It's a European Crisis, not an Irish One
Friday, September 12, 2008 at 07:53AM As usual, the commentary, this time on the final report from the Irish government's commissioned research into the meaning of voters' rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in The Economist's on-line column, Certain Ideas of Europe, is incisive and intelligent. I urge you to read it, and indeed to read the research findings themselves.
Those findings are full of fascinating gems for students of Irish politics, and are also relevant to the wider European polity (inchoate though that be). I expect to be bringing some of them here to examine and admire.
Meanwhile, I give you this extract from Certain Ideas of Europe:
...56% of Irish voters thought that the treaty would bring about more efficient decision-making in the EU, and 61% thought it would strengthen Europe's role in the world. Those are, indeed, two of the proudest boasts of the pro-Lisbon camp. Alas, they are not objectively proved facts at all. "Efficient" decision making is a codephrase for more majority voting (which is certainly quicker, some of the time, than trying to secure unanimous support for new laws). But since when was it efficient to pass laws more quickly? Indeed, since when was it a good thing to pass laws more quickly? The North Korean parliament is a marvel of efficient decision-making, as is a torch-wielding lynch mob. Neither is an attractive model for the EU.
Finally (for now), a crucial statistic from the report which highlights the utter wrong-headedness of the majority of commentators, both domestic and foreign, who persist in characterising the vote result as "anti-EU"
...even among No voters, 63% think the EU is a good thing, well ahead of the EU average of 52%.
Take that one in: nearly two-thirds of the allegedly "Eurosceptic" majority support the Union. When the "yes" voters are added, the percentage is about 70. In the EU as a whole, the figure is 52%.
Are EU leaders really going to pretend that the country at 70% is having a epiphany peculiar to itself while the rest of the Union's population just wants to "get on with it"?
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