Time for a cool, hard look at where Europe is going

Somewhere buried between the Budget and the Clinton visit lies the Treaty of Nice. Arguably, the treaty is of far greater significance than the other two but lacks the feel-good factor associated with either a giveaway budget or good ol' Bill.

A small group of people in Ireland understand the workings of the EU. Some are academics, some are politicians, but many of them are lobbyists, whether it be in business, agriculture, or the less well resourced community and voluntary sector.

They know how it works because they need to, as more and more decisions are taken at that level. The rest of us are vaguely aware of it, as we speed down roads carrying large billboards proclaiming EU funding, and then bump our way on to the side roads not so favoured.

As the supposedly most Europhile country in the EU, could it be that our love is blind, or worse still, that it is cupboard love? Be that as it may, there is scarcely an outpouring of public demand for a referendum on the Treaty of Nice, except by stalwart souls who have challenged the consensus on the EU at every turn.

Anyone who raises the slightest question about the direction Europe is going is accused of being either an isolationist, a crank, or both. There seems to be little room for those who are broadly supportive of closer European links but who are fearful of the anti-democratic nature of the changes that are hurled at us every few years.

Nor is this a Boston versus Berlin debate. It may well be a Dublin versus Brussels debate, and surely that is one worth having?

We are moving inexorably towards some kind of superstate, with more and more power being ceded towards the centre and national sovereignty being eroded. It is a halting, bad-tempered movement, but inexorable none the less. We have a Rapid Reaction Force, an embryonic European army due to come formally into being in 2003. We have an embryonic European constitution in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Worst of all perhaps, we have the threat of a two-tier Europe.

Raising any queries about enlargement of the EU is treated as though it could only be motivated by greed and self-interest, by a refusal to share the benefits of the EU with our poorer neighbours.

It is true that a selfish desire to hold on to advantages gained would constitute the worst possible reason to oppose enlargement, but there are other reasons to oppose or at least question it, that are not selfish.

The key question is, will it be a good place to be for the new entrants? Already they have to accept every condition set down by the EU, none of which they have had a hand in shaping. They have to be willing in principle to abandon their national currency, along with all the control in terms of exchange rates which having their own currency brings.

Poland has two million farmers, many of them farming with methods more in tune with the beginning of the last century than with this one. Has anyone told them that entry into the EU will see the death of the family farm? Or that the seductive cheques in the post signal the death knell of control over agricultural policy? Or that a better alternative might be to form closer alliances with other East European countries which are at a similar level of development?

Irish farmers are realising gloomily that the subsidies are going to run out soon. The net effect of those subsidies was to distort grossly the agricultural market and to leave many farms non-viable. Have Irish farmers shared that information with their Polish neighbours? Of course, they would be accused of simply not wanting to see the lion's share of EU agricultural subsidies going to the East, and there might be an element of truth in that. None the less, it might be more truthful than the "you, too, can have a tiger like Ireland's" propaganda they are receiving at the moment.

Eastern Europe has many new and struggling democracies. During their heroic battles for independence they had scarcely planned trading one lack of democracy for another. While in no way wishing to equate the repressive regime of the Soviet Union with the EU, there is a large and growing democratic deficit within the EU. The new weighted voting system puts Germany, or the German-French axis, in the driving seat. The voting weight of the larger states trebled while the voting weight of the smaller states merely doubled. That would be fine if there was a democratic mandate for such a move. There is not. And since most states are not required by their constitutions to hold referendums on new EU treaties, there never will be.

More than anything else, the tenacity with which many of the members fought to gain the greatest advantage for their own states illustrates that there is no emotional attachment to the EU, no sense that to sacrifice for it ultimately enhances the greater good of all citizens. A prime example is the way we struggled ferociously to hold on temporarily to control of our own tax system. So why rush ahead to cede still more power to the centre, and less and less to the citizens of the nations who comprise it?

As for a so-called United States of Europe, in the US there was a common history of immigration and of struggle to found a new country and it took many generations and a civil war before anything like the modern federal state emerged. Yet we think we can forge some kind of a superstate within years. Any one with an ounce of sense would see it is time to slow down.

A referendum and a decent debate could be the first steps towards a much needed Euro-realism.

bobrien@irish-times.ie