Enough of this nonsense

THE lay citizen, desperately trying to inform himself and herself, will be under-impressed by the latest round of the Berlin/Paris “pas de deux”. So, too, will the markets, but they at least will be able to make money on their pessimism.

When the euro was established, the warnings were clear, (but ignored), that it would not work unless it was backed by strong institutions and procedures of a federal character — as the term “federal” is understood on mainland Europe, in the US and many other states across the world. Not as it is “misunderstood” in the Tory gentlemen’s clubs in London — and slavishly aped here in Ireland.

We never had “economic sovereignty” in this tiny player. Never could. But when Sean Lemass became Taoiseach in 1959, he was able to facilitate the adaptation of the mindset behind Arthur Griffith’s understandable but delusional and hugely wasteful dream of literal self-sufficiency. And, of course, his own Lemassian pursuit of the same goals in the 30s. The irony was that we actually gained massively in our real capacity to exercise genuine “sovereignty” on the ground — enabling us to choose how we wanted to be ourselves.

How we then decided to throw away that advantage is — tragically and truly treacherously — “scéal eile”!

Europe, and the day-to-day future of its people, does not belong to two German and French non-leaders — electorally-obsessed with their own personal futures. Europe and what it offers belongs to all of us, most of all the ‘little countries’.

The conventional process of European institution-building is, precisely because it is ultra-democratic and law-based, too slow and complex to deal appropriately with this life-and-death emergency. It requires all of us to think outside the box, to jump together and to initiate a short to mid-term quantum leap. As the American insurgents concluded in the 1770s and 1780s — most specifically in their 1787 constitution — if we do not “hang together” we shall assuredly “hang separately”.

And where is the Government, very particularly our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamon Gilmore, in all this? Telling the partners, and very specifically the “little fellas”, how it is? Making it clear that we have had enough of this nonsense? Or, like Paddy with his cap in hand, only too pleased to lick the plates after the Bourbon banquet in Versailles?

Maurice O’Connell

Tralee

Co Kerry