The decision by the Coalition Government to establish a public Forum on Europe that will examine such core issues as democratic legitimacy, transparency and effectiveness within the EU is a welcome, though belated, development. A lack of clarity and of full-blooded public debate on EU issues has been a consistent weakness in Ireland's relationship with Brussels. The forum will not only address those public concerns that led to the rejection of the Nice Treaty in a referendum last week. It will look forward to a planned Intergovernmental Council meeting in 2004 that is scheduled to decide where an enlarged EU is going in the long term and what kind of institutions and power structures will be involved.
At a time of growing public concern over the powers of a centralised bureaucracy, such a debate is of vital importance if the citizens of Europe are to feel ownership of the evolving institutions. As the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, told the Dail on Tuesday, there are many different views within member states about what Europe should be doing and how it should do it. There was no question of some uniform blueprint being imposed on all states, he said, and a consensus would have to be reached on the best way forward. In that regard, the Taoiseach identified three basic Irish requirements: that the EU continue to deliver practical benefits for people; that the traditional balance between the institutions should be retained and that the nation state remain the basic EU building block.
Public debate on these far-reaching issues will last into 2004 and the forum being proposed by the Government is expected to begin hearings in the autumn. It will be broadly modelled on the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation and the National Economic and Social Forum and it will draw its members from the political parties and the social partners. As a consequence, opponents of the Nice Treaty have already complained that membership of the forum will be seriously unbalanced. Final decisions on the terms of reference and composition of the forum have, however, yet to be taken by the Government.
The thrust of the Government's response to the referendum defeat has been to buy time and to prepare for an intensive public exploration of what it will eventually mean to be a member of an enlarged EU. Inherent in that approach is a belief that the Nice Treaty will carry comfortably in a second referendum, while changes stemming from the Intergovernmental Conference of 2004 might be more problematic. Whatever about such political judgement, the decision to raise the profile of EU debate and to bring it to the public is a considerable advance. In that process, the political establishment should treat voters as intelligent adults and lay out the pros and cons of an enlarged and evolving EU in unambiguous language.