Political and economic isolation the likely price of a second No to Nice

IRELAND: How should an enlarged European Union organise politics and the European political area? Would this enlargement unite Europe?

Such large questions are thrown up by the current phase of European integration. They deserve much more discussion in the debate on the Nice Treaty. It concentrates too often on the minutiae of legal or technical articles in successive treaties, or focuses too narrowly on the particular record of the Government and the cutbacks it has made since the election.

Core interests and values are at stake for Ireland's role in international and European affairs and for its ability to survive and prosper in a globalised world of which it is one of the chief exemplars.

Nice deals centrally with the political and institutional arrangements necessary for enlarging the EU to 27 members, providing the framework within which it could well reach perhaps 35 in the medium to long term.

It is the political package reached by 15 governments to handle this question; they "own" it and will defend the agreement against possible legal alternatives.

Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia are set to join in 2004 if Ireland ratifies Nice.

Bulgaria and Romania are included in the current round of negotiations and will join later; Turkey is next on the list. Beyond that, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Macedonia are likely candidates within the next 10 years, as are Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.

Ukraine would then make a strong case, raising Russian expectations to be part of the EU later in the century.

By any measure and on any map, this scenario paves the way for a continental enlargement. It would bring most of Europe together voluntarily within a common political system under the rule of law for the first time in its history.

This would be a remarkable achievement, considered against the history of imperial wars and inter-state conflicts which have characterised that history since Roman times.

The veteran Dutch and European statesman Max Kohnstamm says post-war integration has brought western Europe "beyond hegemony and the balance of power". The current enlargement has the potential to bring these benefits to the continent as a whole.

Hegemony describes the tendency of large states to seek dominance of their region; balance of power is the principle of inter-state relations intended to constrain the urge to dominate.

In Europe, hegemony historically took an imperial form, based on conquest, occupation and rule by unaccountable foreign elites. So did the balance of power principle. The result was a series of disastrous wars within the continent and an extrapolation of European colonialism throughout the world beyond it.

Integration has been the principal means by which western European states, large and small, have managed their post-imperial relations and decolonisation. By building a sovereignty-sharing political community, they created the most benign political order seen in modern Europe. It was, of course, underpinned by the United States presence after 1945; and the balance of power principle was arguably displaced to world level by the Cold War, within which the US and the USSR became hegemonic powers within their own spheres.

The end of the Cold War completely altered these geopolitical arrangements. A continental EU enlargement has been enabled by that momentous change in 1989, based on norms of peace, market-based prosperity and democratic values agreed at Copenhagen in 1993; but it has taken a decade and a half to see it come to pass.

The large political questions posed at the beginning of this article were obscured during that time by technical and bureaucratic law-making to complete the single market and install the euro.

It should be remembered that the basic calculation behind the euro swapped French approval for German unification in 1989-90 with German willingness to share economic governance within the EU. The working out of this bargain over the last decade has deepened integration and brought the EU to the point where it must also deepen its political legitimacy and democratic fabric.

Therefore, the question, "Why Europe?" needs to be asked again and addressed politically after many years in which it was avoided by political leaders, Ireland's included. The contradiction between these geopolitical realities and the apolitical way in which the Nice debate has been conducted has become a real impediment to creating widespread consent and support.

Two major aspects of the issue should be borne in mind by voters. Although Ireland must make its own decision on whether to ratify Nice, in the nature of the integration experiment it is not ours alone to make. The 14 other EU member states have already ratified the treaty according to their own constitutional processes. And the 12 negotiating states also claim ownership of and a direct interest in the outcome.

The Polish minister for EU affairs, visiting Dublin last week, said a second No would be a "huge and a terrible disappointment" for her government and the majority of Poles who support accession. It would delay the extremely tight calendar that would bring in up to 10 states in time for them to vote in the European Parliament elections in 2004 and participate fully in the inter-governmental conference on the future of Europe also meeting in that year.

Undoubtedly Ireland would be blamed and made a scapegoat for this political crisis.

In the Concise Oxford Dictionary, prudence is defined as "careful to avoid undesired consequences", precaution as "an action taken beforehand to avoid risk or ensure a good result". Both are needed if Ireland is to avoid political and economic marginalisation by voting No a second time. It is up to the Yes side to make this point convincingly in light of these geopolitical realities - and to the No side to show that a second rejection would not have such undesirable and risky consequences.

pgillespie@irish-times.ie