The Dail's vote in favour of Ireland joining the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace organisation brings this State closer to mainstream developments in European security. Over the last year there have been major changes in this sphere as the attempt is made to create a genuine security community on the continent. It involves a renegotiation of NATO's role and a substantial development in the military and security capability of the European Union. Ireland has a profound interest in a stable and prosperous Europe. This welcome decision will open up greater opportunities for Ireland to participate in and even to influence those developments.
That the decision has popular support is indicated in last week's Irish Times/MRBI poll which found that 59 per cent of voters are in favour of it. But an even greater proportion of voters - 68 per cent - supported having a referendum on whether to join PfP. In strict legal terms, a referendum was not required since PfP is not an alliance but a network of voluntary and selective military co-operation and no pooling of sovereignty is involved. Politically, the case for consulting the people was much stronger, however, especially because the Fianna Fail party in opposition had committed itself to hold one. Its U-turn on this question has made its own contribution to public cynicism about politics. Fianna Fail said before the last election that joining PfP would compromise one of the State's core policies - Ireland's military neutrality.
To have fought and won a consultative referendum would have given the Government more confidence to participate effectively in PfP and related developments. It would have given voters more confidence that future changes would also be put to the people. There is substantial confusion among politicians and voters about the issues at stake because they have been too little discussed in recent years during the impasse on PfP. The transformation in Europe's affairs after the end of the Cold War has not been adequately reflected in public discussion, despite the evident sophistication of voters as revealed in this and other opinion polls which show a willingness to participate in new security structures, while not making the qualitative step to join the NATO alliance.
This discussion can no longer be avoided as the pace of change quickens. This newspaper reports today that Mr Javier Solana, the EU's new foreign and security policy chief, is to take over as secretary general of the Western European Union, the better to oversee an amalgamation, though one limited to the functions of peacekeeping, humanitarian and crisis-management tasks endorsed in the Amsterdam Treaty. On Monday, EU defence ministers are to join their foreign ministerial colleagues for a meeting to plan the new military and security committees also agreed in that treaty. In the forthcoming Inter-Governmental Conference to be initiated next month at the EU's Helsinki Council, there will be pressure to add defence issues to the agenda, including a collective defence commitment. PfP membership is but a small part of this broad emerging agenda, but an important step on the road for Ireland's involvement in it.