The Economist
The future of the European Union
Just bury it
Jun 19th 2008
Jun 19th 2008
From The Economist print edition
It is time to accept that the Lisbon treaty is dead. The European Union can get along well enough without it
VOTERS have once again shot an arrow into the heart of a European Union treaty. This time it was the Irish, who voted no to the Lisbon treaty on June 12th by 53-47%, on a high turnout. They follow the French and Dutch, who rejected Lisbon's predecessor, the EU constitution, in 2005. In 2001 the Irish also turned down the Nice treaty, but the Danes started this game when they voted against the Maastricht treaty in 1992.
Europe's political leaders react to these unwelcome expressions of popular will in three depressingly familiar stages. First they declare portentously that the European club is in deep “crisis” and unable to function. Next, even though treaties have to be ratified by all members to take effect, they put the onus of finding a solution on the country that has said no. Last, they start to hint that the voters in question should think again, and threaten that a second rejection may force the recalcitrant country to leave the EU.
The sole exception to this three-stage process was the Franco-Dutch no in 2005. Then, after two years of debate the politicians hit on the cynical wheeze of writing the constitution's main elements into the incomprehensible Lisbon treaty, with the deliberate aim of avoiding the need to consult Europe's voters directly again.
Now the Irish, the only people in the EU to be offered a referendum on Lisbon, have shot down even this wheeze. And as EU leaders gathered for a Brussels summit, after The Economist went to press, most had duly embarked on their usual three-stage reaction, all the while promising to “respect” the outcome of the Irish referendum—by which they mean to look for a way round it (see article). Some have had the gall to argue, with a straight face, that Lisbon must be brought into effect despite the Irish no because it will make the EU more democratic. This is Brussels's equivalent of a doctor saying that the operation was a success, but the patient died. In truth, it is the Lisbon treaty that should be allowed to die.
Democracy and efficiency don't always go together
Every part of EU leaders' three-stage response is wrong-headed. The Irish rejection of the treaty is a setback, certainly. But in the days after the vote, the Brussels machinery has acted normally, approving mergers, looking into state-aid cases, holding meetings and passing directives. The claim that an expanded EU of 27 countries cannot function without Lisbon is simply not true. Indeed, several academic studies have found that the enlarged EU has worked more efficiently than before. Besides, it is not always desirable to speed up decision-making: democracy usually operates by slowing it down. And many of the institutional reforms in the Lisbon treaty would not have taken effect until 2014 or 2017 in any case.
Nor is it right to treat the outcome as a problem for Ireland alone, still less to start talking of making the Irish vote again. As it happens, a case can be made that EU treaties are too complex to be readily susceptible to a simple yes/no vote. But 11 EU governments grandly promised such referendums on the constitution, and ten of them have been dishonest in pretending that Lisbon is a wholly different document. The Irish constitution requires a vote on any treaty that transfers any power at all to the European level. Even if one believes that referendums are not always desirable, it is both stupefyingly arrogant and anti-democratic to refuse to take no for an answer. Just what kind of democracy is being practised by the EU when the only outcome of a vote that is ever acceptable to Brussels is a yes (see article)?
A mess of pottage
It is not as if the Lisbon treaty is such a wonderful text. Besides being incomprehensible, it was—as so many EU treaties are—a messy compromise. And, like the constitution, it failed to meet the objectives laid down by an EU summit in Laeken almost seven years ago. The broad aims then were to clarify the EU's distribution of powers, with an eye to handing more of them back to national parliaments; and to simplify the rules so as to make the EU more transparent and bring it closer to its citizens. Nobody could pretend that Lisbon fulfils these goals.
This is not to say that everything in the treaty is bad. It would have improved the institutional machinery in Brussels, sorted out a muddle in foreign-policy making and brought in a fairer system of voting by EU members. But these are not the sorts of changes to set voters alight. And in truth, few EU governments or institutions are genuine enthusiasts for the treaty as such (Germany, which would gain voting weight, and the European Parliament, which would win extra powers, are two exceptions). Most simply wanted to get it out of the way and move on to issues more interesting than the institutional navel-gazing that has preoccupied the EU for too long.
After the Irish no, that is precisely what they should now do. The treaty should be buried so that the EU can focus on more urgent matters, such as energy, climate change, immigration, dealing with Russia and the EU's own expansion. It is disingenuous to claim, as some do, that without Lisbon no further enlargement is possible. Each applicant needs an accession treaty that can include the institutional changes, such as new voting weights or extra parliamentary seats.
Needless to say, many of Europe's leaders will instead look for ingenious ways to ignore or reverse the Irish decision. But to come up with a few declarations or protocols and ask the Irish to vote again would not just be contemptuous of democracy: the turnout and margin of defeat also suggest that it might fail. Nor can Ireland, legally or morally, be excluded from the EU. Attempts by diehards to forge a core group of countries that builds a United States of Europe would also founder because, outside Belgium and Luxembourg, there is no longer a serious appetite for a federal Europe.
Ireland is a small country, to be sure. But the EU is an inter-governmental organisation that needs a consensus to proceed. It is bogus to claim that 1m voters are thwarting the will of 495m Europeans by blocking this treaty. Referendums would have been lost in many other countries had their people been given a say. Voters have thrice said no to this mess of pottage. It is time their verdict was respected.
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