David Quinn: How much EU integration is too much?
WHEN Enda Kenny and the rest of the Cabinet fanned out to the four corners of the world to represent Ireland on St Patrick’s Day, some journalists raised the concern that no senior politician would be here in Ireland if British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 that same week, thereby formally beginning the Brexit process.
Well, this week she said Article 50 would be triggered on March 29, and panic stations didn’t have to the manned. The death of Martin McGuinness overshadowed everything.
Mr McGuinness’s death coincided with Sinn Féin reaching its highest water mark to date in Northern Ireland and with Brexit seeming to bring closer the day of Irish unity.
This, I believe, is a chimera. The idea that Brexit brings closer the day of Irish unity assumes that the people of Northern Ireland so badly wish to be part of the EU that they would leave the union with Great Britain. Unionists clearly value the union with Great Britain more than they value the European Union, and while Northern Catholics would prefer to be part of the European Union, in practice how many really want to leave the United Kingdom?
Obviously, many do want to leave it, but many do not, and a very big majority of Catholics would have to vote in favour of leaving the UK in order to cancel out the unionist vote in favour of remaining within the UK.
Personally, I’d love if there was Irish unity, but chiefly because it would bring a big number of evangelical voters into play in Irish politics. That would really set the cat among the pigeons. Imagine a bunch of tough-minded DUP politicians in the Dáil refusing to bow the knee at the altar of political correctness the way almost every other politician does at present? Bring on the day.
Those DUP politicians would also be our own truly Eurosceptic politicians and, for the sake of a more healthy, balanced debate, we need a few genuine Eurosceptics in Dáil Ireland.
In the South, there is almost no debate about the EU. As it happens, I don’t believe Ireland should leave the EU, but I do believe there ought to be a debate about the kind of union we are in.
Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome that brought the European Economic Community (EEC) into being.
This treaty committed its original six signatories (Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) “to establish the foundations of an ever closer union among the European peoples”.
The key words there are “ever closer union”. What exactly do they mean?
Let’s first of all remember the background to the founding of the EEC. Only 12 years before, the equivalent of 2005 compared to today, World War II came to end. World War I had ended less than 40 years before 1957. Nothing like these two cataclysmic wars could ever be permitted to happen again and so the EEC was conceived. It grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community, which had the same original six member states.
So, the goal of the EEC, now the EU, is noble. But everything depends on those words “ever closer union”. When Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, did we ever really consider what they mean?
They could mean better relations, closer ties of trade, more cooperation on the international stage. Or they could mean something far more ambitious than this.
They could mean what eventually amounts to a European superstate with its own currency, its own foreign policy, a common fiscal policy, an overarching court, law-making powers that supersede those of each member-state, open borders, its own army.
Look down that list and you’ll see we are a long way down that road. Why did Britain vote to leave the EU? It’s because it thought it had been dragged too far down this road and there was, and is, no sign of stopping. It believed it was losing too much control over its own affairs.
In commentary in this country on Brexit, there has been far too much concentration on the possible economic downside for Britain of leaving the EU. There hasn’t been half enough emphasis on the other reasons Britain is leaving. One reason is certainly economic in nature, but the other two are about regaining control of its borders and over its ability to make its own laws.
You aren’t much of a sovereign nation if you don’t have much control over your economy, your borders or the laws you live under.
A majority of British people want more control over their economic destiny, more control over who gets to live in Britain and who doesn’t, and more control over their own laws. We ought to respect that instead of pouring scorn all the time over the natural and completely understandable desire to be self-governing and independent.
The question is, what do we want? This isn’t simply a question for our politicians and opinion-leaders. It is a question for each and every Irish person.
Will the point ever come when we say we have ceded enough economic control to Brussels and no more will be given?
Will we ever say we want more control over our borders? Will we ever say we have ceded too much law-making power to Brussels?
Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, 44 years after we joined the EEC, these are questions we must answer. We have to decide once and for all exactly what “ever closer union” means and how much is too much.
In this country on Brexit, there has been far too much concentration on the possible economic downside for Britain of leaving the EU