Lisbon lost, this Plan C we’ve heard nothing about… tell me more.

So… after Lisbon what next for Ireland in the EU? Some very preliminary thoughts.

You might have caught this snippet some time ago in the Irish Times:

.THE CHAIRMAN of the European Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee, Jo Leinen, has suggested that Ireland could be asked to leave the EU if it votes against the Lisbon Treaty.

He also said that another option would be for Ireland to seek opt-outs from various European policies and put an amended treaty to another referendum.

And he raised a reasonable point…

“If one country, Ireland or anyone else, is having a No and 26 (states) are having a Yes, it is as well not very democratic or acceptable that the 26 are blocked. Then I think it is reasonable to find out exactly what the No means. Is it a No to the total EU? Then, in fact, the country should leave the EU,” Mr Leinen told The Irish Times.

Mr Leinen, who is one of the most senior German MEPs, said all member states had an obligation of “loyalty or loyal co-operation” to the EU, which meant a state should not misuse its veto right and block other countries.

“In the event of a No vote the Union has to ask Ireland what exactly it objected to? If it has a principled problem with EU integration then it must negotiate a special relationship with the EU,” he said. “Ireland would be part of the EC (European Community), but not part of the EU.”

Or…

One example of this type of arrangement is Norway, which rejected joining the EU in referendums held in 1972 and 1994.

That doesn’t sound great, now does it? But is it the reality?

Well he goes on in a somewhat more ameliorative fashion:

Mr Leinen said he did not think Ireland would leave the EU because it generally accepted European unity. A more likely option was adding opt-outs or declarations to the treaty to enable a new referendum, as occurred with the Nice Treaty, he added.

But he said this would not be easy because there were very few new EU competences created by the Lisbon Treaty and Ireland had already negotiated opt-outs.

A country tends to be weakened when it opts out of various EU policies, added Mr Leinen, citing Denmark, which after saying no to the Maastricht treaty in 1992 negotiated opt-outs from justice, defence, citizenship and the euro. Denmark is to hold a referendum in the autumn to remove some of these exceptions.

“So you [Ireland] could lose time and lose comfort and be a bit marginalised,” he added.

‘A bit marginalised’… okay. It’s not the end of the world, and once more I’m not going to lose sleep over it.

Still, there are more interesting thoughts here and there about what next…

Richard Laming at Federal Union, a profoundly pro-federal EU website asks ‘what happens if the vote does reject the Treaty?’. As it happens I’m more wedded to the intergovernmental than the federal model, but at least this article attempts to address the issues in some fashion.

But he prefaces this with a good analysis which argues that:

…the consequences of an Irish No vote. I think these consequences would be rather different, because an Irish No would not be an expression of hostility to the EU as such but rather an expression of doubt about its pace and direction. The real meaning of a No vote lies in the motivation of the No campaigners and not only in the legal and institutional consequences of the treaty’s rejection. (This is why a British No vote would be such a threat to British membership of the EU.)

He suggests that:

I don’t think that an Irish No would have particularly serious consequences for Ireland, but it would have serious consequences for the Irish and for the EU as a whole. By that, I mean that the threats of isolation and Ireland being sidelined in future EU developments are rather hollow. If there is a proposal for a future EU initiative on some aspect of economics, for example, it will be open to Ireland to choose whether or not to take part. The judgement of the other countries of the desirability of Irish participation will not be substantially affected by a No vote. If such a vote were the start of a longer-term isolationist policy trend within Ireland itself, then things might turn out to be different, but we cannot say for sure if that will transpire in practice.

I think, I hope, that we’re not looking at this sort of longer-term isolationist instinct, although I find the Libertas intervention entirely dispiriting. I’ve mentioned before how it gave a certain gloss to a middle class voice that had been prior to this fairly supine.

Going further… and I’m pulling huge blocks of text here…

In looking at the consequences for the EU as a whole, it is worth dividing the effect of the Lisbon treaty can be divided into two parts: improvements to the effectiveness of the EU institutions, and improvements to the standard of democracy. If the Lisbon treaty is rejected, what happens to those two parts?

Many of the proposals for effectiveness can be dealt with in other ways. A number of the institutional questions, such as representation regarding foreign affairs, can be addressed in some degree through intergovernmental decisions and changes to the working methods of the Commission and the Council. It would be preferable for these changes to be explicitly written into the treaties, and explicitly confirmed by the voters, but they will not all be lost.

So, from my perspective, no great problem there. And it’s not difficult to envisage that sometime further down the road the situation might change through referendum. Still, interesting to note that on the federal/democratic axis the situation seems rather different. Laming argues:

But the democratic aspects will be much harder to resurrect. Many of these, such as strengthening the link between the European elections and the choice of Commission president, have been watered down in the current text since the Convention first proposed them, and it is hard to see how national governments will want to fight hard for them now (many of them actually think that proposals for more European democracy make their life harder rather than easier). At the very minimum, there is likely to be delay beyond the elections to the European Parliament to be held next June.

And here is the thing, this tension between national governments and democratic structures is already one where the governments are winning. After all, what government is keen on “…making their life harder rather than easier ?”

Nor is Laming sanguine about the future…

Failing to improve the democratic quality of the EU institutions at the same time as attempting to do more through them (there are many issues on the agenda where we need Europe to play an important role) may well end up making things worse rather than better.

This feeds into some of the thoughts on the Pat Kenny show this morning on the Lisbon Treaty [incidentally, Lucinda Creighton made some credible points – which is troubling in any number of ways]. Our sometimes comment… er… what is the term, commentator… John Palmer was featured on it.

He argued that it’s a ‘very serious crisis indeed… not entirely unexpected … This falls into the lap of the French government who will have to put to…’

He also suggested…

A joint statement by French and German government wanting to continue with process of ratification… and to my surprise the UK govt are continuing with ratification. Since all indications are that every other member state will vote Yes we will have a situation where 26 countries said Yes and ireland said No.

He saw this as leading to two possibilities… one where the Irish government accepted that while they can’t be bound by Treaty… it would be unreasonable to prevent the others from succeeding and consequently they would negotiate a new relationship… somewhat, but not necessarily permanently, distanced from the EU. However, he also pointed to a…

Sinister alternative… if a Conservative government comes in in London in the next 18 months, who want to renegotiate relationship with Europe, Ireland would face unenviable choice in relationships with the UK or EU.

Jens-Peter Bonde, a Danish eurosceptic (of a most interesting kind), disagreed suggesting this was nonsense since it was outside the terms of the Treaty itself, but Palmer was adamant, that the dynamic the other 26 can adopt the Treaty and invite the Irish to negotiate the relationship.

I don’t know but I’d tend to the view that it is difficult to see how 26 countries won’t move forward. Why shouldn’t they? There’s no advantage to the status quo.

Fascinating too how Patricia McKenna responded to the ongoing result. She was unable to clearly articulate why national sovereignty as expressed through parliaments was somehow less democratic than referendums (which is a bizarre paradox that keeps cropping up time and again in these discussions – because for those of us who actually like it being intergovernmental rather than federal it really is up to national legislatures rather than direct votes through referendums, or rather the latter shouldn’t per se trump the former). Nor was her response to John Palmer’s question as to what Brian Cowen should be looking for when he next meets the EU leaders and what concessions he should get entirely convincing. Her answer, he should say… “I want you to stop at this point…” … Yes, that’ll work.

Listening to all this, reading other pieces, clarifies some of my own thoughts. I was once, in a fairly received way, quite wedded to the federal model. Result? Supportive of the EU. But now I’ve shifted much more to an intergovernmental viewpoint. Result? Critically supportive of the EU, and consequently a Yes vote yesterday. The thing is that I’m simply not concerned about issues of ‘democratic’ legitimation that seems to exercise federalists, or the more starry eyed on the No side. To me this is about sovereign nations pooling some sovereignty but retaining their individual identities. I can’t really see how it can be otherwise in the context of multiple languages, etc. So, while an EU wide vote on a Treaty is a great idea on one level, I simply don’t believe it will happen, that there is any political or popular will for it and therefore have put it out of my mind. Nor can I envisage a clear means towards a single EU foreign policy – to take an example. At best the EU can formulate – as it largely does now – broad brush stroke policies that allow for national derogations. Indeed, oddly, I’m quite happy with the way things are going as we stand now. I see no percentage in hoping that the EU will be a ‘social EU’ in any meaningful way in the short term. Not least because there appears to be no appetite on the left to engage with its institutions in such a way as to bring that state about. I might like such a thing, indeed I do like it. But who is pushing for it? What we wind up with in reality is a centrist entity… no change there.

And let me bring in a most unlikely source of reference material, for John Waters in today’s Irish Times voted Yes as well, and although on a different journey has wound up in a similar place. His conclusion is that:

The problem is that now it is too late to opt for any kind of alternative. The core concept of development pursued in Ireland over the past two or three decades has centred on the creation of a cuckoo-in-the-nest economy, in which foreign investors undertake to provide employment here in return for certain benefits. This model of economy is intimately bound up with our membership of the EU, and would be impossible to alter without enormous trauma and pain.

Strangely, although still a sceptic, I have come to believe that, yes, we are all Europeans now, and it isn’t all bad. The influx of east European immigrants since 2004 has in my view greatly enhanced this society, its economy and culture. I don’t think the economic model we have opted for is ideal, but it is the one we have chosen and it has worked well on its own terms.

Sounds sensible to me, not least the reality that EU membership has provided us with the hook for much of the external investment. And that is why talk about leaving the EU seems politically premature. Too many people benefit too clearly from our membership. But, while Waters says that ‘… it has worked well on its own terms’… yesterday we just changed those terms, perhaps in a small way, perhaps in a significant way. What does happen next week, and the week after? Michael Martin, Foreign Minister, suggests that time for reflection is necessary. But, how much? Because a final thought on the matter from Federal Union captures the nature of our situation…

Rejecting the new treaty does not leave us with the status quo – nothing in the outside world is standing still – so an Irish No vote will weaken Europe and deny its citizens the voice they ought to have.

I may have problems with the precise analysis behind the second part of that statement (although not it’s totality), but I certain don’t with the first two.