Political cowardice has left us conflicted on EU

INSIDE POLITICS:It is a great paradox that Ireland wants to be at the heart of Europe yet we view it with suspicion

IN THE coming week Taoiseach Brian Cowen will try to persuade Ireland's EU partners to make a number of "concessions" to clear the way for a rerun of the Lisbon Treaty referendum in the autumn of next year.

Although most of the Irish concerns are regarded as fantasy in other European capitals, they will be indulged if that is the price of getting the treaty ratified by Ireland.

As the rest of Europe struggles to understand the latest manifestation of the Irish problem, it is worth recalling how this country started down a road that freed us from British domination and placed us at the heart of Europe for more than three decades.

It began when Seán Lemass, one of the finest politicians in our history, initiated the process of applying for membership of the EEC in 1961.

The existing six members were not exactly enamoured by the Irish application. Even though we applied to join before Britain, Denmark and Norway, they were given dates for the opening of negotiations but Ireland was not.

On the Irish sides there were no caveats at that stage about the nature of the European political project or about its implication for Irish neutrality. Lemass not only insisted that Ireland would play its full part in the development of the community, he emphasised that we were not looking for money from the richer members states but simply the right to join the free trade area.

In January 1962, Lemass travelled to a meeting of the European Council in Brussels to press Ireland's case with the leaders of the six founding members.

"Political considerations, we know, played a considerable part in the motivation and the successful outcome of the negotiations for the treaty [of Rome] and the aims of the European Economic Community go much beyond purely economic matters," the then taoiseach acknowledged.

He went on to say that it was in full awareness of the importance attached by the members states to political objectives that his government, in a letter dated July 31st, 1961, had applied to join. "I desire to emphasise that the political aims of the community are aims to which the Irish government and people are ready to subscribe and in the realisation of which they wish to play an active part."

On the question of defence, Lemass was equally emphatic. "While Ireland did not accede to the North Atlantic Treaty we have always agreed with the general aims of that treaty. The fact that we did not accede to it was due to special circumstances and does not qualify in any way our acceptance of the ideal of European unity."

He then went on to spell out in detail the economic advantages that Ireland would gain from membership, and concluded: "We do not anticipate that it will be necessary to seek any special financial assistance from the community."

Right through his presentation Lemass insisted that Ireland accepted the ideals embodied in the Treaty of Rome and the Bonn Declaration of 1961. That declaration affirmed the conviction of the EEC member states that "only a united Europe, allied to the United States of America and to other free peoples, is in a position to face the dangers which menace the existence of Europe and of the entire free world".

In a series of interviews with the international press in the following months Lemass repeated the points he had made to the EU leaders.

"We are prepared to go into this integrated Europe without any reservations as to how far this will take us in the fields of foreign policy and defence," he told the New York Times.

Ultimately Lemass's ambition foundered in 1963 when President de Gaulle of France vetoed the British application to join. It took almost a decade before the process resumed and Ireland joined the EEC after an overwhelming endorsement by the electorate. By the time the 1972 referendum on membership came along, however, Lemass's clarity of vision had already become obscured.

Instead of being presented as a rational political project the EEC was sold as a gravy train for Irish farmers, while an ill-defined version of neutrality, that meant whatever anybody wanted it to mean, was installed as a core Irish value.

A central paradox of Irish membership is that the more the country benefited from EU membership the more suspicious the electorate has become about the underlying principles that underpin the union.

A great deal of this is due to the fact that successive political leaders shirked the task of explaining clearly where the EU was going and instead pretended that important changes were not actually taking place.

It is that political cowardice that has lumbered us with a huge contradiction today.

While successive surveys show that a majority of people want Ireland to remain at the heart of Europe, there is no taking away from the fact that, when asked for their view, voters have twice rejected treaties designed to make the union work more effectively.

The problem with the Government's strategy of persuading our EU partners to agree to a range of declarations is that some of them will simply encourage fantasy politics by stating the non-existence of threats that are not in the treaty.

Other declarations may involve opt-outs in areas like defence that will actually prevent the country from participating in worthwhile developments like peacekeeping.

The one change that will be welcomed by most people here is the expected agreement that all countries should retain a commissioner. In the long run that may well backfire on us as well as it will strengthen the hand of the bigger member states against the commission, which has traditionally sought to defend the interests of the smaller countries.

Whatever solution is found to placate the Irish electorate the country will inevitably have moved from a position at the heart of Europe to the periphery, and that is assuming the electorate votes for the treaty.

If it is defeated for a second time then the outcome for us will be even grimmer and the impact on the EU itself entirely negative.

Why we should seek to damage a project that has been so good for us and for Europe itself is something that is likely to baffle future generations.