Irish Officials See Victory for a European Treaty

Irish Officials See Victory for a European Treaty
By ERIC PFANNER
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: October 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/world/europe/04ireland.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


Ireland has said yes to a plan to raise the political voice of Europe in world affairs, government officials said based on early results Saturday, voting overwhelmingly to approve a treaty aimed at streamlining the operations of the European Union after rejecting the same pact only last year.

Early results from voting Friday showed that voters had delivered a “convincing win” for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which would give the E.U. its first full-time president and foreign policy chief, Foreign Minister Michael Martin said. Approval of the treaty follows a bitterly fought campaign that raised concerns among foreign investors about Ireland’s commitment to the 27-nation bloc but ultimately hinged on Ireland’s profound economic troubles.

Mr. Martin told The Associated Press that the yes side had a roughly 60 percent majority in the early vote counting. Official results of the referendum were expected later Saturday.

Declan Ganley, an Irish entrepreneur who campaigned heavily against the treaty, conceded defeat.

Pro-treaty groups, determined to avoid a repeat of last year’s no vote, enlisted the support of prominent businesses in Ireland, like the American chipmaker Intel and the budget airline Ryanair, as well as Irish celebrities like the U2 guitarist The Edge and the poet Seamus Heaney. They argued that the country had benefited mightily from E.U. membership.

Since Ireland joined what was then the European Community in 1973, peat bogs and grazing pastures have been plowed over to make way for gleaming semiconductor plants and tracts of suburban McMansions. But over the last year and a half, the so-called Celtic Tiger has lost its roar, as Ireland has suffered through one of the worst real estate busts of any country in the world.

With the economy continuing to function largely because of E.U. support, in the form of liquidity from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, many voters apparently decided that thumbing their noses at their European neighbors would have been a bad idea.

“Ireland has sent a very strong signal to the governments and the boardrooms of the world that it is fully engaged in Europe,” said Brigid Laffan, professor of European politics at University College Dublin.

A no vote by Ireland would have buried the Lisbon Treaty for good, creating institutional chaos in Brussels. Analysts say it would have killed any remaining momentum for further enlargement of the 27-nation E.U., beyond Croatia, which is already in advanced negotiations, and Iceland, which is considered a shoe-in once it gets its economy mended.

While the referendum, which is subject to unanimous approval by the E.U.’s 27 members, was one of the last major hurdles, the Irish do not get the final word. Poland has not yet adopted the treaty, though President Lech Kaczynski said prior to the Irish vote that he would sign if the referendum passed. In the Czech Republic, President Vaclav Klaus also has yet to sign the accord, which is being reviewed by the country’s constitutional court.

If Mr. Klaus were determined to block the treaty, he could try to hold out until next spring, when Britain is required to hold parliamentary elections. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, who is widely expected to be the next prime minister, has vowed to hold a referendum on the treaty; given the prevailing mood of Euroskepticism in Britain, that would almost certainly result in a no vote, analysts say.

Assuming the remaining holdouts sign on, the E.U. could go ahead with plans to name its first full-time president and foreign minister before the end of the year. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain has been lobbying heavily for the post of president.

In the Irish vote, treaty supporters were able to overcome opposition from disparate groups that hoped to turn the referendum into a lightning rod for fears linked to a possible loss of Irish sovereignty. The very word “treaty” resonates deeply in the Irish psyche; the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which ended the war of independence from Britain, resulted in the Irish civil war when treaty opponents took up arms against supporters.

Elizabeth McDermott, a home health-care worker, invoked the name of one of the leaders of Ireland’s struggle for independence from Britain in explaining her decision to vote no.

“When I think about Michael Collins and what they were all fighting for, why should we give that up now?” she asked.

The treaty debate had turned Dublin into a colorful gallery for political poster art, with any available lamppost draped in competing claims and counterclaims. Some campaigners argued that the treaty would usher in legalized abortion, bringing Ireland, which currently has tough restrictions, closer into line with most other European countries. Others played up fears that the treaty could undermine Ireland’s military neutrality. Still others said it flood the country with immigrants and drive down the minimum wage to 1.84 euros an hour (it now stands at 8.64 euros).

Many voters were simply furious about having to vote for a second time on a treaty they had already rejected once, in June 2008. Since then, however, the government negotiated assurances from European leaders that Ireland would be allowed to continue to set its own policies on abortion and taxation, and that it would not have to get involved in foreign military entanglements. Ireland was also told it could keep a full-time seat on the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm in Brussels.

Katie Little, a student midwife, said she was voting for the treaty because she was unmoved by the “scaremongering” of the no campaign.

“It’s gotten ridiculous,” she said. “It’s not about invading us, or something. It’s about restructuring the E.U.”

E.U. officials say the treaty is necessary to help governments coordinate policies on issues like terrorism and the environment in a bloc whose membership has grown by a dozen countries over the last five years, making existing governance processes unwieldy.

While Brussels diplomats have been leading the cheers for the treaty, anyone expecting the E.U. to suddenly become a smoothly functioning machine is likely to be disappointed, said Hugo Brady, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, a London-based think tank. Implementing the outlined changes would set off a new round of wrangling.

“Like master contortionists, they’ve twisted themselves into every possible shape to get this thing passed,” Mr. Brady said in advance of the vote. “I don’t think they’re going to enter this state of nirvana.”

Despite some Irish voters’ concerns about ceding sovereignty to Brussels, he added, their approval of the treaty is unlikely to restart the stalled drive toward European integration. Even in France and the Netherlands, which are generally pro-European, voters previously rejected the predecessor to the Lisbon accord, the proposed European Constitution.

Meanwhile, the economic and financial crisis has demonstrated the limits of Brussels’ powers; national governments in Paris, Berlin, London and elsewhere, which retain their budgetary powers under the Lisbon treaty, mostly pursued separate recession-fighting strategies.

“The future is not some secret move toward a country called Europe,” Mr. Brady said. “That’s over.”

For Ireland, the end of the uncertainty over the treaty could help the country get its economy back on track, economists say. Ireland is heavily dependent on foreign investment, particularly big American technology companies like Intel, which spent several hundred thousand dollars of its own money in support of the treaty.

“Foreign investors will fairly unanimously see this as removing a big area of uncertainty over the Irish economy,” said Alan Gray, an economist at Indecon, a consultancy in Dublin.