The heavy hand of Brussels
While many wonder when our frustrated and desperate citizens will take to the streets, the truth may be that they are learning now what farmers have known for years — that Brussels is the real capital.
Bankrolled by the Common Agricultural Policy, farmers have found it relatively easy to live under EU directives.
This year, they will find it particularly challenging to cope with the EU’s milk quota restrictions — but other restrictions such as the Nitrates Directive are now fairly well assimilated here.
And farmers don’t take Brussels directives lying down. Through their organisations and elected representatives, and in turn through our Government’s representatives in Brussels, they have lobbied and had major input into the framing of the EU directives and of the Irish legislation for enacting them.
As far as farmers are concerned, our Government’s main role has been as their “go-between” to get the best deal from the EU.
Now, when the European Commission has been joined by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund in looking over our Government’s shoulder (because this troika controls our €85 billion bailout), our broader population are getting used to government from Brussels (and Frankfurt and Washington).
In this scenario, it is sectors which can organise well that will get heard in these faraway centres of power (of course, riots in the streets would also get noticed).
For example, IFA does a professional job representing more than 87,000 Irish farmers — and it is no accident that their Director of European Affairs, based in Brussels, has a key position.
The other farm organisations also ensure that our elected representatives are made fully aware of farmers’ needs in EU-inspired government policy and legislation.
Now, the IFA machine has whirred into action to tackle the latest apparent bombshell from Brussels — the proposal that farmers will have to apply for planning permission, or get environmental impact assessments carried out, before reclaiming wetlands, and will need Department of Agriculture permission to remove field boundaries, or convert semi-natural areas to intensive agriculture.
Once again, the EU is behind this, with a European Court of Justice judgment putting the Government under pressure to act. The EU has protection of the environment in mind, but farmers and their organisations will make sure their interests also are protected, in the eventual legislation.
The EU is twisting Ireland’s arm on a number of environmental matters — such as waste disposal, groundwater, urban waste water treatment, the Water Framework Directive, waste electrical and electronic equipment, marine environmental policy, and fuel quality.
However, external control of Irish life is being brought to a new level by the bailout troika which is largely dictating our national economic programme.
Ministers now must effectively have their decisions “signed off” by the troika, which played a major role in recent government moves such as the jobs initiative and the reversal of the minimum wage.
Another commitment in the agreement with the EU/IMF troika is to reform and review social protection so it provides a bridge for people dependent on payments into a job, training or education, according to Social Protection Minister Joan Burton. Major changes are likely to emerge from that.
Another EU/IMF requirement is for an economic analysis of the impact on competition and consumer prices of eliminating or relaxing the floor-space cap on retail premises. Who knows where that will lead to for our surviving small-scale shopkeepers?
Rule from Europe can work for Ireland. After all, it is a tribute to the all-pervasive EU Common Agricultural Policy that our agri-food sector has emerged in reasonable shape from our economic ruins.
No decisions are made in Europe without exhaustive input from the 27 member states. However, directives (or bank interest rates) that work well in central Europe may look strange in the Irish context — which is why they must be radically tweaked when being put into our national legislation.
Well-meaning EU directives can present huge obstacles here — like the environmental protection directives which are deep freezing our fish farming sector’s great potential for the economy and for coastal and rural development, for example. EU laws on turf-cutting are ending centuries-old rural practices.
For farmers, these disadvantages of rule from Europe can be set against the €1.2 billion they get in direct payments per year, market support, and access to 250 million consumers.
For others, however, the heavy hand of Brussels and the troika is harder to bear.
