Ireland's aye sends EU eastward

The Irish Times sees yesterday's vote overwhelmingly in favor of the Lisbon Treaty as a

clear signal that the overwhelming majority of voters want Ireland to remain an outward looking country at the heart of the European project, rather than retreating back to an isolated position on the periphery.
...
The stress by all those campaigning for a Yes vote on the economy and jobs, rather than the intricate details of the Lisbon Treaty, was crucial in keeping the minds of voters on the big picture rather than having them distracted by the legal intricacies of the treaty.
An allied issue was whether the people of Ireland wanted their country to be perceived a vibrant member of the biggest trading block in the world or a disgruntled small nation standing in the way of progress.

As IntLawGrrls have posted, the vote came a year after Ireland had voted "No" on the same pact to enhance regional integration via the European Union. The EU itself wasted no time moving eastward to the Czech Republic and Poland. Le Monde reports:

In their letters of congratulations, the principal leaders of the EU immediately appealed to Prague, as well as Warsaw, not to block the entry into force of the new European institutional framework.

On July 6

On this day in ...
... 2005, the House of Representatives of Malta unanimously approved a Motion for the Ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty, thus making the Mediterranean island nation the 12th state party to that European Union pact. But as we've posted, the treaty failed to take effect on account of "No" votes in referenda held earlier the same year in France and the Netherlands. As a consequence the EU then shifted, seeking member states' OK of the Lisbon Treaty, an agreement that includes much of its predecessor but eschews any claim to being a Constitution. The future of this treaty too is in doubt, on 2 fronts: 1st, the electorate in Ireland, having received certain new assurances from the EU since its 2008 "No to Lisbon" vote, will stage a do-over referendum in October; and 2d, a national court has just ruled that Germany's ratification is not yet valid. (credit for map at left, prepared before German court ruling, which shows Ireland, in red, as the lone Lisbon Treaty holdout among EU member states, otherwise in green)
... 1934 (75 years ago today), amid an uprising (right) that had begun the month before, Chilean troops killed hundreds of campesinos -- the exact number is disputed -- around Fundo Ranquil, an area at the Biobío River near Chile's midpoint. (photo credit) A detailed account, in Spanish, of this unsuccessful movement by the Mapuche people to establish a "República Indígena" is available here.

(Prior July 6 posts are here and here.)

Europe’s Political Deficit

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to do this guest post!)

The Irish government has announced that a second Irish referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty will be held in the autumn. As IntLawGrrls have posted, the treaty was rejected by Ireland’s voters in a referendum last June. (photo by Peter O'Neill of "No to Lisbon" poster in the west of Ireland, June 2008)

The Lisbon Treaty is effectively a ‘de-constitutionalized’ version of the EU Constitutional Treaty, which French and Dutch voters had rejected in popular referenda in 2005. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts).

At the same time, recent newspaper reports are suggesting that across Europe in one month's time, the turnout is likely to be lower than ever for European Parliament elections.

Each of these news reports highlights an aspect of what might be called Europe’s political deficit – in other words, the chronic lack of political engagement of ordinary European citizens with the EU, and the failure or unwillingness of Europe’s political leaders to fully grasp this fact.

In a recent paper, I criticized the EU’s response to Ireland’s no vote to the Lisbon Treaty on the basis that the EU leadership chose to treat the referendum result as essentially an Irish problem rather than as a European problem. According to the Europe’s political leaders, the no-vote reflected concerns specific to the Irish population. The solution proposed was for the Irish government to suggest ways for the EU to respond to these particular concerns -- ultimately, through a package of largely redundant legal and political ‘guarantees’ -- so that the Lisbon Treaty could be ratified.

In this sense, Ireland's no-vote to Lisbon was treated very differently from the French and Dutch no-votes to the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. On that occasion, the complex but overwhelming tide of discontent reflected in the no-votes was quickly recognized as a collective European problem rather than as a specifically Dutch or French problem, and the Constitutional Treaty in its original form was rapidly declared to be dead.

My paper argues that despite the various plausible reasons for distinguishing between the Constitutional Treaty no-votes and the Lisbon Treaty no-vote, the EU strategy of treating Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty as primarily an Irish problem is a short-sighted one which is likely to backfire in the longer term. Ireland's no-vote is merely the latest manifestation of an ongoing crisis of popular legitimacy in the EU, and the European Council's strategy of treating it as essentially an Irish problem is part of the ongoing failure of Europe's political leaders to acknowledge the link between this crisis of popular legitimacy and the deliberately de-politicized nature of the European Union.

If you’re interested in reading more about the debate on whether and how to politicize the European Union, have a look at this exchange on the subject between Simon Hix of the London School of Economics and Stefano Bartolini of the European University Institute.

Athbhliain fé mhaise dhaoibh!

Athbhliain fé mhaise dhaoibh [or, in English, Happy New Year to you all]. I just thought I’d take this opportunity to point out a few things coming up on this (European) side of the Atlantic in 2009 that’s likely to catch our attention here.
► First of all Ireland will, it appears, get another opportunity vote on the Lisbon Treaty. As many of our readers will know, the Irish electorate voted ‘no’ to the ratification and incorporation of the Treaty last summer. We were the only European Union state to have a referendum on the Treaty and for those who wonder why we did, it’s because EU Treaty Law has supremacy over Constitutional law and, in Ireland, that has been interpreted since the case of Crotty v An Taoiseach (1986) as requiring a constitutional referendum on EU Treaties. Ireland has previously voted twice on an EU Treaty (Treaty of Nice) and ‘Lisbon II’ will be one of the political and legal events of 2009 here. The referendum is expected in 2009.
► The European Court of Human Rights will hear cases relating to abortion rights in Ireland and female genital mutilation/non-refoulement both of which emanate from Ireland. We previously discussed these cases on the blog, and the ECtHR’s decisions are anxiously awaited.
► Thirdly, we expect to see discussions about the placement of released Guantánamo Bay detainees in European states gain even more momentum in the next few months. Strategies for closing the detention centre are quite a hot topic here on IntLawGrrls and the role that European states’ will play in this process will be watched with great interest, particularly given the alleged role some European states (incl. Ireland, I’m afraid) are said to have played in getting people to Guantánamo by collusion in extraordinary rendition.
This is just a taster of the international law stories like to come from Europe over the course of the next 12 months, but as always it seems likely that it will be the unexpected occurrences that will most grab our attention. We look forward to discussing all this and more here on IntLawGrrls.