Ireland Can Halt Enlargement - Or Can It?

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

03 June 2002

Having benefitted perhaps more than any other EU state from its membership of the Union, Ireland now finds itself in the interesting position of being able to block the entry of twelve mostly poor and agricultural countries which might also be able to make a quantum jump in terms of economic development once they are in the Union.

Having refused in a referendum last June to accept the EU's Nice Treaty, which included key institutional and power-sharing reforms to enable the European Union to add up to 12 new member states from as early as 2004, Ireland now appears set to confirm its resistance to enlargement in a second referendum.

"One thing is sure: if there is a second no, enlargement is in trouble," said Jean-Christophe Filori, spokesman for EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen. "Enlargement may suffer a serious delay," he told reporters. "It's as simple as that."

Jonathan Faull, spokesman for European Commission President Romano Prodi, added: "At the very best, failure to ratify Nice would cause delay, uncertainty and a considerable amount of unsettled relations for a while."

Out of all 15 EU member states, Ireland is the only one insist on a referendum to ratify international treaties, and poll after poll has shown a swing away from the EU in the last year.

This probably explains why no Irish party was keen on a suggestion that the second Nice referendum should be held on the same day as the recent election to ensure a high turnout and therefore, the argument went, a Yes vote. Nice and the European Union featured in the parties' manifestos, but that was all: Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and the Progressive Democrats all favour a second referendum, but the Greens and Sinn Féin both want last year's No vote to stand.

The issue underlying the No vote was not in fact economic, but concerned Irish worries about the country's neutrality, and the government is said to have asked for assurances from the EU that its neutrality will not be threatened by enlargement. The incoming government will have to deal with Nice as a priority and will doubtless seek a declaration on Irish neutrality from the EU member-states at next month's European summit in Seville.

Anyway, the EU powers that be don't intend to have their long term planning undermined by a small dissident territory half way across the Atlantic towards the USA. Plans have already been laid to get around any repeated Irish 'No' with a series of legal contrivances. The deeply anti-democratic EU establishment regards the citizenry as the worst possible judge of what is best for them and won't be taking any chances over its long-term agenda to unify the whole of Europe, 'from Vancouver to Vladivostock' in NATO's prophetic words.

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