EU referendum optimists are only fooling themselves at this stage

THE prospects for the EU constitution will be weighing on Bertie Ahern’s mind over the next week and on this - as on many issues - he will be conflicted.

This time last year he was in the chair of the European Council meeting in Brussels and he skilfully shepherded his colleagues to agree a final text for the constitution. It was the crowning achievement of a successful Irish presidency.

This day next week Bertie Ahern will meet with his fellow heads of government again at a European Council meeting, but this time in very different circumstances after the No votes in France and the Netherlands.

On one level, Bertie Ahern will feel the need to be the good European and to work with his colleagues to devise an agreed approach to advance the ratification process for the constitution. However, on another level, the Taoiseach must know that the prospects of succeeding in a referendum in Ireland have now diminished considerably.

In reality, there is private relief among many in both Government parties and even within the cabinet itself that the referendum on the EU constitution, which had been pencilled in for next autumn, is now unlikely to go ahead.

Some had serious reservations about the treaty all along - others now know that the French and Dutch votes have dealt it a near fatal blow. Those who are still convinced that such a referendum can be won in Ireland are fooling themselves. The fact that large turnouts in two of the EU’s founding member states have decisively rejected the constitutional treaty has changed the situation radically.

The failure of the referenda in France and the Netherlands is likely to create a domino effect in those other states where referenda are planned. In the last week polls in Denmark, which is due to vote in September, have shown a dramatic jump in the numbers likely to vote No.

Even in Luxembourg, where a referendum is due next month, there is now a real prospect that the constitution could be rejected. In Britain, where some of the recent polls have shown a four-to-one majority against the constitution, Tony Blair has bowed to the inevitable and put plans for a referendum on ice.

It wasn’t as if the European constitution didn’t already come with a number of political handicaps. One fundamental problem is that this treaty has no grand idea behind it. The last occasion on which the peoples of some of Europe’s countries were asked to vote in referenda of this kind was the Nice Treaty.

The main purpose of that treaty was to facilitate the enlargement of the EU to encompass the former Soviet countries of central and eastern Europe.

In Ireland, for example, there was, at least by the time of the second Nice referendum, a real sense that the peoples of these emerging democracies and fledging economies deserved the same opportunity we had with EU membership.

Although it was by a large majority, the Yes vote in the second Nice referendum in Ireland was a reluctant one. The view of many middle ground Irish voters was that even if the additional pooling of sovereignty came at a price, then that price was counter-balanced by a contribution we could make to the wider process of the post Cold War reconfiguration of Europe.

This time around, by comparison, there is no grand political vision behind the latest instalment of European integration which the constitution represents.

Even the supporters of the constitution talk about its purpose in minimalist terms. This constitutional treaty is said to be about no more than “consolidating existing arrangements,” “pulling all the earlier treaties together” or implementing a couple of “innovations” to its decision-making. However, institutional housekeeping or constitutional codification are not the stuff to get political passions raised on your side of a cause.

Much of the analysis of the referendum outcomes in France and the Netherlands has tried to explain the defeats away as being due to peculiar national issues.

They have sought to portray the French and the Dutch as nations uneasy with themselves, languishing in economic stagnation, with unpopular governments and hankering after a European social model which has passed its sell-by date.

However, even if these were the reasons for the No votes (and they may not be), then the fact that the electorates of these countries were persuaded by this kaleidoscope of reasons for voting against the treaty merely illustrates the absence of any pressing reasons for voting for it.

The characterisation of this constitutional treaty as merely a minimalist consolidating exercise is itself questioned by many here in Ireland - and not only by the usual line-up of Eurosceptics.

FOR example, in a significant paper delivered to a conference organised by the Irish Centre for European Law in March one of this country’s leading constitutional experts, Gerard Hogan, a senior counsel and law lecturer in Trinity College, raised a number of concerns which he sees arising from the inclusion of the EU’s charter of fundamental rights in the European constitution.

He argues that the adoption of the constitution with that charter included would undermine our independent constitutional tradition, particularly in the area of fundamental rights, and would restrict our capacity to choose which economic or social model we wish to live by.

It was the latest in a series of speeches by Hogan on the European constitution which have apparently unnerved elements of the civil service, and the various Europhile groups who had expected to inform the Yes side of the referendum debate in Ireland and who had hoped to portray the constitution as merely a tidying up exercise.

Although this aspect of the debate has to date been confined to legal, academic or official circles, it would have percolated more widely through our political system and media as a referendum campaign got going here.

In fact, the reach and significance of the charter of fundamental rights was likely to have become one of the main issues in an Irish referendum campaign - much of it acting to tilt the scales against ratification.

Of course, there would also be the usual concerns about whether the increased centralisation of Europe’s role in foreign and security policy impacts on our neutrality and the usual scaremongering from Eurosceptics on one or two other issues.

All of these, taken with the rejections in France and the Netherlands, would wear away at the thin overlay of Irish support for the European integration project. Without any pressing political reason to vote for it, the referendum is likely to be defeated in Ireland by a margin even greater than the Nice Treaty was in the first referendum.

A No vote on the constitution in Ireland will only do the cause of Europe further damage here. Bertie Ahern and his colleagues should park the constitution-building, for a few years at least, and instead allow time to bed down the recent ten-country enlargement.

They might be wise to follow advice from the former British chancellor, Kenneth Clarke - an unusual entity in that he is a pro-European Tory.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, Clarke argued that the priority now should be to “forget rule changes for the foreseeable future... and get on with the real business of the union.”