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THE EU CRISIS PARADOX
ALEXANDER BORISENKO,
English language editor of Eurasian Home website, Moscow
The rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon on June 12, 2008 by the Irish electorate made a lot of noise in the world. Ireland was given a number of different epithets, from “Europe's gravedigger” to “the last bastion of democracy”. However, it is a fact that the process of the European Union reformation, which is of critical importance to it, came to a deadlock again.
The essence of the EU crisis had shown itself long before the Irish referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. It lies in the ineffective functioning of the institutions of the European Union that swelled up to 27 members. The voting procedure of the EU Council, where even the smallest country can block a decision, the structure of the European Commission that must include a commissioner from every member state, and the features of the national laws adjustment to the EU legal system were not designed for the current size of the European Union.
The fist step to solve those problems was made on October 29, 2004, when the Treaty on the European Constitution was signed. The document provided for settling the institutional issues of the EU as well as a number of innovations, including a flag, an anthem and a motto of the European Union. To some extent those innovations doomed the project to collapse – a Constitution requires a referendum by definition in many EU member states. After the electorate of France and the Netherlands rejected the European Constitution in 2005, it became clear that there was no sense in the continuation of the ratification procedures.
A mistake made at the stage of the project formulation is pretty obvious. It is unreasonable to mix the political issues, which nominally touch upon a question of national sovereignty, and the particular reforms of the European institutions that practically apply only to themselves.
The attempts to solve this problem led to the signing the Treaty of Lisbon on December 13, 2007. This document included all the main provisions of the rejected European Constitution on the reforms of the European institutions and was in fact its light edition. The issues that required holding referenda in the EU member states were excluded.
The ratification of the Treaty was to be done by the Parliaments. This elegant solution did not take into account only one issue – the peculiarities of the Irish national legislation.
A decision made by the Irish Supreme Court in 1987 established that the ratification of any significant amendment to the Treaties of the European Union requires an amendment to the Constitution of Ireland, which would require a referendum in its turn. Actually, this problem goes back to the times of Ireland’s accession into the Common Market in early 1970s. The amendments to the Constitution made in 1973 guaranteed indirectly the need of referendum for the ratification of every following treaty of the European Community.
On February 28, 2008, the Government of Ireland approved the text of the Twenty-eighth constitutional amendment, which allowed for the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon. The bill passed by both the Houses of Parliament by 9 May was submitted to a referendum. It was held on 12 July 2008.
Predictably, the referendum campaign provoked the debates over the wide range of questions often connected rather with the influence of the EU on Ireland as a whole, than with the reforms of the European institutions provided by the Treaty of Lisbon. And although the Treaty was supported both by the government coalition and the main opposition parties, the radicals such as Sinn Féin, which is a legal wing of IRA, successfully agitated against it.
The electorate’s attention was often paid to the issues that had little to do with the reform of the European institutions. The main topics were the Irish Government’s policy, the preservation of the constitutional ban on gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia, the neutrality of the country – all the factors that can be influenced by the European integration only in the distant future.
As a result, the votes of the Irish electorate were divided almost equally, though those who opposed the Treaty won in the bulk of constituencies. The turnout was 53.1%, 53% of participants voted against the Treaty of Lisbon.
As a poll published by the Irish Times on 18 June 2008 shown, about 40% of voters did it because they didn't understand the Treaty.
And no wonder: the 267 page document, created by the European bureaucrats for the European bureaucrats and submitted to a referendum only by unhappy coincidence, cannot be easily understood. It was not intended for the ordinary people.
The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that the document designed to improve the decision-making system of the EU and partially to unify the national legislation, to help these decisions to be implemented, failed because of unbalanced decision-making procedures and discrepancies of the national laws. The crisis itself prevents the emergency measures from being realized.
However, it is obvious that the further development of the EU depends on the indispensable reforms. And this is not only the question of the subsequent enlargement of the European Union, which is impossible until the Treaty of Lisbon be adopted, as President of France and current President of the European Council Nicolas Sarkozy said more than once. This is the question of the efficient work of all the European institutions and avoiding of their stagnation.
The heads of the leading EU member states, especially France and Germany, are determined to change the situation. Comparatively small gap between the number of “Yes” and “No” votes leaves a hope for a subsequent referendum, which, however, could be held not before 2009. For the Ireland’s Prime Minister Brian Cowen the adoption of the Treaty by Ireland becomes an issue of saving his party positions.
Some can be inspired by the last precedent of such “re-voting”. The Treaty of Nice was ratified by Ireland in 2002 at a second referendum after the first vote had rejected it by a narrow margin in 2001. The EU leaders have only to hope that no new obstacles will appear by the time when Ireland is ready to accept the Treaty of Lisbon.
August 8, 2008
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