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I’m pro-Europe, but…
Read more about: Lisbon Treaty
For reasons that I’m still trying to understand, but which are real and cannot be written off, there has been a significant growth in eurosceptic sentiment in Ireland. But wait, I don’t mean that euroscepticism is suddenly widespread and deep. Nor that it was the key factor in the recent outcome. No, but it has expanded significantly.
The bulk of the country is still pretty much in favour of the European Union (minus Lisbon of course!). A eurobarometer survey in January showed that 87% of people thought Ireland had benefitted for EU membership. Pretty high. Yet underneath, and beside all this, is a growing constituency of doubt. At least doubt about the future of Europe.
That such overwhelming numbers are still positively disposed to the EU explains why the small but growing group of eurosceptics still couch their attitudes in pro-European tones. “I’m pro-Europe, but”. It would still be counter productive, they calculate, to be an all out sceptic. But sceptics they are.
I have heard No campaigners question how much Ireland benefitted from membership. A kind of ‘what about the fish’ argument. Or ‘what about the water charges‘. Or, even more obviously eurosceptic, ‘we can do most of these things better ourselves’.
But this kind of disguised euroscepticism is best embodied by the man of the hour, Declan Ganley. Ganley tells us he is not against Europe and not even against European integration. It’s just that he wants a more democratic Union. But then according to today’s Irish Times, Ganley wrote in an article for a US think tank a few years ago in which he “argued against the development of the European Union “in contradistinction” to the US.
(Funny too that the man whose platform was making the Union more transparent has refused to tell us where the money came from that funded his extravagant campaign. Oh yes, he’ll comply with the law, which is so weak that it means this – we shall never know)
But look. Ganley’s attacks on Lisbon though often made calmly contained a latent hostility that showed where the heart was when the tongue said “I’m pro-Europe but”. Perhaps the victory of the No side gave Ganley the boost he needed to throw off his mask, I don’t know. But his rush to join a group of virulent eurosceptics at Westminster in a mutual wankfest just after the vote makes it clear enough.
I have made some efforts to understand the motives of the majoritarian No vote, but thinking about the future I would be grateful for comments on the way forward:
1) Does Ireland want to get out of this mess?
2) What would that require?
3) Will Ireland support the will of other member states to implement the Treaty of Lisbon?
Ralf on drafting the EU constitution the member states agreed that for it to come into force that every country would have to approve. Now they don’t seem to think this any more. Why if the other member states had no intention of sticking by this did they say that in the first place?
Ireland wants to be in the EU but not at any price. That price has to be negociated.
I would believe that the main reason which in recent years has led to a general disillusionment with European affairs is the ability of national politicians to merely displace blame for various unpopular projects and initiatives and pass the buck onto the hefty bureaucracy in Brussels. Europe’s apparent lust for the centralizing of powers and gradual erosion of the powers of national parliaments has only enforced these sentiments. Perhaps some europhiles would like to label this as “euroscepticism” but I would think that a population’s demand for some sort of accountability and maintaining a permanent voice upon the Commission can hardly be seen as that.
I don’t fully share your analysis. I agree with you that Euroscepticism is growing in this country, but I disagree with your suspicions of Declan Ganley’s true feelings on the EU. What he has criticised is the idea of the EU becoming a rival of the US – not the EU’s existence itself.
I am one of those who voted yes to Amsterdam and Nice and for the first time found myself with no option but to vote no on this occasion. My underlying motivations for this – and I believe of most Irish no voters – is a sense that the European project is losing its way. We thought we had joined a democratic Europe, when in fact what is now happening is that the French and Dutch peoples’ democratically-expressed wishes against this blueprint in 2005 are being overridden by a pompous and highhanded elite in Brussels and their hangers-on in the rest of the EU. The Irish people hold democracy dear and will not be easily pushed into helping the politicians overthrow their electorates. It now seems we are to join the French and Dutch peoples as the next victim of coercion by the Eurofederalists – but with the crucial difference is that we have the protections of perhaps the most democratic constitution in the world (other than Switzerland) – thus helping prevent us being sold-out by our politicians like in 1800.
It is true that we have changed and that has impacted on our voting-intentions vis a vis EU treaties. But it is also true that the EU itself has changed – and not for the better. A once democraric union of cooperating nation states has crossed the line into coercion and dictatorship. As in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, your vote is not respected unless you vote ‘the right way’. But it has become worse since 1992 when the precedent of voting again after voting no began in Denmark over Maastricht. This time, 2 peoples – the French and Dutch – are not even being asked have they changed their minds. Well I’m sorry but I cannot bring myself to vote to overrule them and collaborate – Vichy-like – in handing their sovereignty and ours over to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
We have lost enough of our independence. Integration has gone very far, and I am reasonably content with the status-quo. I am one of the 80% of the Irish people who supports EU membership, but which I believe in general does not want to take it further regarding political integration. We want the EU as we know it to continue – not to evolve into a Federal Europe. Political-union is not what 1916 was about. I refuse to be cowed or coerced. Either Cowen returns to us with a substantially renegotiated treaty abolishing the new voting system and the self-amending provisions of Article 48, opting us out from the Charter and retaining our Commissioner and vetoes (other perhaps than space policy), or I will again vote no.
Thank you for summing up my own views, Future.
I cannot believe that we are the only peoples in Europe to think like this. Maybe we are but I doubt it. While we will remain a country deeply committed to Europe I think the reception we are getting in the corridors of power will certainly harden the no vote. If Brian Cowen is going to rerun this in Spring then he will need to have sevral goodies on the table otherwise the EU will back itself into a crisis. Maybe with a new EU president in January the environement might be more favourbale.
A spring referendum would do the Yes meps no favours and I bet they are praying every night to the child of prague to influence the chech court and put this baby to rest.
I cannot understand those people who see the EU as a threat to our identiy and culture. For me the EU is the best hope for us to keep our culture alive and distinct. A powerful entity containing atleast 27 different cultures has to establish and maintain structures that allow various cultures to thrive. That is exactly what the EU has been doing and will continue to do.
For hundreds of years Ireland has stuggled to get free from the dominance of its nearest neighbour. Now that we are in that happy situation we see those who claim to speak for the men of 1916 working against the EU.
Its the celebrating UKIP members who really understand the consequence (whatever the intention) of our ‘No’ vote. It weakens the EU and increases their chances of re-creating the strong United Kingdom of old. What would the men of 1916 think of that?
Shall “Europe” always be defined and determined by the political elite?
A better constitution: http://www.FreeEurope.info
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