Another No vote on Nice would jeopardise Ireland's influence

Latvia won the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday night. The decisive winning points came from Lithuania and the show was hosted by Estonia. As one of the few genuinely pan-European cultural events it continued to attract a large audience - an expected 160 million people, according to a Reuters report.

The winning singer, Marija Naumova (21), is a law graduate, a member of Latvia's large Russian minority, who speaks five languages and hopes to break into the European music scene, like Abba did when they won with Waterloo in 1974. As Denis Staunton pointed out in his European Diary (May 14th), Eurovision closely tracks the story of European integration, with an uncanny tendency to anticipate events. Voting patterns offered a fascinating snapshot of European political attitudes on this occasion as on previous ones. That can cut right across the excellence of the music to express sympathetic political attitudes, as with the Baltic states' solidarity.

Ireland was not a participant this year. Having suffered from Eurovision fatigue, it was perhaps not surprising that less effort should have been put into the competition this year - and perhaps Ireland no longer attracts the votes it used to do on the political scale of things. But it will be involved next year, along with the eight other eliminated states.

It was hard to watch the voting without reflecting on the metaphorical absence of Ireland in a show reflecting so much the continental scale of European integration and enlargement. The most enthusiastic participants were from the applicant countries, mirroring Ireland's own musical enthusiasm when it did so well in the competition in the 1990s. The Estonian government took the show extremely seriously and spent considerable sums on ensuring the spectacle was successful.

Many of the applicant states are still bewildered about Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty last year, which they see as a barrier to their EU accession, since it lays down the institutional terms for their membership. They accept the Government's assurances that this was not the intended effect of the referendum result and the determination of the incoming Government to hold a second vote in the autumn to ensure EU enlargement can go ahead on time.

But they fear a second Irish No would delay the process. It would provide those reluctant about it with a good excuse and open the way for popular fears about migration and competition to become more rooted, after the victory of right-wing parties in recent European elections. A delay would also allow time for arguments within their own societies about the terms of accession to take root, making their own referendums more difficult to carry.

These issues were highlighted in Dublin this week by the launch of the second chairman's report from the National Forum on Europe. The forum was set up after the last referendum to provide a platform for debate on the implications of the result for Ireland's engagement in Europe and to discuss the broader issues arising in the Convention on the Future of Europe currently under way in Brussels. It has done very useful work in building better knowledge and rapport between the parties and groups involved, even if that has not been reflected so far in overall media coverage or public engagement.

The report skilfully navigates these issues, expressing consensus on a number of them and identifying the contentious ones that need to be addressed. Governments of the accession states (most of them diplomatically represented at the forum) will be relieved to hear there is common ground on EU enlargement - "in principle, all participants in the Forum favoured enlargement and that none of the groups was opposed to any of the applicant countries".

The chairman, Mr Maurice Hayes, says there is a "moral and political imperative to bring about the prospective enlargement to include the Central and Eastern European countries, which were sundered from the rest of Europe for fifty years and suffered great hardships." But there is a deep disagreement about whether the treaty is necessary to allow enlargement proceed or not. It should be remembered that it was negotiated by governments, including the Irish one, which have a sense of ownership of its compromises and fear they would be unravelled if revisited. That sense of realpolitik must be taken extremely seriously by those who value Ireland's ability to play in the mainstream of the EU's political and economic affairs.

The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, spelled this out during the week at ceremonies opening new Microsoft facilities in Dublin, accompanied by the US ambassador, Mr Richard Egan. "If we want Ireland to remain at the forefront of the high-tech and knowledge economy, we will have to be at the forefront of Europe," he said. "If we want to secure our progress and protect our prosperity we will have to go closer to the heart of Europe. It would be very costly to stand back now - just as an enlarged, dynamic Europe of 27 states goes ahead." That contains a clear warning that Boston will be less interested in an Ireland not fully connected to Berlin.

We can expect to hear a lot more about such basic political and economic interests and how they must be protected by voting for the treaty a second time over the next few months. Surprisingly such arguments have not so far been prominent in the Forum's deliberations, but it is expected to turn to them in its future work.

Against that opponents of the treaty dispute that such interests could be threatened by a second No. Enlargement could proceed without the treaty, they say. Other issues could be revisited in the Convention and the next treaty negotiation. But this disregards the damaging marginalisation that would follow another rejection, which would jeopardise Ireland's influence on vital EU decision-making. There would be a major loss of sympathy from countries such as Latvia, whose president, Mrs Vaira Vike-Freiberga, is visiting Ireland next week.