Why did Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour go along with a Sinn Féin stunt at the European Parliament?
Thirteen of Ireland’s 14 MEPs signed a letter last month to the president of the parliament, requesting observer status for political representatives from Northern Ireland.
An Italian MEP also added their signature. Ming Flanagan, an independent, was the only Irish name missing.
The letter was a non-starter for two related reasons.
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First, as it conceded, a request would have to come from the United Kingdom and there is no prospect of that happening. “We see no reason why the European Parliament could not indicate its willingness to respond positively to such a request”, the letter said, mischievously.
Second, observer status is only granted to countries that have signed an EU accession treaty and are awaiting full membership. The European Parliament could change its rules to accommodate Northern Ireland, but it would be aggressive and impractical to consider this without involving the British government from the outset.
Observers are appointed by their national parliaments. Westminster would presumably delegate that task to Stormont in the unlikely event of any of this coming to pass.
The letter said Northern Ireland was a form of accession state because the EU had guaranteed it membership in a united Ireland.
That could provide a legal basis for appointing observers, although the justification for their presence would be representing Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, who are also EU citizens, and addressing the democratic deficit in the Windsor Framework, under which Northern Ireland is subject to EU laws.
In reality, observers have no meaningful input at the European Parliament – they cannot vote and may only speak at committees. The parliament has no role in the operation of the Windsor Framework nor is it a conventional legislature. It cannot pass its own laws.
Were it possible for observers to represent Irish citizens and influence the Windsor Framework then both goals would clash as the framework affects everyone in Northern Ireland: British, Irish and other.
The letter’s arguments were a flimsy disguise for its true purpose: advancing Sinn Féin’s campaign for the EU to be a “persuader” for a united Ireland – or more correctly for the party to be able to claim EU institutions are taking an interest in the issue thanks to Sinn Féin.
But the EU has a host of reasons, internal and external, not to be seen to encourage the pre-emptive break-up of the UK. It seems telling, though, that only one MEP from beyond Ireland put their name to a letter that risked sending that signal.
Most other signatories may have felt they were doing no harm. The letter was polite and its request was safely doomed.
Every Irish political party has to manage the complicated relationship between their commitment to a united Ireland and their rivalry with Sinn Féin. Participating in an empty gesture might reasonably be judged the easiest way for a quiet life.
The British government studiously ignored the letter. Unionist parties complained, but they could not sustain a row with nobody arguing back.
Alas, that was not enough for Sinn Féin. On Monday it brought a motion to the Northern Ireland Assembly supporting the letter and calling for observer status.
Debate predictably split along green and orange lines. Unionists deployed Stormont’s cross-community veto, the petition of concern, to ensure the motion did not pass – the first use of this mechanism in five years.
The nastiness of the debate and the use of the petition contributed to the mounting sense of rancour and instability in Northern Ireland politics.
However, the most immediate harm was to Alliance, which was once again knocked off the tightrope it must walk between unionism and nationalism.
The centrist party is fiercely pro-European and was bound to support the motion, exposing it to attack from unionists.
A cunning move might have been to support the petition as well, on the grounds that observer status should not happen without consensus, just as Brexit should not have happened without consensus. That would have been audacious, especially as Alliance wants reform of the petition.
Instead it went too far in the opposite direction, denouncing use of the mechanism “in this context” as “a shameful perversion of democracy and a blatant abuse of process”.
Although the petition has become contentious, largely due to past abuse by the Democratic Unionist Party, it was legitimately deployed on Monday.
Unionist and nationalist parties will be quietly content to see Alliance lose its balance; they will be hoping to pick up some of its voters. The hope of many others for the centre ground in Northern Ireland has suffered another blow.
But Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour did what was best for them in the moment, and as far as politics in the Republic is concerned that is clearly what matters most.
