The big problem with Lisbon, and the reason it is so boring, is that it is about process, not politics, writes Fintan O'Toole.
LAST WEEK, a delegation of local people from north Mayo, opposed to the Shell-led Corrib gas project, travelled to Brussels. They did not travel to Brussels to protest, however, but to meet the petitions committee of the European Parliament and the head of the environmental directorate of the EU Commission. They were arguing that the Corrib development breaches key EU directives on habitats, environmental assessment, water protection and public consultation.
And, what is more, they got a much more sympathetic hearing than they have ever got from the Dáil or from their own Government. The European Parliament representatives promised to engage "in a far more pro-active manner" with the issue. The commission representative promised "detailed and direct liaison with the local community in north Mayo".
Now this, surely, is the nightmare scenario that so many of those campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty want to warn us against. Here is a perfect example of Brussels interfering in the internal affairs of Ireland, seeking to frustrate the will of a national government and bypassing a national parliament to deal directly with the concerns of citizens. Here, too, is EU law being used potentially to override national law and frustrate the will of an elected Irish Government.
Three things are worth noting about all of this. The first is that this kind of thing has been going on for a long time now - Lisbon changes very little of it. The second is that it is a very good thing - in the contemporary world the value of sovereignty needs to be balanced by other considerations, like human rights and the environment, which transcend national boundaries.
And the third is that anti-Lisbon campaigners were curiously silent about the outrageous collusion of the Mayo people with the Eurocrats in challenging the sovereignty of the Irish State. Could it be that they realise that, if you put names and faces and issues to it, the process they want us to fear is actually a progressive and civilising one that can be used to support real political struggles by people against power?
The big problem with Lisbon, and the reason it is so boring, is that it is about process, not politics. It is an argument about the shape and dimensions of the boxing ring, and about some of the nuances of the Queensbury Rules. It is not about the real fight, which is the struggle for social justice and against the abuse of political and corporate power.
The long process of EU expansion - itself a necessary and welcome response to the fall of the Berlin Wall - has had the deadening side-effect of forcing structural issues so far up the agenda that they have more or less killed off discussion about actual politics. It is like having general election campaigns (and God knows we've had a few) that are only about the workings of PR, opinion polls and e-voting machines.
One of the results of this constant revisiting of the EU's structures is that we discuss abstractions instead of realities. Talk about "pooled sovereignty" and the primacy of EU law and, at best, the eyes glaze over. At worst, the hackles rise.
Talk about what those things have actually meant in the experiences of people and communities all over Ireland and you end up in a version of the "What did the Romans ever do for us?" scene from the film The Life of Brian.
Was it a breach of a narrowly-defined Irish sovereignty for the EU to force a reluctant Irish government to cede equal pay for Irish women in the 1970s? Absolutely.
Was it an imposition of alien European socialist principles of solidarity for Jacques Delors to force us to accept billions from the European taxpayer to aid our development? Sure.
And hasn't the effect been overwhelmingly positive? Look around almost any Irish small community fighting an environmental struggle and you'll find people making a beeline for Brussels. What, for example, was the Spanish MEP David Hammerstein-Mintz doing at the oral hearing into Fingal County Council's plans for a super-dump in Lusk a few months back? Oppressing the Irish people with the iron hand of a European super-state? Or responding to a plea to the petitions committee from local people who believed that they had a better chance of getting a fair hearing if someone from the EU was keeping an eye on things?
When the issues are up-close and concrete, rather than abstract and legalistic, Irish people actually want the EU to supplement local and national democracy and to have the power to stand up for them.
The point in all of this is not that the Lisbon Treaty is wonderful, or that there are not fierce battles to be fought over workers' rights, Europe's response to the developing world, defence policies or the direction of market economies. It is that those vital political issues get lost in the endless tedium of structural reform. If we defeat Lisbon, those tedious abstractions will continue to dominate the agenda.
Vote Yes, get the damned thing out of the way, and let the real games begin.