The Wardman Wire

While the Lisbon treaty is not quite sunk, it is holed below the waterline. The Irish ‘no’ vote seems to have discombobulated the EU, with a foreign secretaries’ meeting and a heads of government meeting next week to work out exactly what to do. Had I had a vote on Lisbon, I would have voted in favour of signing. However, the Lisbon treaty should be allowed to sink if the aim - fixing the procedures of the EU to work with twenty-five instead of fifteen members - is to be achieved. The problem remains the same; how do we make the machine work?

What the EU must categorically not do is try to ignore the Irish decision.

There does seem to be, if not cynicism, scepticism across Europe. Part of the problem is a Whiggish interpretation of European history since 1945: an unstoppable march towards peace, unity, freedom and so on. This interpretation has never held true; for evidence, we need only look at de Gaulle and the empty Chair, Macmillan and Plan G, MacSharry and CAP reform and the current arguments over and around enlargement to see that ‘Europe’ and ‘European Union’ are hotly contested ideas. Despite that, the political classes across ‘Old Europe’ continually present the European project as a fait accompli, at times assuming that their respective citizenries will go along with the next step of the project. Nevertheless, we see references to ever-closer union and so on, giving a federalist view of Europe that is out of step with the current, intergovernmental desires of the populations. Equally, the EU has historically developed out of necessity - first, the European Coal & Steel Community, later markets, politics and the Euro. People could probably be convinced, in the current environment, of the need for more co-operation on security matters but that does not mean they see or have been convinced of the need for wholesale reforms.

The Winchester Whisperer alerts me to some comments by Axel Schafer, an SPD member of the Bundestag, on the Irish ‘no’ vote that illustrates the problem:

“With all respect for the Irish vote, we cannot allow the huge majority of Europe to be duped by a minority of a minority of a minority,”

I disagree. The Lisbon Treaty required the assent of each member-state, and in the case of Ireland it was withheld. Any attempt to push on with the Lisbon treaty will probably not only fail but damage the perceptions of the European Union amongst citizens. The need for European reform needs to be explained, by national leaders in each member state’s terms, by recognizing that citizens do have a choice and that the decisions they make do matter. Rather than presenting Lisbon as the next, unavoidable step in a teleological march to the future, it needs to scrapped and we need to look at the problems that need addressing rather than fetishising a particular document. In the case of Lisbon, it is harder to do so because of its connections with the Constitution. This is, though, a good argument for ditching Lisbon and addressing what needs to be addressed (security and the machinations of European decision making) rather than what people at the centre want to address; it is also worth remembering that a constitution will necessarily slow down further changes while the EU is still a relatively young institution that is still finding out what does and doesn’t work.

If Europe is to last, it must not rush.