On Friday, Irish voters go to the polls for a second time to decide whether to adopt the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. The mood in EU capitals is one of nervousness as polling day looms, with the future of the EU in the hands of Ireland’s unpredictable voters. On two of the last three occasions that the Irish have been asked to vote on an EU Treaty, they have rejected the proposal.
For the EU, the stakes could not be higher. The Lisbon Treaty was the compromise agreed by EU leaders in the aftermath of the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in popular referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Much negotiating blood has been spilled on the treaty, and its rejection a second time by Irish voters would leave the EU unable to ratify and implement its provisions; this would inevitably lead to policy paralysis and institutional decay.
The referendum campaign in Ireland has been seen a resurgence of conflict between a familiar constellation of forces. On the Yes side are all of the main political parties, trade unions, the business community and a broad network of civil-society groups. Their campaign has been more coordinated and intense than last time, with the aim of mobilizing the maximum number of supporters and ensuring a high turnout, which most commentators assume will assist the Yes side.
On the No side: a disparate coalition drawn from both the far right and the far left, including ultra-Catholics and unreconstructed Marxists, has sought to whip up hysteria about supposed threats ranging from military conscription to euthanasia and abortion. But the No side has struggled to find a coherent point of reference and seems to have none of the dynamism and vigor that it projected last time.
The main reason for this is that Ireland has been traumatized by economic misfortune over the past year. The hubris of the Celtic Tiger years is a distant memory, owing to the worst recession in Ireland’s history as an independent state. This year economists expect growth to contract by up to 8 percent, with a further steep decline likely next year.
The budget deficit is now the largest in the EU, and public debt has ballooned, as the government has struggled to compensate for the steep drop in revenues. The Irish banking system approached total collapse last September, and was only saved by a 400 billion euro (US$584 million) government guarantee of all bank deposits. More recently, the state assumed the liabilities of rogue property developers by setting up a “bad bank” which could potentially saddle Irish taxpayers with a mountain of debt for decades to come.
The depth of the economy’s plunge has helped the Irish government in its effort to secure a Yes vote. The European Central Bank has provided a monetary lifeline that has provided much needed liquidity within the financial system and helped the government to stem the crisis of confidence created by the banking collapse. Government ministers and EU representatives repeatedly cite the example of Iceland in pointing out what might have happened to Ireland if it had been outside the EU.
Thus, the second referendum campaign has brought back into play the economic dimension of Ireland’s EU membership, which was largely absent from last year’s debate on the treaty. Ireland has benefited disproportionately from EU largesse during its 35 years of membership, and, last year, was still receiving a net sum of 500 million euros from the EU budget. When voters are reminded of the potentially catastrophic cost of being excluded, not just from the Single Market area, but from the decision-making structures in the Council of Ministers and the European Central Bank, what is at stake in the referendum becomes clear.
In addition, the Irish government secured legal guarantees from its EU partners on the issues that most concerned voters who voted No or abstained in the first referendum. These compromises state that nothing in the treaties will affect Irish prerogatives on abortion, military neutrality and taxation. The government also secured EU-wide agreement that, rather than reducing the size of the European Commission, Ireland will be allowed to retain a permanent place at the commission table. This negotiating success has provided the government with considerable breathing space in which to conduct a more effective referendum campaign.
This combination of legal guarantees and changed economic circumstances is helping to mobilize a majority in favor of the treaty. Opinion polls conducted in recent weeks indicate that the Yes side commands a strong majority of 62 percent to 23 percent, with 15 percent of the electorate undecided.
But the picture is far from clear-cut. Surveys indicate that the Irish are strong supporters of EU membership and the integration process. The problem is that these favorable attitudes vary considerably in intensity and constitute a “soft bloc” of support for the EU. In last year’s referendum, this soft bloc crumbled in the final week of the campaign.
It seems clear that a second rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish electorate would plunge the EU into a renewed crisis and threaten to derail the considerable gains in both democratic legitimacy and collective decision-making capacity deriving from the new treaty. Everything indicates that voters now look set to approve the treaty. But nobody should take Irish voters for granted in the final days of the campaign.
John O’Brennan lectures in European Politics and Society at the National University of Ireland Maynooth and is a founding member of the Centre for the Study of Wider Europe COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
China has not been a top-tier issue for much of the second Trump administration. Instead, Trump has focused considerable energy on Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and defending America’s borders. At home, Trump has been busy passing an overhaul to America’s tax system, deporting unlawful immigrants, and targeting his political enemies. More recently, he has been consumed by the fallout of a political scandal involving his past relationship with a disgraced sex offender. When the administration has focused on China, there has not been a consistent throughline in its approach or its public statements. This lack of overarching narrative likely reflects a combination
US President Donald Trump’s alleged request that Taiwanese President William Lai (賴清德) not stop in New York while traveling to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, after his administration also rescheduled a visit to Washington by the minister of national defense, sets an unwise precedent and risks locking the US into a trajectory of either direct conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or capitulation to it over Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities have said that no plans to request a stopover in the US had been submitted to Washington, but Trump shared a direct call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平)
Heavy rains over the past week have overwhelmed southern and central Taiwan, with flooding, landslides, road closures, damage to property and the evacuations of thousands of people. Schools and offices were closed in some areas due to the deluge throughout the week. The heavy downpours brought by the southwest monsoon are a second blow to a region still recovering from last month’s Typhoon Danas. Strong winds and significant rain from the storm inflicted more than NT$2.6 billion (US$86.6 million) in agricultural losses, and damaged more than 23,000 roofs and a record high of nearly 2,500 utility poles, causing power outages. As
The greatest pressure Taiwan has faced in negotiations stems from its continuously growing trade surplus with the US. Taiwan’s trade surplus with the US reached an unprecedented high last year, surging by 54.6 percent from the previous year and placing it among the top six countries with which the US has a trade deficit. The figures became Washington’s primary reason for adopting its firm stance and demanding substantial concessions from Taipei, which put Taiwan at somewhat of a disadvantage at the negotiating table. Taiwan’s most crucial bargaining chip is undoubtedly its key position in the global semiconductor supply chain, which led
RSS