A key concession means the guarantees will be enshrined in future treaties, writes JAMIE SMYTHin Brussels
TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen at last had reason to smile at the end of an EU summit yesterday when he emerged victorious from a tough negotiation with his EU partners over the guarantees Ireland will get on the Lisbon Treaty.
Just over a year after having to explain to his European counterparts why the public had rejected the Lisbon Treaty at his first summit as Taoiseach, Cowen was able to announce that Ireland will hold a new vote in October.
“We have got what we wanted,” Cowen told a jam-packed press conference at the European Council. “The doubts that were raised about certain issues have been clarified and put to rest once and for all,” he said. After two days of talks, EU leaders agreed to provide the Government with a legal decision that makes guarantees on taxation, neutrality and ethical issues such as abortion legally binding.
But they also crucially conceded to Cowen’s demand for an assurance that he can obtain a protocol to enshrine the text of the Irish guarantees into the EU treaties.
A protocol will make the guarantees EU primary law, which should help to blunt a key argument made by the No campaign – that the guarantees are “worthless” and do not enjoy the same legal status as the Lisbon Treaty.
The Government will have to wait for its protocol because it can only enter into force following ratification by parliaments in all 27 EU states. The conclusions of the summit say it can be offered to Ireland at the conclusion of the next EU accession treaty, which will probably be Croatia or Iceland.
All EU states oppose ratifying a protocol before the Lisbon Treaty enters into force in case it reignites the debate on the treaty in their home countries.
Even Cowen’s request to get an assurance that a protocol would be granted at the same time as the next accession treaty met resistance at the summit from states such as Britain, the Netherlands and Slovenia for different reasons.
British prime minister Gordon Brown is understandably anxious not to reignite a debate on Lisbon in the House of Commons where the Conservatives are stern critics of the treaty.
The Dutch did not want to link an Irish protocol with an accession treaty because they are reticent on EU enlargement, and Slovenia feared giving Croatia’s membership talks a boost. Ljubljana is blocking its accession talks over a bitter border dispute.
The spectre of Eurosceptic Czech president Václav Klaus also hung over the discussions at the summit. Klaus, who has still not signed the treaty to complete ratification in the Czech Republic, told his own government this week that the Irish legal guarantees – even without being in the form of a protocol – would require a new ratification process in the Czech parliament.
There are real fears in Brussels that he could use the Irish guarantees as a reason to refuse to sign the treaty or mount a constitutional court challenge in the Czech Republic, even if the Irish public vote Yes in October. This could cause further delay to the ratification of Lisbon, possibly enabling Conservative party leader David Cameron to come to power and unpick the whole treaty.
“He was definitely in the background,” said one participant at the talks, who thought this made the task harder for the Government to extract a final deal.
Anxious to ensure that other EU leaders would not react to the threat by blocking an Irish protocol, Cowen went on the offensive warning them in a pre-summit letter that he couldn’t win a referendum without the protocol.
At the summit he engaged in a series of bilateral meetings with Brown to thrash out a compromise over the wording of the decision offering Ireland the protocol. Brown’s key goal was to ensure that the protocol did not change the treaty in any way and related only to Ireland. This was reflected in the conclusions, which state clearly that the protocol in no way alters the relationship between the EU and its member states. It will “clarify but not change either the content of the application” of the treaty, they say.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who originally promised the Irish a protocol last December, was also helpful in persuading his colleagues that Cowen needed everything they could give him.
German chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been persuaded about the need to grant a protocol to Ireland almost a week ago, also helped to clinch the final deal.
So, barring a last-minute intervention from Klaus, the future of the Lisbon Treaty now rests squarely on the shoulders of the Irish public and the Government, which will announce the referendum next week. Asked whether he would resign if the treaty was rejected, Cowen replied: “I don’t contemplate defeat.” He will hope he is smiling come October.