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Sorry about the title. I've been trying to blog about the Irish referendum and the "no" vote on the Lisbon Treaty for a few days, but have just kept leaving it, partly because I wanted to see what more public reactions have been like, to let some of the hysteria and anti-European triumphalism run its course first.
And besides my baby is teething and was Father's Day and all that takes up extra time to deal with.
More on why that matters in a moment*.
So I've had the luxury of being able to hear David Miliband being very sensible about it all on the Andrew Marr Sunday AM show on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00c4y37.shtml?order =aztitle%3Aalphabetical&filter=category%3A100005&scope=iplayercategories&start=1&version_pid=b00c4xxn should link to the show on BBCi player) and to read both the excellent Observer editorial http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/15/eu.ireland1 and the perplexing Will Hutton piece http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/15/eu.ireland on the issue in Sunday's Observer newspaper.
I said last time I commented on this that there was nothing wrong with wanting to preserve the status quo even if the Treaty of Nice is a fairly awful deal, particularly for the newer member States. My friend Jon Worth has been trying to think it through too http://www.jonworth.eu/irish-vote-no-some-calm-respect/#comments.
But the consequences of the "no" vote are potentially huge, because although there is no "if you can't abide by it,get out" clause in the Treaty of Nice, there is in the Lisbon Treaty, the one the Irish have now rejected.
So if the other 26 Member States support the Lisbon Treaty, what happens with Ireland? No one is entirely sure. Are they in the full EU, or do they become kind of asociate members? If so, how? Are they part of EEA (bound by EU single market rules but unable to vote on them)? What happens with their membership of the Euro?
Will Hutton points out a further worrying scenario - the future possibility of a British government campaigning for an Irish "no" vote and both Ireland and the UK ending up leaving the EU.
This should be a really shocking thought. It says much about media and public attitudes towards the EU that it is even able to be contemplated let alone seen as a good thing by some people.
But I've got really cross about something - the smug voices saying things like "the Irish vote doesn't matter because the EU without Ireland can carry on but without France it would've been unthinkable".
I'm passionate about the fundamental ideas of the EU (an end to war in Europe, the right to live and work anywhere you damn well please without discrimination, a strong voice against the big bads of climate change, international crime and terrrorism, that sort of thing).
But I'm not really liking the implementation at present, or the prospect of an arrogant response.
Even now, MEPs and others in Brussels are looking for cunning ways around the Irish "problem".
I am annoyed about these "carry on oblivious" voices. This is not what it's all supposed to be about.
I mentioned before the issue of what's turned out to be "52% of the voting population of 4 million does not a majority of a Union of nearly 500 million make" and that it might be a problem but that it was democracy. those saying it need to stop for a moment - they'd be hard pressed to find the populus of each Member State actively aware of and in favour of the Lisbon Treaty and shouldn't pretend that it's the case.
Why are people in Brussels thinking that way? This whole referendum issue has been in part a reaction against the political elites, so who are they?
For me, we've partly ourselves to blame.
Our party system that elects MEPs prizes a candidate's ability to go out campaigning for a party over any ability to do the job. But that's the same for choosing suitable people for national parliamentary seats. Only those with the money to give their time for free, especially in the evenings (or employed by a party) stand much chance and are therefore something of a self-selecting group.
For MEPs we've also broken the consituency link, handing power to the political parties so mavericks liked by the people but not by the party will never make it high up the party lists. Fir those that get on, surviving to the next elections means doing what the parties require in order to remain on the list. So political elite is probably fair.
What about the bureaucrats? Look at the Concours as an example of why things are like this… that's the exam to become an official working in the EU institutions for those of you that don't speak Eurojargon.
The problem with this entrance exam is that it’s not based on people having the skills to carry out decent public administration. In prizing this knowledge over skills and experience, the people employed can be moulded to a certain way of thinking, and of seeing the world.
I should put my hand up at this point and admit possible bias by saying that I have actually sat and failed a Concours, and part of the reason for that was that I was busy doing a job that should have made me eminently qualified to pass but actually meant I had less time than I needed to mug up on legislative trivia. Recruitment to the Administrative grades (ie the ones that mainly make policy) is only at the lowet levels, so those higher up are people that have got on by thinking the way that their management structure have prized.
But given those making the policy enter on the basis of the ability to memorise and justify what is already there, and the majority of the population will find that body of stuff (the "acquis") obscure and archane it's a bit depressing that all anyone in a position to change it seems concerned about is the languages candidates can speak.
The point is that looking for wiggle room feels like exactly the wrong solution.
In the UK for example, 30-odd years of press and political distortion of what the EU is and does does not help get the poeple to understand what they are involved in (learn to love is probably too much - I'm not sure I know anyone outside a dictatorshop or the USA that would say they love their public administration).
Having a democratic Convention to draw up the Constitutional Treaty (not Lisbon) was supposed to solve this in part. The problem was (and is) that beyond government only those that are strongly pro a European state or anti anything more than a free trade agreement every really get involved.
And a simple two page document understandable for all becomes 400 pages covering every interest group or government’s pet issue.
Having Giscard d'Estaing - who chaired the Convention and wanted a glorious Constitution - muttering in the margins about similarities has not helped Lisbon. Lisbon is a different beast, not just because it is an amending Treaty which is a point so technocratic as to be meaningless to most people, but because the opt-ins and outs are different and it is possible for it to mean diferent things to different Member States. But again that's a complex argument based on the reality, not a soundbite that makes a good headline Easier just to say "no".
Not everything in Lisbon was self-evidently wonderful but nor was it monstrous. Compromises between so many governments (which through the nature of the democratic process are already taking a compromise view when they go to negotiate) are always going to be hard to sell… the EU is unique in requiring popular consent to an international Treaty-making process and in the effects those Treaties have in citizens’ daily lives.
It's no longer enough to expect every widening of the EU in terms of the number of Member States to be followed by a "deepening" i.e. an expansion of the policy areas in which the EU operates. Even if the political elites in Member States and in Brussels will it, more self-confident populations demand to know what, and why and the chance to re-examine what is.
A referendum is not necessarily the best way of doing it... I've noticed that neither side really feels they need to tell the truth and the pros have just been letting it drift for a long time and not explaining why we are working together (as for statements like "British jobs for British workers", surely everyone spotted the flaw there...?). A frank and open national conversation would be better but no one would really put up with that without some sort of conclusion to it.
But who am I to say? What do you want?
* the teething? My point is that most people have lotsof other stuff going on in their lives and don't really want to have to make time to think about this sort of thing. Who has time to sit down and work out exactly what the implications of each of the Treaty articles could mean in the course of their daily lives? |
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Posted by rose22 on 2008-06-17 15:48:47 | Rating: | Views: 83
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Other bloggers looking at this too, obviously. This one from Jeremy Hargreaves is quite amusing... http://www.jeremyhargreaves.org/blog/2008/why-the-irish -no-is-not-just-some-good-clean-fun/
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Posted by rose22
on 2008-06-17 17:53:01
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Have you thought about combining the pro-EU stuff with the coaching? Some sort of roving ambassador going explaining political shenanigans to those of us who regard it all with suspicion? (I mean all politics, not just EU.)
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Posted by Angelfeet
on 2008-06-18 16:10:43
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