A European vision

The International Statesmen: The 1990 Irish presidency was undoubtedly the high point of Charles Haughey's international role - and arguably of his overall political career, writes Paul Gillespie .

Helmut Kohl spent Germany's 1996 national day in Ireland, prior to attending a special European Union summit at Dublin Castle, under Ireland's EU presidency. At a State dinner he recalled this country's previous presidency in January-June 1990 and the dramatic events involved after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War when communist governments collapsed all over central and eastern Europe.

Looking directly at Charles Haughey, then retired and a guest at the dinner, he remembered Ireland's support for German unification at the Strasbourg summit in December, 1989. While many participants there were opposed to, or ambiguous about, the end of a divided Germany (not least France and Britain) Ireland, he said, "supported us and we will never forget it". That support was continued during the EU presidency, notably at the special Dublin summit in April, 1990. It was called by, and presided over by, Mr Haughey as Taoiseach to agree how German unification should be articulated within the European Community, as it was then called. Two nationalisms were thereby confirmed in solidarity against partition and in implicit antagonism to the British reservations about them.

This episode illustrates very well how Mr Haughey's political abilities bore fruit on the international stage. The 1990 Irish presidency was undoubtedly the high point of his international role - and arguably indeed of his political career as a whole. It is a suitable prism through which to examine that role. There was intensive preparation for it, with extra staffing in the Taoiseach's office and close co-ordination of departmental planning under Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, the Minister of State for European Affairs who worked from that office. At one stage it was expected that the environment would be a keynote theme of the presidency; but this was swiftly supplanted by the huge gale of international politics.

In an extended interview about the EU presidency with this newspaper (May 12th, 1990) Mr Haughey listed the major tasks involved. Calling the special Dublin summit on German unification; bringing central and eastern Europe into a united Europe; completing legislation for the Single Market; preparing the Inter-Governmental Conference on economic and monetary union (which culminated in the Maastricht Treaty); adding and defining political union to this EMU agenda as a necessary "framework into which they can fit"; agreeing the framework for annual EC/EU meetings with the United States; developing the framework of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe to draw in relations with the Soviet Union and the newly independent states.

It was an exceptionally far-reaching and demanding list. It involved Mr Haughey in extensive travel and personal diplomacy with world leaders, including Helmut Kohl - "a key figure I have developed a closer personal relationship with him"; Francois Mitterrand (with whom he also became friendly); Margarat Thatcher - "we have always had an effective political relationship"; George H. Bush, who he met on successive St Patrick's Days as well as at the first US-EC summit; Mikhail Gorbachev, who he met at Shannon in April, 1989; and Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, with whom he worked in detail on the presidency agenda.

Mr Haughey in that interview praised the team of civil servants who worked on the presidency - "they have done brilliantly well, but it needs 24 hours a day, seven days a week and it needs enormous commitment and dedication. Fortunately we have that in abundance in the Irish civil service." But his own command of the brief and the manner in which his political skills were used to best effect are remembered and appreciated by political friends and foes as a major achievement on Ireland's behalf.

This makes a difference in international as well as in domestic politics. A central feature of the Haughey-led governments of 1987-92 was to secure sufficient funds from Brussels to compensate for the severe cuts in government expenditure they made. It was pursued with great skill and attention to detail as Ireland helped to invent, negotiate and then benefited from the cohesion and structural funds intended to compensate for peripherality arising from EMU. It laid the basis for the Celtic Tiger. The goodwill built up with people like Kohl, Mitterrand and Delors helped secure these funds and laid the basis for the next decade's development in relations with Brussels.

Mr Haughey's foreign policy record in office from 1979-82 was more controversial and often less well-judged. He broke ranks with the EC over sanctions against Argentina after the British navy sank the Belgrano while Ireland was on the UN Security Council. Garret FitzGerald accused him of doing incalculable damage to Ireland's international standing and to relations with Britain by making policy on the spur of the moment. He said Ireland would not contemplate EC political union until it had at least 80 per cent of the average EC per capita income and EMU was in place. And he hinted that neutrality could be re-examined as part of an overall constitutional settlement between Britain and Ireland.

Mr Haughey liked to take the limelight himself, distrusted the Department of Foreign Affairs and appointed loyal or compliant ministers there. Opponents described as unprincipled, and he as pragmatic, shifts of policy between opposition and government, the best examples being the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the Single European Act and attitudes towards neutrality.

Mr Haughey believed an opposition should oppose. He did not hesitate to take nationalist positions on these issues in 1983-7, attacking the AIA for compromising Ireland's claim on Northern Ireland and criticising the SEA for eroding military neutrality as a core value of national sovereignty. In office from 1987-92 he proceeded to defend and use the two treaties and denied neutrality was challenged by political union, since the continued existence of NATO would inhibit the development of a European common defence.

He repeatedly spoke of fulfilling a promise first articulated when he supported Irish EC membership in the 1972 accession referendum: "It presents the Irish people with an historic opportunity to break out of the disadvantageous, circumscribed position we have been in for centuriesto oppose EEC membership is to misread our history and misunderstand the fundamental realities of our situation."

In Belfast he told the Institute of Directors that an all-Ireland economy would emerge from a more united European one, while in his Irish Times interview he said: "It's not too romantic to think of a united Ireland as part of a united Europe."