Why Europe’s gift-wrapped elite just won’t take no for an answer
The bad news is that it looks like jobs for the boys are their principal focus.
Yes, you guessed it, as the continent faces into its worst economic recession for two decades, the Eurocrats will devote most of their energies to their favourite subject, empire-building.
But the only new jobs that would flow from ratification of the Lisbon Treaty will be a president of Europe, a European foreign minister and the staff for scores of EU embassies in far-flung parts of the world.
In fairness, one new job that might — just might — arise from the meeting of heads of government will find favour back home: a guaranteed seat at the table for Ireland for a few more years at least, if voters here do as they are told in a second referendum.
Still, if all this sounds as though Ireland’s no vote is being disregarded you would be correct. Mere voters have the right to slow down the train to Europe’s divinely ordained destiny but not to throw the architects of Lisbon back to the drawing board.
You are allowed any amount of plush gift-wrapping, but it’s the same old treaty inside. Not one dot or comma, let alone word, will have been changed.
The European elite’s high-handedness, not to mention blatant disregard for their own rulebook, is the subject of a timely and acute new EU phrase book from the civil liberties group, the Manifesto Club, launched in Brussels on Monday night. This is one guide to Europe’s modus operandi you will be able to understand. The beauty is that the author, Josie Appleton, lets Europe’s leaders speak for themselves, in all their pomposity. For them, no can never really mean no.
Appleton quotes the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht: “Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”
And reading the vast collection of quotations she has assembled from supporters of the treaty in response to the referendum verdict of June, they do appear pretty contemptuous: people didn’t mean to vote no; they just didn’t understand what they were voting on; the referendum was undemocratic; Irish people are ungrateful commies/neocons/popeheads; vote yes, or else.
You name it, every excuse under the sun is trotted out, except of course Irish people — the only people allowed a say — had a fair idea what the incomprehensible treaty represents and didn’t think it would add to the sum of their happiness. Either that or they rather cannily figured that a document so deliberately opaque must have been designed with some ulterior motive in mind: what are they trying to hide?
It’s worth quoting just a few of the more absurd ones. “The no vote has not solved the problems... the treaty is alive.” That was the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso.
The German chancellor echoed the sentiment: “Europe cannot afford any pause for reflection.”
Why ever not? What awful calamity is going to befall Europe that rules out a period of contemplation and a little more humility? But you don’t understand: the treaty is an “absolute necessity”, said the president of the European Parliament — although no one has ever explained what’s wrong with the status quo.
“A few million Irish cannot decide on behalf of 495 million Europeans,” said the German interior minister, begging the question why 495 million Europeans can’t be allowed to decide for themselves.
“It is just not possible that one member state can just stop the others,” said a former Belgian prime minister. Isn’t that the meaning of consensus, Jean-Luc?
And then there’s that old chestnut — “there is no Plan B”.
The Eurocrats don’t want to hear that, though. Haven’t they worked very, very hard? How dare anyone not slap them on the back and pat their bloated tummies for their endeavours to secure themselves more powers at national parliaments’ expense? “The question is how we can prepare it so that it can be won,” said Luxembourg’s foreign minister in a moment of candour.
Commission vice-president Margot Wallstrom is equally frank: “Political leaders have invested so much political capital... they will not give up easily.”
Wallstrom does at least credit Irish people with normal intelligence: “The turnout was relatively high and the issues were discussed and debated.”
Others, at home as well as abroad, imagine threats are the only thing ordinary people understand: “If there is a no again, the EU has to say goodbye to Ireland in a very clear way,” said the Belgian foreign minister. Are we entitled to ask, by what power? In all the treaties ever passed, the right of the strong to expel the weak was never granted. Never.
It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for the Taoiseach in all this. He campaigned for a treaty he says he believed in and accepted the result. He has come up against nothing short of bullying ever since: “When governments sign a treaty, they assume the responsibility to have it ratified,” menaced Barroso. So back to square one it is next October, or as early as April if the French presidency gets its way. After all, we can’t possibly have European elections about a European subject, can we?
As Appleton puts it: “The response of leader after leader reveals the upside-down world of European politics: not a political structure to reflect the will of the people, but instead, the people are called upon to reflect the will of the political structure.”
And when the vote is rerun, expect to be told anything from concentration camps being re-erected in Poland to the Black and Tans returning if you don’t vote the ‘right’ way.
DID any tanks roll into The Netherlands or France after they too said “no thanks”, one wonders? Having written all that, it is easy — too easy — to poke fun at the Eurocrats. They are acting in their own best interests as often as not, and who can blame them?
They might even be acting in Ireland’s interests if recent polls are to be believed. Many might conclude Ireland has enough problems without another full-scale crisis on its hands, albeit one entirely of Brussels’ own making.
Perhaps all people wanted were a few (non-binding) words about corporation tax, neutrality and the unborn. We shall see next year, it seems.
At the same time, it is hard not to imagine the Government will be making an enormous rod for its own back tomorrow and on Friday.
Charlie McCreevy seems to think as much: “People did take the issue very seriously. That has to be respected.”
Let’s assume Brian Cowen does agree to a second vote? Maybe a bit more explaining will do the trick, but what if it doesn’t?
What if voters say no to an unpopular Government for throwing back to them the same treaty they didn’t like much when that Government was riding high?
No one can accuse the Taoiseach of not playing for high stakes. It remains to be seen if he has made one gamble too many. Whether he proves to have been weak or courageous will make or break him.
