Ireland is at a crossroads in relation to the European Union, arguesBrigid Laffan, and we must not let eurosceptics, 'soft' or 'hard',point us in the wrong direction. We must continue to be a constructiveplayer
I am penning this on May 10th, 2002, 30 years after the Irish electorate voted by a large majority of 83 per cent to join the EU. Earlier in January 1972, Brussels experienced its first great Irish party on the evening following the signing of Ireland's Treaty of Accession by the Taoiseach Jack Lynch and the Foreign Minister Paddy Hillery.
Officials from the Commission and the continental member-states found the Irish jest for song and craic very refreshing. They were particularly impressed by Jack Lynch's rendition of The Banks.
Thirty years after the first Irish referendum on the EU, we find ourselves at a crossroads concerning our attitudes to the EU and the shape of Ireland's engagement with the European project.
Ireland's accession was an important test of the ability of the Union to accommodate poor peripheral states and the Union met that test. Ireland was followed by the two Mediterranean enlargements of the 1980s and the historic enlargement to East Central Europe which is the challenge for this decade.
Commission officials in Social Affairs and Regional Policy were deeply committed to Ireland and used their knowledge and financial resources to help build a training infrastructure for young people, women and the disabled.
Engagement with the Commission and agencies in other memberstates opened up a new world of public policy to the Irish administration and State-sponsored sector.
What is most striking about the contemporary discourse on the EU and Ireland's place in that Union is the extent to which we appear to "forget to remember" just how much has changed for the better and the significance of EU membership in fostering that change. We need to recall four imperatives:
Ireland's major contribution to the EU was to make a success of membership.
All states need a framework for managing internationalisation and the EU provided Ireland as a small poor state with a relatively benign one.
Membership of the EU enabled Ireland to manage its relationship with Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Boston was only prepared to invest in Ireland because of Berlin, i.e., the single market.
Notwithstanding our beneficial engagement with the EU over 30 years, the outcome of the Nice referendum in June 2001 highlighted the fact that we are entering a different phase of engagement with the European Union. We are now divided on Europe. It is difficult to determine how much euroscepticism, or just what kind of euroscepticism, is now prevalent in Ireland.
A group of academics working on euroscepticism at the University of Sussex distinguish between "hard euroscepticism" and "soft euroscepticism", which provides a useful conceptual lens for thinking about this topic. Hard euroscepticism can be equated with outright opposition to the European project and opposition to a country's continuing membership in the EU.
There are a number of hard eurosceptics in Ireland who opposed Ireland's original membership and have opposed all subsequent efforts to deepen integration.
The hard eurosceptics are those who always allude to the problems of integration and never to its contribution to economic, social and political stability in Europe. The hard eurosceptics anticipate the disintegration of the EU and tend to see all difficulties in the EU as a harbinger of its eventual disappearance. Given the beneficial effects of EU membership in Ireland, this polity does not offer fertile soil for hard euroscepticism.
Soft euroscepticism is growing in Ireland. It was evident during the Nice referendum, when many of those opposing the treaty portrayed the European Union as a "superstate", "a vision of evil", an "empire" and a military alliance in the making. This inaccurate and intemperate language was designed to promote fear. Soft euroscepticism comes in two variants - "policy euroscepticism" and "national interest euroscepticism".
The former may cover the entire spread of EU policies. Different political actors may oppose the EU on the grounds that it is not liberal enough or that it is too liberal. Or they may oppose a single project such as the euro or the habitats directive.
The second variant national interest euroscepticism employs the rhetoric of standing up for the national interest and defending the national interest as a central element of its opposition to particular developments in the Union. In the Nice referendum all variants of euroscepticism were apparent.
The recent address by John Rogers SC to the Burren Law School is a nice example of soft euroscepticism. While John Rogers acknowledges that Ireland has done well from the Union and while he by and large supports the changes brought about by the EU in Ireland, he continues his opposition to the Treaty of Nice. He suggests that there is an attempt to put the frighteners on Irish citizens following the No to Nice.
John Rodgers's piece puts the frighteners on me, not because of his well rehearsed opposition to the Nice Treaty, nor because of his wilfully inaccurate portrayal of the EU's legislative system and the role of the European Parliament. No, he put the frighteners on me because in a short address in which he uses the terms "democracy" "democratic" and "democratise" 10 times, not once does he allude to why the treaty was negotiated in the first place.
Yes, John, it was negotiated to enable the EU to proceed with the accession of states and their peoples who experienced authoritarian rule for over 40 years, whose peoples could not travel freely and who experienced Soviet tanks on their streets. The Nice Treaty was not, as he suggests, about advancing the process of integration. It was about providing the constitutional, legal and institutional framework for enlargement.
As he suggests, we must address coolly how to further democratise political space above the level of the nation state but we must do so not by navel gazing but by embracing our membership of the wider European family. Nor should we discuss the democratisation of the EU without due acknowledgement of and concern for the democratic fabric of our own political system.
So, years on, we are at a cross-roads in relation to the EU. The excitement of the first Irish party in Brussels in January 1972 is long forgotten. A richer, less dependent Ireland has begun to forget the manifold ways in which the EU provided a frame for this small State and its people for dealing with an increasingly internationalised world.
What we must not do is begin to think that the EU is part of our past and not our future. We have a choice to make between becoming an "outlier" in the EU system or continuing our well established role as a constructive player.
In fact, given our unique experience of integration, we have an opportunity to augment our role in the EU. The choice is ours.
Brigid Laffan is Director of the Dublin European Institute and Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics at the Department of Politics, University College Dublin