The Laeken European Council presents many challenges and many opportunities for Ireland's citizens and political leaders. At the weekend the Taoiseach and his partners agreed the terms for an ambitious Convention on the Future of the European Union, which will prepare the way for a constitutional treaty in 2004. Ireland comes to this engagement fresh from the experience of an unsatisfactory political debate on the Treaty of Nice but with the comparative advantage of a more focused discussion on how that might be changed.
It is vital that political leaders should draw confidence from this experience over the coming year to explore Ireland's optimal position, interests and values in the emerging enlarged European Union, rather than be continually on the defensive. The defeat of the referendum on Nice last June was a great setback for them. It exposed a complacency about Ireland's participation in the EU, echoed in the abject failure of leading political parties and organisations in Irish society to engage themselves actively in the campaign, despite their rhetorical support for the treaty. They are now coming to realise Ireland risks damaging isolation and loss of influence should the consequences of that failure remain unaddressed.
The debate on Europe's future offers many opportunities to rediscover and redefine the interests and values concerned. Ireland has benefited enormously from its membership of the EU and from the pooling of sovereignty involved. This has provided a seat at the table together with large states and small, under the rule of law, a context of particular advantage for smaller states which could not hope otherwise to exert such influence on international affairs. A much enlarged EU will reinforce those lessons, but only if it is designed much more transparently and democratically for its citizens. How that should be done forms the subject matter of this convention.
Ireland brings to it a successful experience of EU membership, using transfers and market opportunities, that is a real example for the 10 candidate states identified at the Laeken summit as ready to join next year. There are huge political and commercial opportunities for Ireland in extending a welcome to them. But that will require a willingness to tackle the Nice rejection, almost certainly in another referendum, if EU enlargement is not to be delayed because of a political refusal by other member-states to allow it without the agreements reached in that treaty.
The political and constitutional process launched at Laeken involves a radical review of the EU's structures and decision-making. Despite the widespread indifference and lack of knowledge about it, the EU impinges more and more on domestic politics throughout the member-states because of the way it internationalises government. It is time democracy caught up with that through reforming and simplifying the different levels of politics and administration involved, creating greater accountability and agreeing a constitutional document setting out these values and structures.