomenon to another well-established practice in all the Member States, whereby governments and ministers tend to blame Brussels for unpopular decisions and claim national credit for popular ones, even though they are part and parcel of the decision-making process in the Council of Ministers. As he put it, if you do that “you can’t then expect voters to vote for EU referendums.”

Missed opportunity

The suggestion that a second Nice referendum should have been held on the same day as the general election in order to optimise turnout was firmly rejected by the outgoing government, because they thought it would give a fillip to parties that had successfully opposed the treaty in the first one. The election outcome tends to confirm their fears. The Sinn Fein party, which grew from one to five seats in the Dail on a vote increase of 2.5% to 6.5%, and the Greens, which grew from two to six seats (2.8% to 3.9% in votes), both oppose a second referendum, especially if it is unaccompanied by any substantive change in the treaty in response to popular reservations.

Their organisatio ns emerge strengthened from the campaign and emboldened to inflict another defeat on the establishment. In contrast, the failure of the pro-Nice parties to use the campaign to raise awareness was a missed opportunity. Fine Gael, the most Europhile party, will be slow to recover from this blow and hardly in a position to campaign vigorously in favour of the Nice treaty again. Labour now faces competition on its left from parties which opposed the treaty last time. The incoming government will face difficulties with state finances in addition to the Nice question.

The missed opportunity shows up in the latest opinion poll on the Nice issue in The Irish Times, reflecting views four days before voting. Opinion is evenly divided, with 32% in favour of the treaty, 32% against, 32% don’t knows and only 4% saying they would not vote. That shows a slippage towards the No side and the Don’t Knows from a previous poll in January, an impression confirmed by answers to a question measuring attitudes towards European integration.

Many people resent being asked to vote a second time and are frustrated by a lack of explanation of what the treaty means. This is in spite of the useful work carried out from October 2001 to March this year by the all-party National Forum on Europe (except for Fine Gael which refused to participate in it), which examined the treaty and the questions it deals with, including EU enlargement and the debate on the future of Europe, hearing many speakers from other EU member and accession states. While this has improved the quality of debate among and between the political leaderships, it has not been communicated effectively to the electorate.

In the face of such confusion and hostility a major task faces those in favour of the treaty if they are to carry it in a second referendum. The incoming government will seek a declaration from the forthcoming Seville European Council that nothing in the treaty compromises Ireland’s military neutrality. This was one of the issues arising in the campaign last year and the debate since then; but a political declaration would not be legally binding and would fall well short of the protocol demanded by some of its opponents and by constitutional entrenchment of neutrality by others. The outgoing government has also announced plans for substantial reform of parliamentary scrutiny of EU legislation and negotiations. The whole affair has exposed a great deal of dissatisfaction about such procedures at Irish and Union levels and much ignorance about how EU business is conducted.

Increasing Irish indifference

That comes on top of significant changes in Irish attitudes towards integration. While high levels of overall enthusiasm for the EU continue, as do levels of belief that Ireland has benefited from membership, recent years have seen Ireland converge towards the EU average on Eurobarometer measures of indifference towards the Union. There has been a political failure to articulate and communicate Ireland’s changing interests and values as it successfully caught up with EU income levels.

While this success depends centrally on access to EU markets and an ability to remain in its political mainstream, arguments have surfaced within the political class about whether deeper integration would necessarily compromise the low taxation regime on which both the outgoing parties believe Ireland’s economic success depends. That tended to cast a negative shadow over the first Nice referendum, which communicated itself to those who normally support treaty change. In the process there was a tendency to forget or overlook the many ways in which the EU enabled Ireland to develop by providing a benign framework for dealing with an increasingly internationalised world, in which Ireland is one of the most globalised states of all.

The major interest groups and the most important ministers in the incoming government realise how vital it will be to win another referendum on Nice and to explain more effectively that it opens the legal and institutional way to EU enlargement. They understand clearly that Ireland’s continuing success depends on remaining in the EU mainstream, rather than becoming marginalised if the treaty is rejected again. They will argue that many of the dissatisfactions about integration and democracy expressed in the last campaign are best tackled through the Convention on the Future of Europe and the inter-governmental conference to follow it. That will require them to articulate a vision about the desirable direction of integration overall, on which many of those who voted No or abstained need to be reassured.

Nice – Time is running out

But there is precious little political time between now and October/November within which to develop such a vision and mobilise potential support. The referendum will be won by whichever side manages to mobilise the large “don’t know” constituency. That will require confidence, passion and conviction in the Yes campaign, matching that displayed by the disparate groups which combined to defeat the referendum last year. The art of convincing them to vote Yes will be to combine a positive account of how Ireland’s future development can be charted within the EU with a clear warning that Ireland must choose between being in or out of the European mainstream. There is a growing awareness that Ireland could suffer more if it is used as a scapegoat and blamed for holding up enlargement by states that covertly oppose it or want to se it delayed. That may include some states whose governments have recently shifted to the centre-right.

The incoming government is likely to adopt a defensive attitude towards the Convention on the Future of Europe, in keeping with the outgoing one. Its representative on the convention, former European Commissioner Ray McSharry, has opposed “grandiose” plans for changing the EU’s structures and policies. The government is concerned that ambitious or radical ideas for change, including those of the European Commission, may reinforce No voters. There is little stomach to pursue them. Ireland’s other representatives on the convention, Prionsias De Rossa, MEP and John Bruton TD, are more adventurous. If the referendum is to be won it will have to be fought confidently on this broader terrain.

There is little sign, in Dublin or Brussels, that serious attention has yet been given to alternative ways of proceeding if Nice is rejected a second time. In theory they could include putting some of the Nice Treaty terms into the accession treaties and reopening the remaining questions in the 2003/4 Inter-Governmental Conference. There are also fears that the other Member States would devise a means of going ahead with the treaty without Ireland. The Seville summit will encourage more such speculation. But the main news from Dublin is that the incoming government is determined to fight a second referendum, but will have its work cut out to win it.

Paul Gillespieis Foreign Editor of The Irish Times .He is active in the Irish Institute of European Affairs and a member of the editorial board of the EPC’s on-line journal “Challenge Europe”.

For more analyses see The European Policy Centre’s

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