THE IDEA that we have lost our “national sovereignty” in the course of the bailout and through successive European treaties has become commonplace in the language of political debate.
But it’s an easy shorthand for journalists and politicians that begs questions about what exactly we mean by “sovereignty” and what exactly we have lost, and a few answers too, in presuming that sharing or the pooling of decision-making, and hence sovereignty, with our European partners is always a malign erosion of democracy.
Sovereignty may be economic or political, may reside in markets, political institutions or individuals. It may reside in the nation-state and its government, in supra-national bodies or in local government. Or, in truth, all the above at once, in changing permutations over time.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said in his state of the nation address on Sunday night that “I want to be the Taoiseach who retrieves Ireland’s economic sovereignty”. And there can be little argument that the parlous state of the State’s economic situation has constrained hugely the range of possibilities open to an Irish government in terms of sovereignty. Yet it is far from clear that that lost sovereignty now rests with anyone else, though many would be keen to point the finger at Germany. A bit like national wealth, sovereignty can simply evaporate.
In Toulon on Friday France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy reassured voters that “more Europe” means “more sovereignty, not less, because it increases our capacity to act”. He makes an important point that should particularly resonate in Ireland in the context of the euro debate – our involvement from day one in the common currency was precisely undertaken because the currencies of small countries like Ireland could not stand up against speculative attacks on its money.
In banding together they did not diminish their individual sovereignty, but created a “capacity to act”, created a sovereign power where none existed. That is the essence of the European Union in a range of domains, from the environment to agriculture to the currency, where challenges are beyond nation-states acting alone.
Such arguments go to the heart of the treaty-change debates that will inevitably follow this week’s EU summit. Crucially, citizens will have to be persuaded that sovereignty is more effectively exercised through the patient work of contributing to collective decision-making at European level, and not just in the wielding of national vetoes which have, over time, wrongly come to be seen as enshrining sovereignty’s only expression.