My Two Cent On Nice

Nice. Well, Ireland’s passed Nice. The Second Nice Referendum, sponsored by Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, asked us all “is that your final answer?” after we rejected the same proposal last year. And asking Ireland to vote again was the right thing to do. Ireland has unanimously passed every EU-related referendum since 1973. Suddenly it rejects the biggest one ever. That’s a dramatic step away from the established pattern, and a step made by a fraction of the eligible voters in Ireland. Ireland had to be asked “are you sure?” Because if Nice was rejected again (provoking a huge constitutional crisis and raising the possibility of an enlarged EU working like a county council) then questions would have to be asked about Ireland within the EU. Do the people of Ireland want to stay within the EU? Do the people of Ireland, who’ve been near model members of the EU for almost thirty years, want to leave, despite being the only English-speaking country to have ditched their own currency and adopted the common European currency? It sounded like an almost schizophrenic decision. So we were asked again. And the Treaty of Nice, after a far more informative and argued-out campaign, was approved by far more people (49% of the electorate) than last time. Only two out of the 42 electoral districts approved the Treaty in the first referendum; this time not one district rejected it. If there was ever justification sought for holding an identical referendum twice…..

For those who don’t know what Nice is, two years ago the 15 leaders of the states of the European Union got together in the charming French city of Nice (pronounced “niece”) and set out this treaty to pave the way for expansion of the Union to take in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta. Unlike the United States, the EU does not intend to purchase the territory needed for expansion but instead will re-jig it’s various constituent parts to make an enlarged EU more efficient. A 25 member European Union cannot be as democratic as a 15 member union, not in the way the institutions are now. There’s too many vetos, too many conditions and regulations. The EU has to start thinking about the Union, not each country for itself.

The Treaty of Nice isn’t great. It’s all about taking away our Commissioner every four years. It’s about qualified majority voting; if we don’t like something but everyone else does, then tough. It’s about diluting our funding, making us a net contributor to the European Social Fund among other things. Ireland will move from one of the poorest countries in Europe to by far one of the richest. In fact, we have already made that move. But we’re still in the poor mindset. Ireland still lacks confidence. And it’s corrupt. And it has no imagination. And there’s no looking at the big picture. But most of all, Ireland seems to have lost it’s charity. How come not one ad going for a Yes vote for Nice asked us to vote Yes to allow in countries like Lithuania; a small Catholic country of almost four million dominated for centuries by a vast neighbour and now finding it’s feet. A country just like us. Right now in the EU, there’s no other country like Ireland. Finland is frozen, has six million people and has a fetish for driving very fast in powerful cars and making incredibly popular mobile phones. That’s as close as you get to Ireland. But within the applicant countries are a LOT of countries like Ireland. So why didn’t I see any poster saying “Vote Yes For THEM!” Why must we always ask “what’s in it for us?” There are things in Nice for us; new tariff-free markets and sources of labour (there’s a labour shortage here, remember?) and…..damn it there’ll be European unity! Why must Western Europe be the privileged bit just because 70 years ago a few madmen decided to have a war? How stupid is it to keep this division between east and west? Europe is the centre of western civilisation; everywhere else in the world that’s regarded as “the West” is simply a photocopy of the original. It’s the homeland to not only half a billion people, but also the ancestral homeland to every person with Caucasian blood in them. Why hasn’t this happened sooner? Why is Europe such a non-entity in world affairs? Because we’ve spent decades in committees, voting sessions and bureaucratic bullshit. The United States is the most powerful country in the world; it isn’t strong because it halts a bill due to the non-agreement of Rhode Island in article 133 of the legislation. The EU needs to be stripped down for speed, flexibility and effectiveness. This means a loss of something, of course it does. But think of what we could do……

j