Anyone
familiar with Europe has some idea about the Lisbon treaty. This is a
typical piece of welfare state protectionism through state enlargement
or “federalism”. From what I understand the twenty-seven countries (at
last count) within the EU are to ratify (bureaucratic speak for forcing
unto “their” populations) a treaty which will streamline the
integration of police and other forms of interference with everyday
life. This quotation from the Economist outlines “their” thinking on these subjects.
The small print of a notably complicated document
EUROCRATS like to talk about building
Europe “step by step”. Critics accuse Brussels of slicing away national
sovereignty, treaty by treaty. Both versions are correct. Treaties are
try-ons whose true effects become clear only years later. Supporters
say EU institutions will more “efficient “and this will “streamline”
decision-making after the union's enlargement to 27 nations. What does
that mean in practice? voting system will become simpler and more
reflective of a nation's population size. The changes will be phased in
between 2014 and 2017. After that, a majority vote in the Council of
Ministers (which represents national governments) will be carried if
55% of nations representing 65% of the overall EU population say yes. In practice, though, the EU rarely votes, preferring consensus.
More
important, majority voting will become the rule in some 50 policy areas
currently decided by unanimity: most dramatically migration, criminal
justice and judicial and police co-operation, where the European Court
of Justice (ECJ) will also gain broad
oversight for the first time. In return for giving up national vetoes,
Britain and Ireland have obtained the right to stand aloof from
individual measures, but in practice may opt in quite often.
The treaty creates a full-time standing president of the European
Council (which represents national leaders). This figure, probably an
ex-prime minister or similar bigwig, will be elected by serving heads
of government for a two-and-a-half-year stint, renewable once, and will
prepare and host four or more summits a year.
A new foreign minister in all but name will be created by merging two
existing posts. Working for both governments and the European
Commission, he will have political clout, money and his own diplomatic
service. He will speak for the EU in places
like the United Nations, whenever governments have agreed on a foreign
policy position. Under the treaty, the keenest member states may also
push ahead with defence co-operation among themselves.
The treaty gives legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a
sweeping catalogue of social and civil rights. It is hard to predict
how much it will matter. It talks of things such as a right to strike,
or a “right of access to preventive health care”, that are not in the EU's gift: the Union has few direct powers to regulate industrial disputes or national health services. Everyone expects the ECJ
to have the final say—even in Britain, which hopes a special protocol
will make British laws immune from challenges based on the charter.
The European Commission's top layer of political leaders will shrink. After 2014, EU
nations will lose the right to send one commissioner each to Brussels.
Instead, the total number of commissioners will be capped at a rotating
two-thirds of the number of member states. This may weaken the
commission if big countries sulk about not having their own man inside.
National parliaments will be allowed to protest if they consider a proposed EU
law unnecessary. The bar is set high: if half the 27 national
parliaments are unhappy, then a majority of national governments (or a
majority of members of the European Parliament) can insist a draft
measure be scrapped. This new clause may hearten domestic opponents of
moves dictated from Brussels. Or it may not.
This
is very similar to the “checks and balances” theory in the United
States ie. the strange notion that the state can be used to protect
people from the state.
Some resistance on the part of what passes for “conservatism” in
Britain, amounts to little more than opposition to welfare state
limitations on the exploitation of workers within that country. An
example is the UK ranks near the bottom for annual paid holidays
compared to the continent. Of course the horrible state of civil liberties
in the UK makes the continent seem sane in comparison a problem which
barely existed before 1997 (again in relative terms). Fear of
opposition “from Brussels” on welfare issues might inform some elitist
resistance to greater integration but judging from the Economist's
article (and the experience particular in eastern Europe). this is no
guarantee that a federation of states will much more helpful to the
rights of ordinary citizens. Below is an item lifted from Workers' Solidarity
the Irish anarchist/libertarian socialist who in turn reprinted from
the Irish Left Review. This appraisal looks at the treaty from several
viewpoints including integrationist (Liberal) and both popular and
elitist resistance to such integration.
With
a large number of conflicting interpretations in circulation, many
voters’ decisions depended on whom they trusted the most.
When it came down to it, the side that was represented by politicians and IBEC (Irish Business and Employers Confederation)
was always going to be in trouble. In the end, the loyalty test split
the electorate on class lines. The wealthier constituencies trusted
their politicians and business leaders more, the rest of the country
sided against them and with the left or the nationalists.
Background to the Referendum
On June 12th, 2008, the Irish electorate was presented with the
opportunity to vote “yes” or “no” to the Lisbon Treaty. This was the
seventh referendum on European integration in Ireland in the last 36
years, so EU referendums are very much part of the political landscape.
This one, however, was probably the most meaningful since Ireland voted
to join the EEC along with the UK back in 1972. The significance of the
vote was not down to the importance of the text itself, but due to the
context in which the referendum took place.
In 2005, the EU constitution, which was supposed to replace the
existing European treaties with a simplified text and a streamlined
structure, was defeated in referenda in both France and the
Netherlands. The Lisbon treaty more or less contained the same contents
as the EU constitution. The major differences between the EU
constitution and the Lisbon Treaty were the following
* Some of the symbolic elements, traditionally associated with
nationalism, such as an official EU flag, anthem and “Europe Day” were
ditched.
* The relative simplicity of the Constitution was replaced with an
excessively complicated document, consisting of over 300 pages of
amendments to earlier treaties, which could only be read in parallel
with the existing treaties. The meaningful changes were buried among
hundreds of terminological and cross-referential adjustments.
Other than these and a few other minor changes, the Lisbon treaty
incorporated the structural changes to the EU that were present in the
constitution into the text of the existing treaties. The repackaging
introduced the changes in such a way so as to avoid the need for
national referenda to ratify them, while the omission of the
nationalist symbols was designed to allow the political leaders to sign
the treaty without arousing the outright opposition of their citizenry.
The repackaging had been successful thus far. Stripped of its
nationalist symbols and rendered excessively complex by the
labyrinthine amendments, the political rulers of Europe felt confident
enough in the face of their courts and domestic public opinion, to
ratify the treaty through the formality of parliamentary approval and
avoid putting it to a vote. Ireland was the only country which put the
treaty to referendum and, until the referendum in Ireland, it was on
course to be approved as a formality by the rest of the EU governments
by the end of 2008.
The significance of the Irish referendum was not, however, simply due
to the fact that it was the only country to hold a referendum. Ireland
was also the only country to vote on the Nice Treaty, and the no vote
that was delivered then had no obvious effect on anything much. The EU
simply introduced a fairly vague protocol on neutrality and implemented
the treaty anyway and the Irish government eventually delivered a yes
vote to support their decision to ignore the first result.
However, in the case of Lisbon, the context was quite different. The
defeat of the EU constitution represented a significant blow to the
project of EU integration. On the popular level, it undermined the
perceived legitimacy of the EU institutions and curtailed the
deployments of the nationalist symbols which have traditionally been
employed by states to build up a sense of identification between the
citizens and the state. If the EU is ever to emerge as a global power,
it needs a significant proportion of its citizens to identify with it
at some level. Flags, parades, songs and the rest of the romantic
symbols of nationalism are still the most effective ways that states
have to promote loyalty and patriotism. Therefore, the mutation of the
constitution into the Lisbon treaty already represented something of a
step backwards for the forces driving EU political integration. To
understand the delicate position that the EU found itself in, on the
eve of the Irish vote on the Lisbon treaty, it is necessary to take a
brief look at these “integrationist*[1]” forces and their opposition.
The Balance of Forces in the EU
The Integrationists
The EU integrationist forces are extremely powerful. They include
amongst their number a large majority of continental Europe’s major
industries, corporations and capitalists and a large majority of the
political elites in most EU countries, with particular concentrations
in the heartland of the EU’s industrial economy – France, Germany, the
Benelux countries and Northern Italy. From their point of view, the
project of EU political integration has been a no-brainer for a long
time. An EU with increased political clout and the ability to
“strategically project power” would be a very useful thing in practice.
Without such a political actor to pursue their goals, Europe’s
industries are helpless in the face of the risks to the supply of
resources that they need. In a world where oil has hit $135 a barrel,
with “peak-oil” on the immediate horizon, at a time when energy
supplies are increasingly used for political
leverage, it’s not hard to see why European industrialists and
politicians alike are well disposed towards the idea of an EU with
greater political and military clout. And it’s not just the industrial
barons who think like this, the need for an EU which can provide
“energy security” was one of the major arguments of the Irish Green
Party in favour of ratification of Lisbon.
The EU has always been economically dominated by the outlook of
mainland European industry – which remains heavily concentrated in a
relatively small area stretching from Northern Italy to Western Germany
and Westwards into France. Europe’s major industries traditionally
relied upon close integration with “dirigiste” state apparatuses. Due
to its military strength and its relative autonomy from NATO, the
French state has been the traditional political power-house of the EU
and has been the driving force, in partnership with Germany in recent
years, behind EU ntegration. The political leadership of France in EU
integration can be seen in the primacy given to the Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) in EU funding. On the one hand, food security is a basic
requirement for any state with ambitions of being a global power, on
the other, the French economy is unusual, in EU terms, for the
importance of
agriculture and the political power of farmers.
Left Wing & Nationalist Popular Opposition
The integrationists are by no means without opposition. Popular
opposition and outright resistance to the EU project from the left and
from the broad family of traditional European nationalisms have been
obstacles that the integrationists have had to repeatedly overcome on
their slow march towards a coherent federal EU state. However, as the
various EU treaties have all been agreed to unanimously by each of the
component governments of the EU after detailed negotiations, the
ability of popular opposition movements to affect the course of the EU
is severely limited. In most cases, it is the very governments which
have signed treaties which subsequently ‘ratify’ them through
parliamentary formalities. From time to time various governments have
decided to hold referenda, or have been forced to do so by their courts
or domestic political pressure, and popular opposition has had a chance
to show its face. ‘No’ votes in referenda have done little, however, to
alter the course of European integration. They have merely been treated
as speed-bumps on the road, somewhat slowing the rate of progress. In
general, in the face of no votes, some clause or exemption has been
negotiated between the EU and the member government in order to give
the impression that the vote has been respected, with the treaty being
implemented regardless.
Apart from serving as general speed-bumps, the other meaningful way
that popular movements have influenced the course of EU is through
lobbying and applying various pressures on their national governments
during negotiations. Such influence is, however, vastly weaker than the
influence of the corporate world, with their armies of lobbyists and
virtually unlimited access to key decision makers. Thus, the social
aspects of the EU treaties remain relatively weak, lacking enforcement
mechanisms or being too vague to be applied in practice.
The integrationists face other opposition forces, however, and these
forces have proved powerful in influencing the direction of the EU
project over the years. They represent a section of Europe’s ruling
class in a self-interested alliance with the US state. They represent
those elites within the corporate, state and military sectors who feel
threatened – generally with good reason – by the prospect of a
politically powerful EU.
Atlanta-cist & Corporate Opposition
The UK economy is significantly
different to those of its continental neighbours. Agriculture has not
been important for over a hundred years. The financial services
industry is a particularly strong part of the economy. Much of the
wealth that flows through the markets of London originates from the
Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands and other crown
dependencies that serve as global off-shore tax havens. To understand
why EU political integration is seen as a threat to this sector of the
UK economy, where better to turn than
Professor Tim Congdon, a leading UK euro-skeptic economist. In a
presentation to the anti-EU Tory think tank, the Bruges Group, entitled
“The EU’s Threat to the City of London,” Congdon noted that “English
speaking Crown dependencies have got a totally disproportionate share
of the world’s financial business.” He went on to explain why these
dependencies were important to London’s financial services sector: “a
lot of value added in terms of managing the assets and so on is
actually done in London and this is critical to London’s prosperity
because we’re talking about quite large sums of money … it’s now about
getting on for $20 trillion”
But what has this to do with the EU? “[T]here’s resentment in the rest
of Europe and there are some somewhat disagreeable aspects of this bond
market … much of the market arose because of tax evasion.” Many of
those who invest in these offshore havens are European citizens,
evading taxes that are due to their states. Indeed, in Ireland, the
Ansbacher report uncovered the fact that Irish banks were ystematically
colluding with wealthy investors to evade taxes by investing in fake
off-shore accounts in the Caymans and the practice must be similarly
widespread elsewhere – that $20 trillion didn’t come from nowhere.
This leads us on to the European “resentment”. Firstly, the economic
and monetary policies of the EU are geared towards servicing
continental industry rather than UK finance – which have significantly
different needs. One of the five economic tests established by Labour
leader Gordon Brown in determining whether the UK should join the
Euro-zone is “what impact would entry into the euro have on the UK’s
financial services industry?” When the UK joined the European Exchange
Rate Mechanism, the Euro’s precursor, in October 1990, it remained
within the system for less than two years. The markets exploited the
differences in economic policies across the channel to force sterling
out of the system.
The second major “resentment” relates to taxation. To put it simply,
the continental powers would prefer that the tax money, which their
states should be collecting, was not instead funnelled into offshore
tax havens which are in practice, if not in law, based in London. They
would also like to end the common practice of companies basing
themselves in countries with low corporate tax rates, such as Ireland
and the UK, when their business is conducted across the union. A common
consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) has long been a publicly stated
goal of the integrationists and has been the official policy of the EU
commission since 2001, but has been actively opposed by the UK state
over the years, regardless of government.
For these reasons, the UK financial services industry has always been a
major opponent of EU closer economic and political integration as that
would inevitably cause it to lose its influence on political decision
makers and could threaten the tax loopholes that it depends upon.
The other major opposition to the project of EU political integration
has come, in recent years, from elements within the US state and their
security network. The European states are, bar one or two, currently
subordinate members of the US-commanded NATO security system. The
French state in particular has, since the Second World War,
consistently seen European integration as a means of maintaining and
reasserting their strategic power on the world stage, autonomous of US
control. This ultimately requires the construction of a European army
outside the orbit of NATO. Many of the internal battles that have raged
within the EU over the last decades have been concerned with the
apparently trivial details of whether the EU armed forces should use
NATO planning staff or ‘duplicate’ these functions with their own
staff. Ultimately, however, as European integration progresses, the US
will inevitably lose this battle as the logic of having an autonomous
military capacity becomes inescapable to the EU leaders and their
industrial backers.
The political opposition of NATO generals and US state department
officials is largely conducted in private. They have access to EU
political leaders as well as to the governments of the constituent
countries. Being representatives of the world’s super-power, they can
wield a great deal of power and have access to a large selection of
sticks and carrots to influence EU decision makers. EU political
integration not only threatens their military hegemony, it undermines
their ability to apply pressure to the individual European governments.
On the other hand, the US state is entirely supportive of European
economic integration, as it provides their corporations with a
convenient free-trade area. They are even supportive of military and
political integration – as long as it is politically subservient to the
US and militarily subordinate within NATO. Indeed the project of
European integration was initially driven by post-war US planners and
the various European movements were covertly funded from Washington for
decades. The US is also in favour of increased EU military spending,
within NATO at least. Their opposition is to political integration
which would allow the EU to act on the world stage autonomously of the
US. As integration proceeds, that is increasingly the reality they are
facing.
This ‘Atlantacist” opposition to the EU includes factions in most
European countries – as their NATO links mean that they all contain a
section of the elite who are more or less dependant on US hegemony for
their power. It also includes several prominent US-based capitalists
whose business interests in the EU give them significant influence. The
most notable example is Rupert Murdoch, whose international media
network gives him particular power and a unique ability to influence
the opinions of the European masses against the plans of their leaders.
Overall, however, this opposition is most strongly concentrated in the
UK due to the historic ‘special relationship’ with the US, its close
relationship with Commonwealth countries, its prominent, if
subordinate, position in the NATO command chain and the shared language
and close cultural ties with its former colony. The strength of the
Atlantacists in the UK dovetails neatly with the interests of the city
of London to create a particularly strong opposition to further EU
integration in the UK. These ‘euro-sceptics’, as they are known, are a
powerful force in the UK conservative party and the media and have
exercised a strong influence on UK government policy towards Europe
over the years, regardless of who has been in power. Since its entry to
the EEC, the UK has consistently acted as something of a ‘wrecker’
within the Union. This reached its nadir in the 1980’s when Thatcher’s
government threw a succession of spanners into the EU’s works causing
it to grind to a halt, but, regardless of government, the UK has always
served as a major obstacle to political and economic integration. It
remains outside the euro-zone, it has blocked the CCCTB for at least a
decade and, in general, it continues to serve as a brake on political
integration in all areas.
Nevertheless, the UK’s economy is still heavily dependant on remaining
within the EU. While it can block integrationist plans, pulling out is
not really an option. In the late 1990’s, the integrationists
introduced a framework for ‘enhanced cooperation’ allowing 8 countries
or more to forge ahead with closer integration by themselves. This
created a ‘multi-speed’ Europe, where the core continental economies
have pursued closer integration in a range of areas, leaving the UK and
others behind. It is also worth noting that a significant proportion of
the UK political and industrial elite share the same interests as their
continental peers. Therefore, while the UK has generally served as a
brake on integrationists plans and continues to do so, the pressure of
an internal pro-integration faction and the danger of being left behind
by the continental powers have slowly forced it along the EU path. Each
treaty represents, in the main part, a laboriously elaborated
compromise between these various forces being represented most clearly
by France and Germany on one part, and the UK on the other.
The Relevance of the Irish vote on Lisbon
In this context, with the project of the integrationists already on the
back foot after the rejection of the EU constitution, the Atlantacists
and anti-integrationist forces were dearly wishing that the Lisbon
treaty would be defeated in Ireland. In the UK, the euro-sceptic
British Conservatives were riding high in the polls. The Labour
government was due to ratify the treaty just a week after the Irish
poll. If they were to do so in a situation where the
only referendum in Europe had rejected the treaty, they would find
themselves under considerable popular pressure. The holding of a
referendum on the EU constitution was a Labour campaign promise -
reportedly extracted from Tony Blair by Rupert Murdoch as a condition
for his support – and the opposition and media will not be slow to
point out how similar the Lisbon treaty is to the constitution.
The Lisbon treaty already represents an agreed compromise between the
various factions of the European business and political elite. At this
stage the only real remaining weapon available to the
anti-integrationist forces was popular opinion. While they can use the
euro-sceptic press in the UK and elsewhere to rant and rave against the
bureaucrats in Brussels, this had no affect whatsoever on the treaty’s
ratification in parliament. In Ireland, however, the referendum gave
them a much more direct opportunity to throw another spanner in the
works.
Defeat for the Lisbon treaty in Ireland represents a significant blow
to the EU and has encouraged its opponents throughout Europe. It is
impossible to tell exactly how this will pan out, but it is not
inconceivable that it will engender a crisis amongst the
integrationists. It has certainly not helped the legitimacy of the
federal EU state or any of the member governments who have ratified the
treaty or intend to do so – which might cause popular opposition to
become much more problematic to the corporate and political elites
driving integration. It
has certainly encouraged the Atlantacists and the corporate opposition
to EU integration. While a yes vote would have allowed the good ship EU
to sail serenely on its state-building course, an Irish no vote might
yet serve as a significant blow to those plans.
In terms of the effect of a no vote on Ireland itself, it is almost
impossible to predict since it largely depends on the effects
elsewhere. It seems most likely that the EU leaders will simply press
ahead regardless of the Irish vote. Whether they take a punitive or
conciliatory approach to negotiations with Ireland depends mostly on
the strength of opposition elsewhere in Europe. Whatever happens, the
Irish state has ultimately no leverage in negotiations. Economically,
Ireland mostly plays a parasitic role in the EU. It gobbles up
agricultural subsidies and provides a tax haven for US multinationals
doing business in the EU. It possesses almost no strategic resources or
military might. The Irish state has thus no chips to bargain with. The
only thing stopping the EU from being as harsh as it wants is the
effect that this might have on public opinion elsewhere. Ireland has
only been allowed to retain its low corporate tax rates and light
financial regulation regime due to the fact that the UK also opposes
“tax harmonisation”, while the CAP subsidies are due to France being
their champion. If Ireland was the only country not to ratify the
treaty, the Irish state would be isolated, with no real leverage and
such policies could be vulnerable. That is the outcome that the Irish
elite fear more than anything – it’s also probably the best thing that
could come out of the vote for European workers, incidentally.
It is even possible that defeat in the Irish referendum, followed by an
upsurge in opposition to the EU elsewhere might cause the
integrationists to take a significantly different tack – for example by
focusing on integration between the core continental EU states through
“enhanced cooperation” or a similar arrangement and leaving Ireland and
the UK on the outside. Still, it is probably most likely that the no
vote will merely be treated as another speed bump in the EU’s path and
they will simply continue with their onward march and maybe agree a new
protocol to explain away the Irish public’s rejection.
The Treaty Campaign In Ireland
Given the wider context, it is not surprising that the political
campaign surrounding the Lisbon treaty was unusually long-running and
intense by the standards of Irish European referenda. The vote was
scheduled for June 12th, 2008, yet public campaigning started in 2007.
The breakdown of the forces ran pretty much exactly according to the
standard European schema outlined above. On the yes side we had almost
the entirety of the corporate and political elite, from the employers’
federation IBEC, to the three largest political parties: Fianna Fail,
Fine Gael and Labour. 160 of the 166 members of the Irish parliament
supported the treaty.
On the no side we had a wide array of groups. These can broadly be
categorised as representing the left on one part and traditional
nationalism on the other. The left incorporates Marxists, anarchists,
some trade unionists and some social democrats. The traditional
nationalists incorporate the catholic fundamentalists of Coir / Youth
Defence as well as the various shades of Irish Republicanism (Sinn
Fein, Republican Sinn Fein, 32 County Sovereignty Movement). Other
oppositional groups sat somewhere between the two (Eirigi, People’s
Movement).
The Atlantacists were represented by Libertas, a political novelty in
Ireland, which I’ve examined elsewhere [1]. They were weak in number,
since there is no significant section of the Irish economy that does
not depend on Ireland’s EU membership in some manner or another.
However, the reach of multi-national media corporations in Ireland,
many of whom are owned and controlled by figures close to the US and UK
administrations, amplifies their voice considerably. For example,
Rupert Murdoch’s News International broadcasts a range of widely
received “Sky” televisions channels as well as publishing several daily
and weekly newspapers with mass audiences in Ireland. These all took a
marked “No” position in their coverage.
What was unusual in this campaign, however, is the fact that some of
those advocating a no vote had access to considerable resources to run
their campaigns. Both Libertas and Coir probably spent well over a
million euros, money spent on billboards, posters, press conferences
and advertisements. Both groups even spent significant amounts of money
buying Google “adwords” – both purchased Google’s sponsored links for
“EU referendum” – costing them over 2 dollars every time somebody
clicked the link! Libertas were preparing their campaign and appointing
staff up to two years in advance of the poll and their campaign had
swung into top-gear, with a public launch of their campaign,
accompanied by a truck-sized advertisement, in December 2007. They
eventually claimed to have spent about €1.3 million, but that is
unverified and the source of their funding remains mysterious. The
amount of money that Coir spent is also unknown. Both groups have
strong connections to US backed groups, the defence and intelligence
communities in the case of Ganley and the pro-life movement in the case
of Coir.
However, while the significance of the campaign, and the length of time
that it covered, ensured that the media coverage was voluminous and the
public debate was all-pervasive, the information content of the debate
was probably, on balance, negative. A diligent and reasonably
discerning citizen who relied upon the media for their information
about the treaty would, on average, have emerged from the debate less
well informed about the EU and the significance of the treaty than when
the debate started.
Whenever a prominent campaigner issued a claim about some aspect of the
treaty, it was widely reported by the media, no matter how obviously
wrong or dishonest it was. Due to the fact that the elite forces on
either side were naturally reluctant to argue their case openly, there
was no shortage of spectacularly dishonest claims. The debate consisted
of a bewildering blizzard of directly contradictory claims. For the
vast majority of voters, the only really way to choose between these
claims was on the basis of how much they trusted the people making them.
A second major problem with the public debate was the constant tendency
towards simplification. A large number of groups in Ireland opposed the
treaty, from a wide range of wildly different points of view. These
ranged from anarchists and Trotskyists on the left, to fundamentalist
catholics and NATO supporters on the right. These groups were often
more vocally opposed to one another than they were to towards those
advocating a Yes vote. The political and corporate elite who backed the
treaty were, on the other hand, fairly united. They ran a coordinated
and coherent campaign which saw them all singing from the same hymn
sheet. While it would be fair enough to describe this as a collective
“Yes Campaign”, it would be enormously wrong to do the same with the
“No Campaign” which consisted of a large number of different, mutually
antagonistic groups. Yet that’s exactly what the media did. The
campaign was simplified to a battle between the Yes Side and the No
Side. Farcically, Declan Ganley, head honcho at Libertas, was
frequently described as the leader of the No campaign despite the fact
that his organisation had no more than a dozen members or so and most
of them seem ed to also be his employees. So, not only were Yes and No
campaigners directly contradicting each other, “spokespeople for the No
Campaign” frequently made statements which directly contradicted the
claims made by “spokespeople for the No Campaign.”
But it wasn’t just the preponderance of wildly inaccurate and dishonest
claims or farcical simplifications which detracted from the quality
debate. Where information was accurate and well-grounded it suffered
from an intense insularity, lack of context and narrowness of focus. It
focused overwhelmingly on the question of “is the treaty good for
Ireland?” and this narrow focus reduced much of the debate to a
concentration on how the Irish state’s voice in Europe would be
affected if the treaty was passed. In the greater scheme of things,
this is very much an irrelevance. Before the treaty, the Irish state,
by itself, had a miniscule ability to influence European decisions and
this will remain the case for the foreseeable future. The vast quantity
of coverage which examined the various clauses of the treaty in minute
detail to evaluate their likely impact on Irish decision making power
was almost entirely pointless.
Worse still, all such arguments were essentially speculative since the
treaty was to affect significant changes to the EU’s decision making
structures, to allow the EU to make decisions more efficiently and to
carry them out more coherently. How these decisions would have impacted
upon the interests of the Irish state would have depended upon what the
decisions actually were. It is highly likely that they would, sooner or
later, be used to attempt to end the tax-haven status of Ireland.
Whether that succeeds or not depends upon the balance of forces between
the UK and the continental core of the EU and has little to do with the
treaty. It is highly unlikely that the Irish state will ever exercise a
veto on anything significant since the major EU states are also the
major driving forces in European integration and they possess between
them the ability to apply overwhelming pressure on a weak dependant
country like Ireland. The idea that the Irish state could veto a CCCTB
plan that had been agreed – after decades of slow diplomacy – between
the UK, France, Germany and the other major EU economies appears highly
unlikely.
So, overall, the media coverage of the EU campaign was dominated by
dishonest and clearly wrong claims. Where it managed to be remotely
reality-based it was, more often than not, premised on a vast
overestimation of the Irish state’s influence on EU decisions. The
bigger picture of the direction of European integration and the major
forces influencing that direction, were almost totally ignored and
remain almost entirely unknown to the public. In order to demonstrate
this point, the following sections examine some of the issues that
formed the focus of public debate in the media, how they were presented
by the various campaigners, what the reality of the situation was, and
how the public debate diverged from that reality.
A significant proportion of
the public debate focused on the claimed loss of sovereignty. Of the No
campaigners, virtually every group bar the anarchists raised this as a
complaint in one form or another. The specific complaints included the
extension of Qualified Majority Voting, the dilution of the Irish
state’s veto rights over a range of areas, the new legal personality of
the EU, the paramount nature of the European Court of Justice with
respect to national courts, the loss of an automatic right of a
commissioner and the creation of official EU representative positions.
On the far right wing of the No campaign, this loss of sovereignty was
equated with an “EU takeover” and even the “End of Nations”.
The reality of the situation is that European integration must, by
definition, lead to a progressive loss of sovereignty on the part of
national governments – that’s the whole point. The EU is a state in
slow formation, each treaty has transferred some decision making power
from the member countries to the EU and has consequently reduced the
sovereignty of the member states. However, it is very much still a work
in progress and it will be some time before effective political power
rests in Brussels rather than Paris, Frankfurt and London. The EU lacks
efficient enforcement mechanisms, it is internally divided, it is
finding that economic liberalisation and political integration across
languages and cultures is not straightforward, it lacks a real
deployable security service and its decision making mechanisms remain
laborious. While there has been a continuous and progressive transfer
of power from the member nations to the EU since the start, it is far
from being complete.
The Yes campaign either simply denied that the treaty implied any loss
of sovereignty or avoided the question by describing it as “pooled
sovereignty” or some other semantic chicanery. The reluctance to
honestly address this issue simply sprang from the desire amongst the
elites not to stir up traditional nationalist sentiment amongst the
population – the ditching of the flag and other symbols from the
constitution was testament to the strength of this fear. Therefore,in
this at least, we can say that the Yes campaign was, at best,dishonest
by omission.
While the claims from No campaigners about the loss of sovereignty
might have been accurate in the general case, more often than not they
were wildly inaccurate and misleading in the specifics. The claimed
loss of sovereignty was presented as being much more sudden, absolute
and complete than has actually been the case. For example, several
nationalist groups claimed that the treaty would inaugurate the primacy
of the ECJ – a primacy which in fact dates back to 1962. Many of the
other changes that were claimed to represent significant blows to
sovereignty were simply slight adjustments to existing institutions
rather than state-defining moments.
Overall,
in the public debate, the clear and obvious reality, of an incomplete
and partial state in gradual formation with sovereignty being slowly
and progressively ceded to the new state from its members was almost
entirely obscured.
Taxation
The
“protection of Ireland’s tax independence” was, naturally, a
significant focus of the debate. The Atlantacists, the nationalists and
even some of the left claimed that the Lisbon Treaty put that
independence at risk. The Yes campaign, on the other hand, claimed that
the Lisbon Treaty would not affect Ireland’s veto on tax-related
matters and would provide the best protection of Ireland’s interests
into the future.
The reality of the situation is that there has been a long term
struggle between the continental core of the EU on one side and the UK
and the Atlantacists on the other, as has been touched on above. This
treaty does nothing one way or the other to resolve this struggle. The
French state in particular is wedded to the idea of a CCCTB and it has
been official policy of the EU commission since 2001.
It is basically impossible to tell how the result of the treaty vote
will affect the situation. It could be that the No vote will see
punitive measures applied to Ireland which might undermine the state’s
tax independence, but it is equally possible that the updated, more
efficient decision making mechanisms of the EU that a Yes vote would
have ushered in would have been used to place Ireland and the UK under
significant pressure to harmonise their tax rates.
In terms of the public debate, pretty much every single claim from No
campaigners about tax was either totally wrong or wildly speculative.
From Libertas, to Coir, the People’s Movement and Sinn Fein, all of the
claims about taxation were dishonest. These claims were even echoed, in
a milder form, by some of the left. The fact that they are normally
against the low tax rate for corporations seems to have been forgotten
and they were, in effect, happy to oppose the treaty on the grounds
that it reduced the ability of US corporations to avoid paying taxes.
This compounded the dishonesty with a huge dollop of hypocrisy. The Yes
campaign’s claims about taxation and the treaty were somewhat more
honest, yet the lack of context and an implicit vast over-estimation of
the Irish state’s ability to influence such matters also meant that the
picture that they painted was woefully inaccurate.
Economic Policy
The effects of the Lisbon treaty on Ireland’s economy formed another
major focus of the public debate. This aspect was most strongly taken
up by the left and the more left-leaning of the nationalists, who
argued that the treaty would lead to privatisations and other
neo-liberal measures. Libertas argued against the treaty on economic
grounds from almost exactly the opposite point of view, denouncing the
EU as a bureaucratic morass of anti-business red-tape. The Yes
campaign, for its part, focused heavily on the past and future benefits
of EU membership to Ireland’s economy.
The reality of the situation is somewhat complex. Firstly, it is
unquestionably true that EU membership has been beneficial to Ireland’s
economy as against its previous economic isolation and dependence on
the UK. It is also unquestionably true that, as long as Ireland’s
economy is dependent on offering cut-price tax rates and receiving
enormous agricultural subsidies, it will remain heavily vulnerable to
decisions out of its control. It is also unquestionably true that, in
the current situation, withdrawal from the EU would see Ireland’s
economy collapse. However, whether Ireland’s membership of the EU
continues to be economically beneficial is a matter outside of the
control of the Irish state.
It is also almost impossible to argue that the EU’s economic direction
has not been progressing in a markedly neo-liberal direction in recent
years. The Lisbon agenda, agreed by the council of Europe in 2000,
adopted a general policy of market liberalisation in all spheres, which
essentially means the progressive reduction of the state’s role in the
economy and in providing public services. The Lisbon treaty added
several new areas to the specific list of sectors to be opened to
liberalisation – most importantly health and education. This represents
a small step forward on the neo-liberal structuring of the internal EU
economy.
Yet, once again, it is a mistake to think that this change would see
Europe suddenly order its member states to privatise their health and
education systems. The reality of the situation is that neo-liberal
economics is currently virtually ubiquitous amongst the world’s
political and economic elites. he thing that stops Europe’s governments
from privatising public service is not the fact that they don’t want to
do it, it’s the fact that they find themselves unable to do so due to
popular opposition. Privatisation and liberalisation in transport and
energy in Ireland is still extremely limited, as it is elsewhere in
Europe, while the Irish health system has always had a significant
private element, despite the fact that liberalisation in health has
just been rejected while transport and energy have been ‘liberalised’
for some time. In this context, the idea that Europe might order the
government to privatise is hardly meaningful.
Nevertheless, the prospect of granting the task of delegating such
unpopular decisions to a remote federal government is an appealing one
to many governments. Already, in many Irish disputes we see the
government claiming that their hands are tied by EU legislation, for
example invoking EU legislation during the bin tax dispute in 2004. The
extension of liberalisation within the EU and the development of better
enforcement mechanisms will eventually see the EU make and enforce such
decisions at a federal level. There is no other reason to make such
agreements, but it is likely to be a slow process.
In terms of the public debate over Lisbon, we can start by saying that
the arguments of the Atlantacists in Libertas were generally vague and
clichéd attacks on “the bureaucrats in city hall”. They garnered a tiny
amount of support from capitalists who felt threatened by one thing or
another about EU integration, but there was no discernible specific
complaints or proposed reforms suggested. It is hard to see these
claims as anything other than general-purpose mud thrown to confuse the
debate and sow doubt in the public mind.
The arguments of the left about the neo-liberal direction of the EU are
difficult to argue with, although many of the specific claims were
somewhat misleading, over-estimating the direct impact of the specific
changes. The Yes campaign, for its part, relied upon generalised and
non-specific allusions to how the EU had been good for Ireland’s
economy and that the treaty protected Ireland’s interests. All
specifics concerning economic risks and the economic
direction of EU policy were studiously avoided.
Overall, thus, while the public debate did manage to convey the idea
that privatisations and neo-liberalism are a strong force in EU
decision making, this was obscured by the contradictory smoke emitted
by the Atlantacists and where it did manage to make a splash in the
media, it was often connected with a grossly exaggerated estimation of
the significance of the current changes.
Militarisation
The implications of the treaty for military matters was another major
focus of public debate. The left criticised it as leading to increased
militarisation of the EU. This criticism was also echoed by others
including Libertas and the nationalist groups. At the more extreme end
of the claims, some groups claimed that the treaty would effectively
terminate Ireland’s traditional policy of military neutrality. The Yes
campaign focused on the fact that an EU protocol, agreed as part of the
second Nice treaty referendum, had guaranteed respect for Ireland’s
neutrality and that nothing in the current treaty could overrule that.
The reality is, once again, significantly more complex. The EU protocol
guaranteeing Ireland’s neutrality would indeed prevent the EU from
ordering the Irish state to take part in an EU army or a collective
war. However, as with privatisation, this is a rather pointless freedom
since the Irish government and all the major parties are more keen than
anybody to ditch their policy and to participate in future EU
‘security’ operations. The Irish army is, after all, currently in Chad
providing an EU fig-leaf to the French army’s fifth or sixth military
intervention to prop up their favoured dictator there. They have
rendered the meaning of neutrality virtually meaningless by offering
whatever assistance they can to the US military’s war in Iraq and the
Irish courts have themselves ruled that neutrality is ‘aspirational’.
In a situation where the Irish state is so keen on participating in EU
armed forces, it is really not that significant that the EU state
doesn’t have the power to order them to do so.
On the other hand, when it comes to EU militarisation, there is no
doubt that the Lisbon treaty represented another small step on the road
to military integration and a common EU army. The small modifications
to the text that it contained serve to strengthen the language and put
pressure on the member governments to spend money on standardising
their armies in preparation for greater integration. The creation of
such an army has been the unambiguous goal of the EU integrationists
since the start. It is far from existing in practice, but at this stage
it is well on the way. Most importantly it has finally managed to set
up a planning centre and HQ that is independent of NATO. That hurdle
having been cleared, it is quite possible that the pace of integration
will increase, but opposition from NATO still has the possibility of
being a formidable roadblock in their path. The treaty was a tiny step
forward, but how significant it might have turned out to be will depend
on events that are quite unpredictable at this stage.
On the claims of militarisation, therefore, the No campaigners were
clearly somewhat accurate, albeit alarmist in some cases. On the claims
of a loss of neutrality, the Yes campaign was somewhat accurate,
although, once again, the lack of context led to them putting forward a
very misleading story. The real source of the misinformation, however,
was in Yes campaigners repeatedly conflating the two – when asked about
EU militarisation, the standard reply was to deny any threat to Irish
neutrality as if the two questions were the same.
Abortion, Euthanasia, Gay Marriage, etc
The implications of the Lisbon treaty on a broad range of social
questions also formed the focus of some public debate. These issues
were generally raised by the traditionalist nationalist wing of the No
campaign, although they were echoed to a certain extent by the
Atlantacists of Libertas. At essence, the claims were that a No vote
could help see a situation where legalised abortion, euthanasia and
various other measures which might undermine Ireland’s traditional
catholic ethos could be forced upon Ireland by decisions of the ECJ.
The left wing No campaigners and the entirety of the Yes campaign
dismissed these claims as baseless.
The reality of the situation is that there was no prospect of the ECJ
acting to force the Irish government to introduce legalised abortion or
euthanasia. There was also nothing whatsoever in the treaty that makes
this prospect any more or less likely. The claims of the nationalist No
camp were, in this regard, totally inaccurate. However, once again it’s
not as simple as that. As EU integration progresses there has been and
will continue to be a harmonisation of social and cultural norms – the
basic rights of citizens and so on. The period since Ireland joined the
EU has seen an enormous decline in the power of catholic social
teaching in Ireland. Ireland’s progressive integration into an EU which
is overwhelmingly secular in nature in comparison to Ireland has
undoubtedly played a part in that. While the process of European
integration continues, at a social and institutional level, the process
of Irish de-catholicisation is likely to continue in parallel. This
will eventually lead to a situation where continued bans on abortion in
Ireland will come under pressure from the EU, through its courts and
decision making institutions.
So, while one can say unequivocally that the traditional nationalists’
claims about the treaty were wrong, their fears were not entirely
misplaced. Indeed, it is the fear of gradual cultural assimilation into
European secular norms that most strongly motivates this group to fight
against European treaties. They understand that compulsory fidelity to
doctrinaire catholic teaching is not much of a vote winner, thus they
have to invent alarmist stories on some of the more polarising issues
to try to reach a broader layer of public support.
Immigration
One issue that was barely mentioned by campaigners, but still cropped
up repeatedly in the media was immigration. Only a handful of
individuals on the very fringes of the no campaign raised the issue in
public in relation to Lisbon, but it still cropped up repeatedly with
reference to the Nice treaty and EU expansion, in advance of which the
Irish government had assured the people that there would be only
limited immigration into Ireland. In actual fact the Irish construction
boom saw tens of thousands of immigrants arrive. It was reported in
various places that this had caused a feeling of resentment among large
swathes of the public. It is highly likely that this fear was stoked in
private campaigning by some traditional nationalist no campaigners. The
basic problem expressed was that Ireland would lose control over its
borders.
The reality of the situation is that freedom of movement within the EU
has been a reality for a long time.s Essentially, on this point, we can
consider Ireland to be just like a US state. The very idea of
immigration controls from the EU into Ireland makes as little sense as
the dea that Nebraska might adopt immigration controls on the rest of
the US. Similarly, given the internal EU freedom of movement, the Irish
state has very little latitude to define immigration controls for those
arriving from the rest of the world. The simple fact is that when there
are jobs people will come, when there are no jobs people will leave.
While Ireland remains part of the EU, this will remain the case.
Finally, having looked at the European context and the stunningly poor
quality of the public debate, we will briefly look at the course of the
campaign to ask why it went the way that it did. There were several
significant differences with past EU referendums, most notably the
strength of the No vote in opinion polls leading up to the vote. The
last two opinion polls before the vote registered a 35% to 30% lead for
a No and a slim 42% to 39% lead for a Yes in the other. This was an
nprecedented situation – even in the first Irish poll on the Nice
referendum – which was defeated – the Yes vote was ahead in the last
poll before the vote. Although the Yes side threw enormous resources
into the campaign in the last few days before the poll and mobilised
everybody they possibly could, they failed to stem the tide and the
campaign was defeated by 53% to 47%, with a turnout of 51%, a marked
increase over the numbers who voted on Nice.
In the early years of EU membership, Irish voters could be relied on to
deliver a massive vote in favour of whatever European treaty was put in
front of them due mainly to the fact that the EU seemed to be a
plausible route out of poverty. By 2001, when the Nice Treaty was
rejected, immediate economic necessity was far less of a force.
However, this vote came after a relatively low key campaign and a very
low turnout. When the political and business elite focused their
energies and resources on delivering a Yes vote second time around,
they managed to win 62% of the vote and were able to put the first loss
down to “taking their eye off the ball”. For Lisbon, they most
certainly did have their eye on the ball. They ran a well resourced,
intensive and expensive media campaign, fronted by a carefully chosen
selection of political, economic and business leaders. They covered the
country with posters and billboards and mobilised their friends in the
media to help persuade the population. Yet they lost. So what happened?
Firstly, the nature of the referendum campaign conspired against the
Irish elite. European treaties are complicated documents, concerned
with the workings of arcane institutions governing distant affairs. Due
to the lack of opportunities for personal advancement on offer, the
major parties find it particularly difficult to mobilise their
constituency organisations, while the nationalists and the left are
generally more motivated than ever.
Thus, Ireland’s political and business leaders have traditionally
relied heavily on their advertising, PR and media resources in order to
sell their case for European treaties. This was particularly so with
Lisbon, but the difference this time was that, in Declan Ganley, they
were opposed by somebody who had access to comparable PR resources and
in Lord Rothermere and Rupert Murdoch, they were opposed by people who
controlled a significant minority of the Irish media. Although the
British tabloids have far less political influence in Ireland than the
Irish press, a significant proportion of the voting population are
notparticularly interested in European politics, never mind the
extension of QMV or new shared-competencies. They absorb information
about the issues in fragments, an article here, a radio interview
there. By introducing sufficient alternative interpretations of the
significance of the treaty into the public sphere, Libertas and their
media allies were able to neutralise the media as a propaganda tool.
So, while the post-election opinion polls revealed that very few people
voted against the treaty from a pro-business point of view, the PR and
media work of Ganley, Murdoch et al were instrumental in levelling the
playing field between the campaigns.
With a large number of conflicting interpretations in circulation, many
voters’ voting decisions depended on whom they trusted the most. When
it came down to it, the side that was represented by politicians and
IBEC was always going to be in trouble. In the end, the loyalty test
split the electorate on class lines. The wealthier constituencies
trusted their politicians and business leaders more, the rest of the
country sided against them and with the left or the nationalists.
Ironically, the intervention of NATO supporting businessmen helped
significantly in exposing the class divide that runs through capitalist
Ireland. The depth and distrust between the workers and their leaders
was temporarily laid bare.
[1] http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87311
First Published in Irish Left Review, June 20th
I can now confirm that this man was Chris Dreyfus, an inspector in the police. 
