Rightly or wrongly, Lisbon II is being framed as an economic choice

THE likelihood of Lisbon surviving could hinge on the dominant issue in this campaign – the economy and employment prospects.

Rightly or wrongly Lisbon II has been framed as a choice on our future economic policy. Yes for recovery and Lisbon for jobs, shout the pro-treaty clique.

And the No camp point to the imminent prospect of 500,000 being on the dole as proof the EU is not working for Ireland.

Employment was raised in negotiations with Europe before June’s guarantees were finalised. A commitment on workers’ rights was included, albeit as a more woolly legal declaration than the protocols on abortion and neutrality.

Far from this taking the issue off the table it has served to agitate anti-Lisbon campaigners from the left and right.

The most dominant poster of the campaign has been the claim by Coir that the minimum wage could drop to €1.84, a contrived argument drawing on the average minimum wage in the accession countries.

These have been the themes of Lisbon II. And this is peculiar.

It is peculiar for the economy and employment to have featured so prominently after being largely ignored in early 2008. Yet in a perverse way it is understandable.

When the last referendum was held the Government was still whistling Dixie and skipping past the economic graveyard.

It was only afterwards, as borrowing became more expensive and relationships cooled, that the economy became more important to the discussion.

But on economic grounds there is little explicitly in Lisbon to advance Ireland’s cause beyond what is already in the Nice Treaty.

There are protocols attached to the Treaty which have some effect.

Eurozone ministers can meet informally to discuss currency responsibilities, for instance.

And technical relations surrounding the European central and investment banks are clarified.

Another protocol gives legal status to the Laval Judgment, which has formed the basis of the controversial minimum wage disputes and has been cited by both sides as proof workers’ rights will/will not be safeguarded.

Meanwhile our life support machine, the European Central Bank, is not one of the main tenants of the Treaty, nor is its membership, policy or priorities.

Instead the economic arguments in the campaign have been more abstract.

The Yes side have said we need the goodwill and support of our neighbours.

In recent weeks this has become more prominent. Pro-Lisbon business and trade union leaders have not trusted the Government to do their bidding.

Intel pumped more than €100,000 into campaigning and Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has found himself in the unlikely position of standing as an ally of the Government.

But the sanctuary the Yes camp have found in the economic arguments is likely to bewilder European watchers already confused about our consistently bi-polar relationship with the European project in the last decade.

Because, after apportioning a large part of the blame for the rejection of Treaty in June 2008 on the fact people did not understand the content of Lisbon, the Yes camp has pitched its defence on an aspect of Europe engagement which is not altered by Lisbon.

Moreover Lisbon is actually designed to move the focus of the Union even further from the predominantly economic ideals of the original European Coal and Steel Community project and towards a more political union.

The Government’s own explanation White Paper produced before the first referendum said as much.

“The Government believed that the Convention and the Intergovernmental Council were correct to avoid a root-and-branch overhaul of all internal policies.

“The Government is particularly pleased that the essential elements relating to the internal market, Economic and Monetary Union and the Common Agricultural Policy remain unchanged,” it said.

Yet still all the main political parties are using the transfusion of billions of euro of ECB bonds for us to revive the banking sector as an excuse to back the Treaty. This would not change under Lisbon although the message is that decision makers may be less inclined to answer our calls.

At the Oireachtas committee on European Affairs last week Sinn Féin asked Labour party leader Eamon Gilmore to square this circle.

His answer captured succinctly the Yes side’s theory.

“We must accept that getting out of our economic difficulty will involve collaboration with our neighbours in Europe. We will disagree on certain issues and we will have various arguments about what is happening with regard to our economy but to get out of the economic hole which Ireland, Europe and the world are in will require that we work with our neighbours,” he said.

He said a union that was not obsessed with reforming administration, which Lisbon does deal with, could respond better to economic crises.

However, economic issues will no longer have a near-monopoly regarding the attention of EU policy makers under Lisbon as the treaty will assume more political, defence and justice provisions.

And despite both sides clinging to economic arguments in this sphere it is a wishy-washy deal.

A victory in the initial negotiation of the treaty was to secure a commitment from the union to chase a goal of “full employment” rather high level of employment.

But such grand commitments ring hollow after a year in which a quarter of a million people lost their jobs.