Ireland will hold a referendum on the EU’s new fiscal treaty, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said on Tuesday, setting the stage for the first popular vote on the -German-led plan for stricter budget discipline across the bloc.
Support for the EU has cooled in Ireland after its financial crisis, meaning there is no guarantee a vote will succeed. Irish voters rejected the last two European referendums, most recently in 2008, before passing them once concessions were offered.
After joining 24 other EU states last month in agreeing to the pact for stricter budget discipline, Kenny sought advice from the state’s lawyer on whether a vote was necessary and told parliament that on balance, a referendum would be required.
“The Irish people will be asked for their authorization in a referendum to ratify the European Stability Treaty,” Kenny told parliament, adding that arrangements on the vote would be made in the coming weeks.
“I strongly believe that it is very much in Ireland”s national interest that this treaty be approved,” he added.
Unlike most other European countries, Irish citizens are entitled to vote on any major transfer of powers to Brussels. A rejection would damage long-term funding prospects for Ireland, which took an EU/IMF bailout in 2010, and cast doubt on its commitment to the single currency.
With the new pact set to come into effect once 12 states have ratified it, Irish European Affairs Minister Lucinda Creighton said that the government would have just one shot at winning approval this time around.
Creighton added that Ireland would not seek concessions from Europe to ease its debt burden to make the referendum more palatable for voters.
“It will be pretty hard and certainly won’t be a walkover. The last number of referendums have got tighter and the EU is probably less popular now than before,” said Eoin O’Malley, a politics lecturer at Dublin City University. “One of the things that the government will try and do is frame it as economically suicidal not to accept it ... I suspect it will come down to who wins that framing debate.”
Ireland’s return to moderate economic growth last year and its success in meeting the targets set under its EU/IMF bailout has distanced it from fellow bailout recipients Greece and Portugal.
The head of one of the country’s largest companies, CRH, said that the referendum could distract the country from its priorities of getting itself out of the economic quagmire.
Irish borrowing costs have more than halved on secondary markets since July last year, with yields on 10-year paper at 6.89 percent on Tuesday, the lowest level since the lead up to the bailout.
However a rejection of the treaty would probably reverse that progress rapidly.
A “no” vote would prevent Dublin from using the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the permanent successor to the eurozone’s current rescue fund, which Ireland is tapping as part of the bailout that runs until the end of next year.
Ireland aims to resume issuing debt on bond markets later this year as a first step toward ending the bailout on schedule. However, with about 20 billion euros (US$27 billion) of borrowing costs to cover in 2014, most analysts believe it will need more official funding to meet some of its commitments.
“It [the vote] has important implications for Ireland potentially over the next few years,” Goodbody Stockbrokers chief economist Dermot O’Leary said. “There is a reasonable prospect that Ireland will need further funding in the future, and it may indeed come from the ESM.”
DIVIDED VIEWS: Although the Fed agreed on holding rates steady, some officials see no rate cuts for this year, while 10 policymakers foresee two or more cuts There are a lot of unknowns about the outlook for the economy and interest rates, but US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at least one thing seems certain: Higher prices are coming. Fed policymakers voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, as they await clarity on whether tariffs would leave a one-time or more lasting mark on inflation. Powell said it is still unclear how much of the bill would fall on the shoulders of consumers, but he expects to learn more about tariffs
NOT JUSTIFIED: The bank’s governor said there would only be a rate cut if inflation falls below 1.5% and economic conditions deteriorate, which have not been detected The central bank yesterday kept its key interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive quarter, aligning with market expectations, while slightly lowering its inflation outlook amid signs of cooling price pressures. The move came after the US Federal Reserve held rates steady overnight, despite pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut borrowing costs. Central bank board members unanimously voted to maintain the discount rate at 2 percent, the secured loan rate at 2.375 percent and the overnight lending rate at 4.25 percent. “We consider the policy decision appropriate, although it suggests tightening leaning after factoring in slackening inflation and stable GDP growth,”
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
As they zigzagged from one machine to another in the searing African sun, the workers were covered in black soot. However, the charcoal they were making is known as “green,” and backers hope it can save impoverished Chad from rampant deforestation. Chad, a vast, landlocked country of 19 million people perched at the crossroads of north and central Africa, is steadily turning to desert. It has lost more than 90 percent of its forest cover since the 1970s, hit by climate change and overexploitation of trees for household uses such as cooking, officials say. “Green charcoal” aims to protect what
RSS