O’Rourke: Voter disinterest poses threat to Lisbon

EFFORTS to pass the Lisbon Treaty could fail because voters don’t know or care what it’s about, one of the longest-serving government members has warned.

But it seems the EU also has doubts about Ireland’s ability to make a mature decision given the public vote to send Dustin the Turkey to Eurovision.

The two-way concern over Ireland’s response to the treaty emerged as Margot Wallstrom, vice-president of the European Commission, addressed the Oireachtas committee on EU affairs.

Committee member Mary O’Rourke said there was a “miasma of misunderstanding” around the treaty and EU affairs in general which made engaging with the public on the subject “very onerous”.

“The difficulty for us is when you go to a public meeting no matter how open we aim to be, no matter how discursive we wish to be, nobody likes, lumps or has interest in Europe,” she said. “It’s a very daunting task to be faced with a wall of non-interest, sometimes verging on hostile, sometimes verging on ‘I couldn’t care less’.”

She told Ms Wallstrom: “We don’t like the language, we don’t like the sentences, we don’t like the clauses. We don’t understand them. This in my mind is what will cause us to falter at the last step — the step of getting Lisbon through.”

Some of those concerns appear to be shared by Ms Wallstrom, who also has responsibility for the commission’s communications strategy and has pioneered use of the web to reach out to EU citizens.

In her daily online blog, written as she set out on her trip to Ireland, she began: “How can you trust a country to have a serious vote when its citizens have recently voted to have a puppet turkey represent it in the Eurovision song contest?!”

Ms Wallstrom quickly added: “I joke of course…” but she signed off her entry with: “Meantime, I will report back soon on my visit to Ireland. Oh yes, and have a look at the Irish Eurovision entry. All I can say is Oh. My. God…”

The EU affairs committee did not get around to discussing Dustin, their questions to Ms Wallstrom instead focusing on the likely implications of the treaty on taxation, farming, vetoes, intellectual property rights and the role of the Dáil.

The vice-president began answering the questions but was cut short when the committee broke up in panic because the members had to get to the Dáil chamber for a vote on pharmaceutical pricing. Ms Wallstrom promised to write to them with her answers.

Wallstrom: Friendly face of EC

MARGOT WALLSTROM is the friendly face of the European Commission whose popularity in her native Sweden and beyond earned her the job of the EU’s top communications official, tasked with bridging the gulf between officialdom and the citizenry it serves.

A member of the Swedish parliament at age 24, she was also a media executive before entering EU politics and her experience has been brought to bear in rolling out a plethora of information initiatives utilising the internet, TV and radio.

EUtube — a continually updated scrapbook of EU news and events with unedited comments by viewers — is hosted by YouTube and has proved a hit. It can be found on www.youtube.com/eutube

Ms Wallstrom also announced this week a €6 million annual fund to help radio stations jointly create and exchange programmes on EU affairs. Broadcasters from 15 countries have joined the consortium, which is due to begin transmitting programmes from April, but none are from Ireland.

Ms Wallstrom’s own blog, and those of a few other commissioners who have followed her example, can be found on http://blogs.ec.europa.eu.