Ireland will hold a second referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon on October 2nd. Most opinion polls in the run-up to the vote show that a majority of Irish voters now back the EU treaty they rejected in June 2008.
However, despite Ireland having subsequently won a special deal on the treaty, and despite the country’s economic dependence on the Union, the result of the referendum is far from certain. The government is the most unpopular since Ireland won its independence, the public mood is volatile amidst a deep recession and many voters remain unconvinced and confused about the treaty’s merits.
At stake is much more than the credibility of Ireland’s already enfeebled government. A Yes vote would allow the EU to improve the way it makes decisions, particularly in foreign policy. A No vote would lead to recrimination, policy paralysis and probably a freeze on further EU enlargement. The EU’s leaders – divided on what to do next – would be distracted from the many urgent tasks that face the Union, ranging from responding in an effective and co-ordinated manner to the economic crisis, to making a success of negotiations on climate change, to putting in place a new European Commission.
Ireland’s voters shocked EU governments on June 13th 2008 by rejecting the Lisbon treaty by 53 to 47 per cent. Despite the fact that the country’s businesses, media and political mainstream are almost uniformly pro-European, the government failed to assuage the fears – mostly spurious – raised by the No campaign over the treaty’s impact on corporation tax,
neutrality, abortion and a loss of Irish influence in Brussels. On October 2nd the
Dublin government, the country’s various pro-treaty campaigners and Ireland’s 26 EU partners will hope that the Irish reverse that decision. The odds appear to be stacked in favour of a Yes, for several reasons.
First, the EU has added a set of quasi-legal guarantees to the treaty that address many of the more tangible concerns that turned Irish voters against the treaty the last time round. The guarantees state that nothing in the treaty will affect Irish law concerning family matters, corporate taxation, military neutrality or workers’ rights. On top of this, the EU governments have also agreed not to implement a clause in the treaty that would shrink the number of European commissioners from 2014, so that each member-state would periodically forego the right to have a commissioner. Ireland, like many EU countries, feared that its voice
in Brussels would be weakened during the periods when it lacked ‘its own’ commissioner there.
Second, Irish voters appear to be more favourably disposed towards the treaty than they were a year ago. Opinion polls in September indicate that a clear majority of voters back the
treaty. One survey puts the share of Yes voters as high as 62 per cent, with 15 per cent still undecided. Many voters have concluded that Ireland can ill afford a confrontation with the rest of the EU at a time when its economy is reeling from a collapse in global demand, high unemployment and a burst property bubble.
Third, the Yes campaign is now more motivated, united and organised than in the run-up to the first vote. All Irish political parties, big and small, are unanimous in their support for the treaty. The only exception is Sinn Fein, the hard-line nationalist party which has a handful of seats in Ireland’s parliament.
Industrialists, most trade unionists, farmers, and a plethora of civil society organisations are unambiguously and actively backing a Yes vote. Pro-treaty campaigners have enlisted the support of footballers, musicians, and other celebrities to appeal directly to voters for a Yes vote. Well-known businessmen, such as Michael O’Leary of Ryanair and Jim O’Hara, boss of Intel Ireland, are running their own highly visible Yes campaigns. And ‘Ireland for Europe’, the advocacy group that was important in winning Ireland’s second referendum on the Nice treaty in 2002, has reformed under the leadership of Pat Cox, a respected former president of the European Parliament. Other groups are running slick PR campaigns intended to target young voters : most voters under the age of 30 opposed the treaty in 2008.
Fourth, the No campaign – a colourful collection of Catholic conservatives, unreconstructed
nationalists and the hard left – has lost a great deal of credibility and is strapped for cash. Most voters have realised that many of the claims advanced by the No campaign in 2008, such as the notion that the treaty would introduce military conscription in Ireland, were bogus. Voters are likely to treat new assertions – the No side now says that the treaty will reduce the Irish minimum wage to S1.84 an hour, which is of course a pure fiction – with fresh scepticism. Furthermore the No side may not be helped by the decision of the fervently eurosceptic UK Independence Party to send more than a million anti-treaty leaflets to Irish homes.
Last, and perhaps most importantly, turnout is likely to be high. Most voters know the vote is an important one for the country’s future. A high turnout on its own will not be sufficient to secure a Yes vote : a respectable 53 per cent of the electorate voted in the last referendum. But most polls indicate that those already intending to vote Yes are more likely than No voters to turn out on the day.
Despite these advantages, the Yes campaign is unlikely to win the overwhelming majority that many polls predict and a victory for the No camp is far from inconceivable. First, Ireland’s government is deeply unpopular. Voters – particularly supporters of opposition parties – may find it difficult to support any measure backed by the governing coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. Support for Fianna Fáil, a centrist conservative party and the largest in Ireland’s parliament, has fallen to 14 per cent, its lowest score in living memory. Brian Cowen, Ireland’s uncharismatic Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil, has appealed to the Irish not to link their decision on the Lisbon treaty to a verdict on his government. However, many voters will find it hard to resist the temptation of using the referendum as an opportunity to tell the government what they think about some of the measures it has announced and is planning. These include further painful cuts to public services ; tax rises that are likely to be included in December’s budget ; and an unpopular scheme to buy bad property loans from Ireland’s troubled banks and give them to a National Asset Management Agency that would sell them once the property market recovers.
Second, a key reason for the No vote in 2008 was the Yes campaign’s failure to explain to voters face-to-face why they should back the treaty. But no group from either side in the campaign currently has the resources to conduct such canvassing. Instead the government is conducting “a short campaign, high on rhetoric, low on explanation, and [based on] hope that fear of the unknown will induce a change of mind in the electorate”. A campaign fought almost exclusively in the media, with bland messages such as “Vote Yes for recovery” may not be enough to secure a positive vote. In addition, Declan Ganley, a wealthy businessman and outspoken critic of the treaty, has unexpectedly returned to the No campaign. His money and media skills were instrumental in defeating the treaty in 2008. He may well succeed in luring some hesitant backers of the treaty back into the No camp.
The main hurdle facing pro-Lisbon campaigners is that they cannot come up with a reason for voting Yes that is simple, credible and based on the actual treaty. This is not entirely a failure of their imagination or planning. The Lisbon treaty contains no grand project, such as the euro or enlargement to the east, to engage the public. It is mostly a set of bureaucratic reforms, except perhaps the Charter of Fundamental Rights that is annexed to its main text. One of the few concrete arguments that the government and pro-European activists can use – that a Yes vote would copper-plate Ireland’s right to its own EU commissioner – has to some extent been undermined already. Frederik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden and holder of the EU presidency in the second half of 2009, has said publicly that all EU countries would keep ‘their’ commissioner irrespective of the plight of the treaty. [Reinfeldt was over-simplifying : the EU’s current rulebook says the number of commissioners must be less than the number of member-states from now on. But if the treaty falls, the member-states have since agreed to shrink the Commission by only one member and to give the job of EU High Representative for foreign policy to the remaining member-state.] This was a well-meaning effort to avoid appearing to bully Ireland into ratification, but it could weaken the Yes side’s trump argument.
What happens if Ireland says No
If Ireland votes No a second time, the EU’s governments will have to abandon the Lisbon treaty. A decade of attempts to reform the EU’s institutions – stretching from the Laeken declaration of December 2001 to the constitutional convention to the inter-governmental conference that produced the constitutional treaty to its transformation into the Lisbon treaty – will have ended. Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, and his Polish counterpart, Lech Kaczynski – neither of whom has yet signed the treaty, although their parliaments have approved it – would feel no need to do so. It is virtually inconceivable that European leaders would make yet another attempt to revive the set of institutional reforms that French and Dutch voters said No to in 2005 and that Irish voters had twice rejected. Nor would EU governments start talking about a new treaty. Given the difficulties of getting 27 countries to ratify any new prospective treaty, even the most integrationist member-states would be reluctant to embark on yet another inter-governmental conference to revise the existing treaties.
The demise of the Lisbon treaty would have far-reaching implications. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, have made it clear that there can be no further EU enlargement unless and until the treaty is ratified. They have said that an exception can be made for Croatia – already well advanced in its accession talks – and Iceland, a long-standing member of the European Economic Area. However, other would-be members would probably have to set aside that aspiration, at least for the foreseeable future. Balkan countries such as Bosnia-Hercegovina, Macedonia or Serbia would lose a much-needed anchor for political and economic reform, and could even suffer from a return of political instability. Turkey – already frustrated by the slow pace of its membership talks – could turn away from the EU in anger. Ukraine, Moldova and other former Soviet states would probably discard all hopes of moving closer to the EU.
One could expect that some countries, led by Germany and France, would seek to salvage certain elements from the Lisbon treaty that they consider crucial for the smooth functioning of the Union, such as changes to the EU’s voting rules and the streamlining of its foreign policy machinery. Since these changes require a new legal basis, Berlin and Paris could try to include them in the accession treaty of Croatia, which may be drawn up in 2011. However, Britain’s Conservative Party, which looks set to return to office by mid-2010 and is strongly opposed to the Lisbon treaty, would almost certainly block such a move.
A more conservative option would be for EU countries to try to use provisions of the Nice treaty to bring about changes similar to those contained in the Lisbon text. For example, the Lisbon treaty abolishes national vetoes over EU action to tackle terrorism, organised crime and illegal immigration. But this radical step could also be taken by using a special clause in the Nice treaty that would allow the governments – if they all agree – to switch decision-making on policing, criminal justice and migration to majority voting.
However, the application of that Nice treaty clause would be politically controversial and a legal minefield.
The Lisbon treaty stipulates that such a move would be accompanied by an ‘emergency brake’ procedure that would allow any member-state to stop negotiations that might have an adverse impact on its criminal laws. If the member-states did use the Nice treaty to move to majority voting, they would do so without that safeguard. Britain and Ireland, the EU’s two biggest common law countries, would be most likely to object to such an initiative.
If that kind of tinkering with the existing rules turns out to be exceedingly difficult, some capitals could rethink the long-standing principle that the EU should try to bring along all its members for big changes and new policies. The much-discussed idea of building a ‘core Europe’ around the eurozone is unlikely to come to fruition, because the countries that are in the euro are not necessarily the countries that one would want in an avant-garde group on, say, defence. In any case Ireland, in the euro but opposed to the Lisbon treaty, could hardly be expected to sign up to a new political project.
However, other forms of variable geometry, based on specific policy areas, are more likely to make headway.
For example, there are clauses in the Nice treaty that would allow smaller groupings of member-states to pursue particular projects, under a procedure known as ‘enhanced co-operation’. It is also possible that smaller groups of member-states could seek to move ahead by establishing groups – formal or informal – outside the framework of the EU treaties. Some member-states would object strongly to new avant-garde groups, on the grounds that they would undermine the Union’s unity and cohesion. The Commission, too, would be likely to take that line. But in Paris officials are thinking about reviving the idea once promoted
by President Jacques Chirac of ‘pioneer groups’. The most feasible areas for such experiments would be defence, justice and home affairs and, possibly, taxation.
In the long run, the EU might be able to agree on new treaties dealing with single policy issues, such as climate change or energy security. But the poisonous and febrile atmosphere that an Irish No would generate, combined with widespread disagreement on the EU’s future direction, could mean that even that sort of treaty change would be difficult to agree upon.
In Ireland, a No vote would lead to Brian Cowen facing a vote of no confidence in the Dáil, Ireland’s parliament. His struggling coalition government would probably start to fall to pieces. Ireland’s borrowing costs would rise further if investors perceived the No vote as a sign of impending political instability. Since the government has to plug a S20 billion hole in the budget, higher borrowing costs would further undermine the chances of economic recovery. In legal terms Ireland’s position in the EU would remain the same, but its influence in the Union would be seriously diminished.
Heads or tails ?
Ireland’s second referendum on the Lisbon treaty is winnable. That does not mean that it will be won. The Yes campaign has invested vastly more money, time and effort than in 2008 to convince and mobilise Ireland’s instinctively pro-European majority. But the different groups on the Yes side have not been able to agree upon and communicate a single, positive message that would put the outcome beyond doubt. The Yes campaign’s ineffectiveness has a lot to do with the complex and bureaucratic nature of the Lisbon treaty itself : any other EU government would also struggle to communicate its purpose to its electorate. Faced with
blandness on one side and hysterical hyperbole on the other, Ireland’s beleaguered electorate is likely to pick the option which they think best preserves the status quo, and vote accordingly. That toss of the coin will dictate the direction of EU politics for years to come.
If Ireland votes Yes on October 2nd, the EU will live with the Lisbon treaty for a very long time. And if it votes No the Europeans will have put up with the current Nice treaty for perhaps a generation. Now that the Union has 27 members, with more likely to join in the future, it has become immensely difficult for everyone to agree to the kind of complex and fragile compromises that a new treaty requires. The EU may one day adopt treaties on specific issues, such as climate change. But most European leaders now agree that the EU has more important things to do than to fiddle with its institutions and decision-making procedures.
The main lesson that many of them will draw from this lengthy, and frustrating episode in treaty-making is that, yes or no, the era of the grand EU treaty is over.
