Committee Reports > List of Committees > Joint > 2005 > Committee on European Affairs > Report No. 09 - Europe Day in Dáil Éireann

Tuarascáil an Rapporteur don Chomhchoiste um Ghnóthaí Eorpacha ar Lá na hEorpa i nDáil Éireann, 10 Bealtaine 2006 leis an Teachta Ruairí Ó Cuinn

Rapporteur’s Report to the Joint Committee on European Affairs On Europe Day in Dáil Éireann, 10^th May 2006 By Deputy Ruairí Quinn

July 2006

Rapporteur’s Report to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs on Oireachtas Europe Day 10 May 2006

Introduction

There has been, for some years now, a perception by many citizens and commentators that the decision-making process of the European Union is detached from the political consciousness of the people in all of the Member States.

The national parliaments are close to their people because their debates are comprehensively reported and their procedures generally understood by national citizens.

The same cannot be said about the three main political institutions of the European Union; the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

The primary objective of Oireachtas Europe Day was to close that gap of perception and understanding.

National Politics in Europe

The evolution of parliamentary politics in most European States has been slow but progressive over the last one hundred and fifty years. The gradual extension of the right to vote, at first to all males and latterly, after 1918, to females was accompanied by a continuous political awareness among the electorate.

The reporting of parliamentary debates, at first, confined to the print media was in the sixties and seventies opened to include live radio and TV. coverage. Political parties mobilised their members and politicians communicated with the electorate. The historical political divisions, rooted in class, civil war or regional loyalties were understood by all and handed down from generation to generation. In modern times those bonds of loyalty and traditions of voting have been substantially loosened. But the basic foundations remain and still inform, perhaps subconsciously, the attitudes of national electorates to the issues of the day.

While the intensity of political division at national level in Europe has eased, particularly since the end of the Cold War, political consciousness remains deep within the national culture and continues to inform public political dialogue and participation. This complex process is assisted by a media, and in particular the press where national newspapers are known by the public for their support of either side of the ideological spectrum. If you want to know what a political party’s reaction to a complex controversy of the day may be, then you also know which paper to purchase. The Guardian or the Telegraph in Britain, le Monde or le Figaro in France and El Pais or El Mundo in Spain will articulate through it coverage and columnists a left or right of centre interpretation of events. In summary; citizens understand the signs and signals of political debate within their own country because of the manner and the medium of communication.

This is not the case for the coverage of political issues at European level. To begin with, the historical cultural legacy of comprehension, both subconscious and explicit, simply does not exist for the vast majority of citizens at this level. News Editors will prioritise national political stories above European ones, and more space will be available always for a domestic issue. The exception proves the rule. When a European story has a strong and specific domestic relevance, then it will get great coverage.

For example, the arcane details and obscure language of the Bolkenstein Services Directive were transposed into terrifying reality with the Irish Ferries displacement of secure and well paid jobs. Not since the days, in the late 1970s of the PAYE tax marches, did over 100,000 Irish people come out on to the streets in our major cities. Many were not sure what they were marching for, but they were clearly determined to defend the job security which previous generations had achieved. Suddenly, the obscure machinations over there in Brussels, reported back to Ireland by R.T.E’s Europe Correspondent, became a domestic news story on the front of every page.

The disconnection between there and here has been a slow but growing reality in nearly all European Member States of the Union. In some countries more than others, coverage is weak or ill informed. For example, the bias of the proprietors who own the tabloid press in Britain has intimidated Labour Government Ministers from talking openly and enthusiastically about European issues which are debated and decided at the Council of Ministers. The European Parliament is not fully understood in many countries because nationally elected MEPs sit in political groups and seldom vote en bloc as a national delegation.

Ireland is long used to the practice of claiming national success at home for a positive decision of the Council of Ministers in Brussels. However when the result goes the other way, then the same Minister will describe how the good fight was fought but the nation’s interests were defeated in Brussels. Is it any wonder that the process of scepticism and detachment grew slowly among the EU 12 and increased slightly in the EU 15 when two of the three new Member States, Sweden and Austria, were net contributors to the Union’s budget from the first day of their membership.

The fall of the Berlin Wall transformed the political landscape of Central Europe and the rest of the continent. Stability and democratic consolidation could only be guaranteed to the newly independent States by the prospect and speedy delivery of full membership of the European Union. But it was never going to be easy to achieve. Besides, throughout the decade of the nineties, the European Union was preoccupied, among other things with the project of the Single Currency at home and the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia on its external borders.

Faith in the steadiness of the European Project was not strengthened by the timidity of political leadership. The Nice Treaty, negotiated under the inept French presidency in 1998, was supposed to prepare the Union for enlargement to the East so as to accommodate twelve new Member States. The shoddy political compromises combined with the late night wheeler dealing of a politically isolated President Chirac produced a new Treaty for which there was little enthusiasm, even among the many supporters of the European Project. In Ireland, a county which had comfortably ratified all five previous Treaties in Referenda, the defeat of the Nice Treaty in June 2001 was a major shock, or so it seemed. A complacent government had provided little leadership and a lack-lustre campaign. Traditional groups, such as farmers, who had always been supporters and direct beneficiaries of the European Project, lost their enthusiasm in the face of perceived competition from Eastern European farmers for the dwindling Common Agricultural Policy cash resources.

Many Irish women, fearful of what was presented by European Union opponents as a militarised European Project, voted ‘no to conscription’, even though no such provision existed in the Nice Treaty.

Ireland’s No now stood in the way of Europe’s Yes to enlargement. Fifteen months later, in the Autumn of 2002, Ireland voted yes to Nice II, after a number of changes were made and assurances given by the rest of the European Union to accommodate Ireland’s concerns. The shock of the original Irish rejection was a catalyst for change. Many politicians and commentators had expressed dismay at the sordid and secretive political dealings which had produced the Nice Treaty. Others were dissatisfied with the voting system which distorted the historical political relationship, in voting terms, between Spain and Germany, on the one hand, and Poland and France, on the other hand, within the proposed enlargement.

Nearly everyone agreed that a new process of treaty making was required and a new European Project was now, historically, demanded.

An open convention of treaty makers comprised of representatives, not just of governments as in the old days, but members of national parliaments, including those from the twelve applicant States, the Commission and the European Parliamentary was to be brought together. The proceedings would be held in open session available to the public. Civic society, across Europe would be invited to make a contribution.

In Berlin at the Humboldt University the German Foreign Minister, Joscka Fischer, in a seminal speech on May 12th 2000, launched the concept of a Constitution for Europe. It would, he articulated, be a comprehensive document and would provide the platform for the future of what was now historically a reunited Europe. The president of the treaty drafting convention, appointed by the heads of government, was former French President, Valery Gisgard d’Estaing. He rose to the challenge and steered through, what was often a divided gathering, a comprehensive but compromise text which was called a Constitutional Treaty. But it was intended by him and many other enthusiasts to be in effect a new constitution for a new Europe.

The comprehensive text of the institutional treaty was presented to the governments of Europe in the Intergovernmental Conference of June 2004 held under the Irish Presidency. There, despite some misgivings about the changed voting allocations for different countries, it was unanimously accepted. Europe was at last on its way.

In response to the declaration of Laeken during the Belgian Presidency of 2001 seeking openness, transparency and fuller participation in the formulation process of treaty making, France and The Netherlands had announced that they would put the completed Treaty to their people respectively in a Referendum. This had never happened in The Netherlands. In France where most such treaties were ratified by parliament, President Francois Mitterand in 1992, following the Danish rejection of the Maastricht Treaty, had announced a French Referendum in solidarity with the European Project. It was, contrary to early poll predictions, very nearly defeated in a campaign which became more concerned with domestic French issues than the politics of the single currency which were set out in the Maastricht Treaty.

In February 2005, Spain under the leadership of the recently elected Socialist Government, and with the support of the main Opposition party, ratified the Constitutional Treaty in a Referendum by a significant majority. Other national parliaments followed suit, but in May 2005, France shocked Europe and itself when it rejected the Treaty. A few days later, this apparently unique French event was transformed by the rejection of the Treaty by the Dutch electorate in The Netherlands.

This was now a crisis of unforeseen proportions. Unlike Maastricht, in which special provisions could be made for the Danes, or Nice, where Irish concerns about neutrality could be accommodated, the Constitutional Treaty could not be customised to suit national concerns. As unanimity was required across all twenty-five Member States of the Union for the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty, a period of reflection was announced by European Leaders following the Dutch and French defeats. As parliamentary ratification proceeded in different countries, no further Referenda were held, including Ireland’s which had provisionally been scheduled for autumn 2005. What would Europe do now was the question, but who could pose it and how should it be answered?

Bringing Europe closer to the people

The new President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, already knew when he took office in late 2004, with his five Vice-Presidents and nineteen Commissioners, that a new communication strategy was required if the European Project was to be brought back into the consciousness of the European citizen. The Swedish Vice-President and Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, was given the new responsibility of communications strategy along with responsibility for institutional relations. From now on the whole approach to contact and information with citizens, groups and civic society was to be transformed. It was clear that European citizens at national level had to be informed and enthused about European issues. But this is no easy task.

The paradox of all of this is that while there are growing doubts about the efficacy of the project, Europe has never been more successful as a political, social and economic project than it is today. The enlargement with ten additional Member States in 2004 has been carried into effect with comparative ease. It is likely that Bulgaria and Romania will complete that fifth enlargement process without difficulty in 2007. On the economic front the single currency has been introduced without disruption and has, within a space of five years, become one of the three worldwide reserve currencies along with the US Dollar and the Japanese Yen. Its arrival has been characterised by historically low inflation and low interest rates. Meanwhile Europe’s political stability has become a beacon of hope and influence. Its near neighbours, like the former Yugoslavian States and Turkey, want to become full members. In order to qualify they are adopting reformist policies, strengthening their democracies and cleaning up the civil and judicial administrations of their countries with a commitment and enthusiasm to human rights and democratic values that no army of occupation could engender.

However within the security of the Union’s boundaries, its established citizens, particularly those in the old western Union of fifteen Member States, have reservations and doubts. Some of these are related to the emerging political deficit between the national political institutions of the Member States and the operations of the political institutions at European level.

A new political balance between the Capital and the Capitals

The original political architecture of the European Union was influenced by the strong Federalist tendencies which surrounded its foundations. The triangular relationship between the Commission, the Parliament and the Council reflected this. The Commission proposed initiatives, the Parliament was consulted and the Council decided. It all happened away from national capitals. Government Ministers went to Europe, MEPs lost contact with their national parliaments when elected to the European Parliament, and Commissioners, nominated by their national governments, were now pledged, by oath, to give their first loyalty to the Union.

But as the European Union evolved and expanded, this political architecture could not accommodate the constitutional hybrid which is unique to the very creation of the European Union. Because that Union is, in part Federal and in part, Inter-Governmental in its structure and activities, it needs to reflect that combination in its democratic political processes, particularly at national level.

The draft Constitutional Treaty, rejected by the French and Dutch, recognised, in part, this deficit. That is why its provisions proposed an enhanced role for national parliaments in relation to the other three institutions. Henceforth under the provisions of that draft Treaty, national parliaments would be engaged much earlier in the process of law making and they could, acting together at international level within the Union, assert the principle of subsidiarity by referring back a legislative initiate proposed by the Commission.

Welcome as this proposal is, it does not go far enough. The gap between the European institutions and the twenty-five national parliaments must be closed, both politically and geographically. The European political process of decision making and executive responsibility must in part be brought on to the floor of national parliaments. There that process becomes visible and accountable, not just to Ministers, but to opposition parties and government back-benchers as well. In front of the national media and the political press corps, European decisions, made by European Commissioners, can be challenged by national politicians who have to deal with the consequences of those decisions. While they may have been made far away in Brussels, their impact is right here at home amongst national voters.

A contemporary example

The dramatic change in the European sugar regime was a requirement of the European Union’s responsibilities under its obligations to the World Trade Organisation. While the terms of that agreement with the WTO were resolutely negotiated, its national impact across the Union has been both varied and enormous.

In Ireland, an historic industry, eighty years old has disappeared in one year. Three thousand seven hundred beet farmers have lost a valuable cash crop. Five hundred workers have lost their jobs in a sugar refinery and a whole region suffers the consequences of the economic decline of what had been a traditional sector.

It was for that reason that the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs in its first Oireachtas Europe Day wanted to have the European Agricultural Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, present her case on the floor of the Dáil.

This was a sitting where both Senators and Deputies from all sides pressed questions and received answers. In front of the press gallery and the wider media the Irish public could make the connection between the closure of the Mallow sugar plant and the continued dominance of Europe as the world’s largest trading bloc. Dáil Deputies and Senators, as distinct from MEPs, could ask questions not of the national Minister for Agriculture about matters European, but of the European Commissioner for Agriculture who had effectively taken the decision within the mandate negotiated by the Council of Agricultural Ministers.

Later on the same day, other issues of European origin and Irish engagement were discussed and debated.

Summary

The national parliaments are the political stadia with which European citizens are politically most familiar. As partisan fans of either government or opposition, they understand the political games and the drama of power which is played out by politicians elected by them in national elections. They know the history of their team. They know that there is an inter action between national legislation and European legislation. But what they did not know is that up to seventy per cent of all national laws, debated earnestly in national parliaments, start their legal journey within the Commission, the Parliament and the Council. While Brussels may propose, it is the national parliaments who finally transpose those mediated initiatives into national laws. The political, parliamentary and legal link between the national and the European law making process has not been understood or even seen by many of Europe’s political spectators and engaged citizens. Is it any wonder that they distrust this political game, the first half of which they cannot see.

The solution must involve linking the national parliaments with the European institutions. The method of how this is to be achieved will vary from capital to capital in accordance with the political traditions and arrangements of each national parliamentary institution. But the principle of linkage and integration between the national and the European must at all times be constant. There can be no more home matches played away out of sight of the traditional spectators of citizens, reporters and political commentators. If in each of the three parliamentary sessions which the Oireachtas hold each year, we had dedicated Europe Oireachtas weeks which would provide such a transparent linkage between the national and the European, then we would all be winners.

The Proposal

The original idea was to have an Oireachtas European week, which would involve both the Seanad and the Dáil chambers. This proposal was adopted by the Joint Committee on European Affairs and sent to the Government Chief Whip and Opposition Party Whips for their consideration and approval. Subsequently consultations took place with the Ceann Comhairle, representatives of the Joint Committee on European Affairs and the Whips. It was finally agreed, that a single day would be set aside, and that the activities would occur in the Dáil chamber. Wednesday 10^th May was chosen, because it was the day after Europe Day and was also a full Oireachtas day as well.

The details of what would happen then were finally arranged, based upon the original outline put forward by the Joint Committee on European Affairs and including suggestions made by the Government Chief Whip, with the agreement of the Opposition Whips.

In addition to having a new kind of format for discussion, the Joint Committee on European Affairs also wanted to have the normal rules of debate liberalised, so as to promote a more lively and interactive exchange between Deputies and Senators and invited speakers. Accordingly prepared scripts, except for the Commissioner and the Minister, were discouraged. Interruptions and questions were to be allowed. The speaker in possession on the floor was encouraged to accept such interventions and to respond in a dynamic way.

Finally, it was also decided to reach out beyond the confines of Leinster House and make a special direct effort to engage the public. A new publicity initiative was launched with the help of the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas. A dedicated web site was opened and the public, informed by radio advertisements, were invited in advance of the day, the 10^th May, to consider posing questions on the web site which they would like to have asked and answered during the course of the Oireachtas Europe day. This entirely new initiative attracted a substantial response from the public. The web site registered 750 hits and over 60 questions were placed on the web site. Many of these questions were subsequently put by members of the Oireachtas during the course of the day.

Evaluation

The whole day was deemed by the majority who participated in the process to have been a success. The highlight, undoubtedly, was the presence in the Dáil chamber of European Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. A new precedent was established by physically locating her and her adviser in the centre of the chamber, aligned to neither the Government side nor the Opposition side of the House. This spatial statement underlined the unique nature of the event, and her relationship and indeed that of the Commission to the Oireachtas.

The debate on the future of European agriculture and the specific demise of the Irish sugar industry was very topical. In the exchange of questions and answers between members and the Commissioner, a new political dimension was clearly established, and witnessed by the public through the live media coverage and subsequent press reportage.

The other aspects of the day ranged over a set of relevant issues which have a contemporary resonance with the Irish public. The Treaty of Accession to allow Romania and Bulgaria complete the fifth enlargement of the Union and become members of the European Union was debated.

Ireland’s rapidly increasing Development Aid Programme, which commands widespread interest across the country, was presented by the Minister for Development Aid and was extensively debated by the members present.

The full details of the programme of the day are annexed to this report along with associated documents which also form a part of this report. In addition, there is an abbreviated version of the actual events as televised on a DVD. The full proceedings are available in the annex.

Accordingly, each person can therefore make their own evaluation. But the reaction at the end of the day by members of the Joint Committee on European Affairs was that the entire event, and the process leading up to it, had been a success. This also appears to have been the view of the media in Leinster House and beyond.

Conclusion:

The Oireachtas Europe day was a successful first step in trying to close the communications gap between the citizens and the reality of the European Union. It is the intention to build upon this experience by increasing the extent and the frequency of such events. Hopefully, there will be a dedicated Oireachtas Europe week in each of the three parliamentary sessions that make up the Oireachtas calendar year. There is undoubted potential to develop and expand on the interaction between the citizens and members of the Oireachtas on the dedicated web site.

Finally, the Joint Committee on European Affairs believes that this parliamentary model has a relevance and an application to all the other national parliaments of the Member States. The principle of engaging Commissioners and Chairpersons of European parliamentary committees with national politicians in their own parliament is the key foundation stone of this initiative. How the proceedings are to be organised and arranged in each parliament is clearly a matter for the elected members in each State of the European Union to decide. There will of course be many variations that will emerge which in the process will reinforce one of the values of the Union: United in our Diversity.