Are the European Commission and the leaders of the big five getting at Ireland? Some highly influential people here, who are proud that we are the success story of Europe, certainly think so. First came Pedro Solbes and his unprecedented criticism of our budgetary policy, then this week, French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, called for tax harmonisation throughout the EU.
To cap it all, on Tuesday, the Commission President, Romano Prodi, said he wanted greater budgetary co-ordination and an EU tax. All this at a time when next week's referendum on the Nice Treaty, the only one in the EU, is in the balance.
While proclaiming that Nice must be passed, for the greater good of all, do the EU hotshots not care how Ireland votes? Couldn't David O'Sullivan, Prodi's secretary general and the most senior civil servant in the EU, have persuaded his boss to delay his vision speech for two weeks? Yes campaigners here have been dismayed at the rhetoric coming from Europe of late and say that more speeches of this nature will lead to a No vote on Europe sooner or later.
Ireland has always had its Eurosceptics, mostly from the fringes of mainstream politics, but a new group is now emerging which feels that the Euro hierarchy is losing the run of itself and recent speeches confirm their suspicions about the plans for overcentralisation and increased bureaucracy. While all this debate is in full swing, the EU office in Dublin is hamstrung by the McKenna judgment. During the Amsterdam referendum, O'Sullivan's predecessor, Carlo Trojan, decided the Dublin office was bound by the ruling, although many argued otherwise. O'Sullivan hasn't reversed that directive. Consequently, the EU office in Dawson Street is playing an informative, rather than a campaigning, role but it hasn't avoided controversy.
Two weeks ago, Patricia McKenna MEP wrote to O'Sullivan asking him to get his Dublin office to desist its illegal activities, that is, promoting a 'Yes' vote. Then her Green colleague, John Gormley TD, complained that the office wasn't disseminating enough information. Later, a McKenna staffer arrived in to Dawson Street with a bundle of 'No' posters and asked that they be displayed. They weren't.