EUROPEAN DIARY:The closure of National Forum on Europe was not fully explained by the Government, writes JAMIE SMYTH
WITH THE country in an economic mess most public servants knew this month’s Budget would hit them hard in their pockets and result in the postponement or scrapping of some Government projects. But if there was one organisation that might have expected to escape the chop surely it was the National Forum on Europe, the body set up in 2001 to facilitate a debate on Ireland’s EU membership following the No vote to the Nice treaty.
After all, the Government has committed itself to a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in a few months’ time and a body dedicated to raising public awareness of the union may come in handy. The forum has also become the poster child for Europe’s attempts to engage citizens, with EU commissioner Margot Wallström describing it last year as a “model of how best to promote public debate on the EU” and urging others to copy it.
But in a short press release published a few days after the emergency Budget, the Government said it had decided to wind up the forum “against the backdrop of the current budgetary situation” and the necessity to review “all areas of expenditure”.
Fair enough. When times are tough everyone must share the pain. But the forum was hardly a big spender. Its annual budget was worth about €1.5 million during its eight-year existence and its closure won’t make much of a dent in Ireland’s ballooning deficit.
Few people who follow the work of the forum, however, believe the Government shut it down to cut costs.
For one thing, Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s letter to forum chairman Maurice Hayes, which is published on the forum’s website, announcing its closure doesn’t even mention financial pressures. Instead, it praises the work of the Oireachtas committee on the future of Europe and says the parliament should do the job of engaging citizens.
The letter goes on to praise the “immense contribution” of the forum in providing a neutral space to debate Ireland’s membership of the EU.
But behind all the platitudes there can be little doubt the Government believes the forum has simply outlived its usefulness.
This view is shared by Fine Gael, which first called for the forum to be shut down after the No vote in the first referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. “The National Forum on Europe had degenerated into a talking-shop, dominated by the social partners. Most of the ‘representatives’ who participated in the forum had no mandate and did not represent any clear constituency,” said Lucinda Creighton, Fine Gael’s European affairs spokeswoman.
That is not entirely true given that the forum’s membership was composed solely of members of the Oireachtas and Irish MEPs.
The social partners, religious bodies, NGOs and political parties such as the SDLP and the Socialist Party were invited only to attend and speak as observers. The general public was also invited to attend debates, which garnered some media coverage and helped to raise the profile of European affairs. During last year’s referendum campaign the forum had also branched out to publish the first readable summary of the treaty and organise regional public meetings to help foster a debate.
People who took part in the 23 pre-Lisbon regional meetings say the No campaign was usually better represented at these debates and presented its arguments much more passionately than Yes campaigners. Local politicians from parties advocating a Yes vote often failed to show up: on one occasion in Waterford even when a council meeting had just ended at the building next door.
The failure of the Yes campaign to lead the debate has led some politicians to note privately the forum was “hijacked” by No campaigners.
Viewed together with an Oireachtas committee’s call to end the current requirement for broadcasters to provide equal coverage to the Yes and No campaigns in referendums, it is hard to argue with No campaigners who say the forum is being punished for being neutral.
“We won the argument and now they want to minimise any debate,” says Munster MEP Kathy Sinnott, who spoke last year at forum regional debates in Waterford and Cork.
The Government’s aim to get the Oireachtas more directly involved in the debate on Europe is welcome. The British House of Lords, the Danish and Dutch parliaments have all played a very useful role in scrutinising EU legislation, which now accounts for anything up to 80 per cent of new laws.
But handing the Oireachtas the primary role of bringing the public closer to Europe is fraught with danger, given the abject failure of so many politicians on the Yes campaign to engage during the first Lisbon referendum.
One criticism that can be levied at the forum is that it is dominated by the same political elite that sits in the Oireachtas.
But by closing it without announcing any other way to engage the public in Europe, the Government runs the risk of being accused of cynical political manoeuvring ahead of Ireland’s biggest foreign policy decision in three decades.