Have your say in EU co-op
The Parliamentarians we elected last week could become more powerful than any of their predecessors, depending on the outcome of the European Convention's attempts to devise a fair voting and decision making scheme for up to 28 member states.
The majority of farmers made sure they had an input, by going along to vote, a good habit which is encouraged among farmers by their strong involvement in co-operatives.
For farmers, the EU is, in effect, by far the most important co-operative in their lives. Brussels decides farming prosperity; a decision like last year's agreement to decouple subsidies can turn farming on its head.
As in co-operatives, a democratic system of government is needed if all member states are to have a fair input into such momentous decisions.
The 1958 Treaty of Rome laid down the rules for qualified majority voting in the EEC 6, as it was then. The big three Germany, France and Italy got four votes each, Belgium and the Netherlands got two each and Luxembourg got one vote.
A qualified majority of 12 of the 17 total votes was needed to make a decision.
Even this simple system for six countries had its flaws.
Luxembourg's one vote gave it no power, because any coalition that had enough votes to win could always push through its decision with or without Luxembourg. However, as it turned out, qualified majority voting was used rarely until 1973, when the UK, Denmark and Ireland joined the EU.
Since then, Luxembourg's votes have turned out to be crucial in a surprisingly large number of coalitions. Maybe that is why Luxembourg now gets more from Brussels per person than any other member state, even though its citizens are already the EU's richest by far.
Ireland cannot complain either, having enough voting strength to win huge amounts of financial aid from Brussels over the years, much of which has ended up on our farms.
That would not have happened if every person in the EU had an equal say in Brussels decision making. Such a system would give Germany, for example, 2,000% more power than Ireland.
Nor would equal power per member state work well, that would give Luxembourgers 160 times more power per person than Germans.
The answer, which steered between the two extremes, was the EU's qualified majority vote-weighting scheme.
But this decision-making structure designed for six member states would simply collapse under the weight of today's 25 members, set to increase to 27 or 28 within a few years.
So EU leaders started the search for a new viable voting system in 1996, but failed to agree. It was 2000 before they produced a range of workable reforms, but they all, however, broke the voting-power parity between France and Germany. The French objected and forced through the Nice Treaty voting system, which is now also seen to have failed to solve the enlarged EU's decision-making problems.
Hence the setting up of the European Convention, which came up with another voting scheme in its draft Constitutional Treaty.
But this is seen to have broken the Nice Treaty's parity between French and Spanish voting power, and it has been shot down by the Spanish.
EU leaders are still searching for a viable voting system eight years on, and their deadline is up now. At the crux of their dilemma is how many member states, or what proportion of the EU population, are needed to approve a Brussels decision.
Where they draw the lines could shift the power balances between member states, the Council of Ministers, the Commission and the Parliament.
By voting last week, Irish farmers did all they could to have their say in the Europe of the future. Citizens elect national governments, which then vote in the EU Council. As long as Irish farmers continue to vote, they continue to have a major say in the running of Europe, much more so than voters in the big member states.
Ireland's voters, with the population of a medium to small city in, say, Germany or the UK, have a real say, through the Government and European Parliament representatives they elect.
Long may that last.
