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THE PLENARY SESSION COMMENCED ON THURSDAY, 8TH MAY 2008 AS FOLLOWS:
Opening remarks from Chairman Maurice Hayes
Concluding remarks by Chairman Maurice Hayes
Today's meeting is the third in our series of thematic discussions on aspects of the Treaty of particular importance to Ireland. During the recent plenary debates and also the public meetings around the country, questions of defence and Irish policy on neutrality have been constant themes. The new Treaty contains significant changes to the EU's Common Foreign and Security policy and there has been a sharp divergence of views as to the implications for Ireland and these changes. We are delighted to have with us today two guest speakers who are well placed to put the case for and against the Treaty in terms of these issues.
It is a great pleasure to welcome Mr Pat Cox, former President of the European Parliament and Mr Joe Noonan, solicitor, who has been closely involved in debates about Irish neutrality over many years.
Pat Cox was first elected to the European Parliament in 1989 as a member of the constituency of Munster. He was elected three times to the European Parliament and was also elected to Dáil Eireann for Cork South in 1992. He served as President of the European Parliament from January 2002 to July 2004. The Forum was particularly honoured when he came here as guest speaker in January 2002 at the beginning of his term in office, and he was with us most recently last November when we held a special session in Cork on Ireland's specific contribution to the European Union.
Mr Joe Noonan is a solicitor practicing in Cork, a partner in the firm of Noonan Linehan Carroll Coffey. He has an international reputation in the field of environmental and planning law. In the landmark Crotty case in 1987 Joe Noonan was the expert witness in the legal implications of the Foreign and Security Policy elements of the Single European Act. The case brought by Mr Crotty successfully challenged the Government's decision to adopt the Single European Act without a referendum and the Supreme Court found in favour of Mr Crotty specifically because of the foreign policy aspects of the Single European Act. The judgment sets the legal basis in which we in Ireland will hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Joe Noonan's special interest is in examining the Treaty's changes to assess their affects on Irish interests, including our independence of action in the military and defence fields.
We are delighted to welcome such expert speakers to share their views with us on this important aspect of our discussion and we look forward to a lively discussion. As always, translation from the Irish language will be available on your head sets. And this is the time, too, when I remind you to turn off your mobile phones and any other devices that might interfere with the audio visual equipment.
Today's proceedings are being streamed live on the Forum's website and a web cast recording will be available on our website from this afternoon, as is last week's Plenary with the President of Sinn Fein Gerry Adams, MP, MLA.
It is now my honour to call on Mr Pat Cox to address the Forum.
MR COX: Mr Chairman, members of the Forum, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be here today and I thank you for the invitation. I have been invited to speak on 'The Lisbon Treaty ‑ the implications for Foreign Policy, Defence and Neutrality'. First, however, let me recall, Mr Chairman, that it was on this day, May 8th 1945, that Germany's unconditional surrender to the allied forces was ratified in Berlin bringing an end to the Second World War in Europe. How different things are today and in no small measure thanks to the peace and reconciliation of the process of European integration whose values we will explore today in terms of their contemporary external global expression. Let me try to deal with context as well as text.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the rapid end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union which followed dramatically altered the strategic landscape. It carried both opportunities and challenges in its wake. German reunification and the enlargement of the EU from 15 to 27 Member States illustrate the extent in Europe to which these opportunities already have been realised. Old certainties died. Predictability yielded to complexity and diversity. The threat of large scale aggression against any Member State is now highly improbable. Europe faces new threats which are more diverse, less visible and less predictable. They range from terrorism where Europe is both a target and a base, to the prospect of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction especially in the wider Middle East, to state failure which undermines regional and global stability, to organised crime with cross border trafficking in drugs, women, illegal migrants and weapons. In contrast to the massive and visible threat in the Cold War none of the new threats is purely military, nor can they be tackled by purely military means. Politics, diplomacy, policing and civilian activities together with EU trade, development, energy and climate change policies all have a role to play.
A second consequence of the ending of the Cold War was that bipolarity ended leaving the United States in a dominant position as a military actor. The considerable difficulty it has encountered in trying to dominate by force indicates that the possession and use of military strength alone is no answer. The US also through the war in Iraq has exhibited an appetite for the creation of ad hoc coalitions of the willing. In sharp contrast the European Union places heavy emphasis on an international order based on effective multilateralism grounded in the framework of the United Nations Charter. Javier Solana, the current High Representative, has described it succinctly as, and I quote, 'to make power lawful and the law powerful'. If we want international organisations, systems and treaties to be effective in confronting our many challenges both as Ireland and as the European Union we must be prepared to play our part.
In terms of shared values and interests Europeans and not least among them the Irish are disturbed in the international context by the scale of the development gap between rich and poor nations, its associated poverty, famine and disease, by the extent of poor governance, failed states, unsettled conflicts, by the widespread absence of respect for fundamental rights, by the rise in terrorism, intolerance and fundamentalism and by the drift towards unilateralism.
The European Union's Member States increasingly sense a shared vulnerability in the face of new security risks from energy supply to weapons of mass destruction, to international terrorism, crime and trafficking. This has begun to strengthen their resolve to act together.
In terms of time and distance we live in a shrinking world. This phenomenon and its associated pace of change are here to stay. We are challenged by globalisation, technical advances, by aging demographics, raw material competition, resource scarcity, climate change and new security risks. We live on an increasingly interdependent planet. The 21st century will be one of relentless relative European and Western decline as emerging economies, societies and political systems in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere come into their own. This process of relative decline will challenge collective EU capacities but I believe certainly would dwarf us as Europeans if our only capacity to respond was predicated on 19th century concepts of national sovereignty. This, Chairman, is the broad context within which the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy has evolved.
The origins of the Common Foreign and Security Policy can be traced to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, including the reference to a possible future 'common defence'. At that time Ireland marked out our policy boundary by securing in the Treaty the phrase that union policy 'shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States'. This formulation has been retained ever since. The mid '90s was marked, as we know, by the reality check of the murderous breakdown of former Yugoslavia. For many, images that we thought were consigned to the pages of European history touched our consciousness and haunted our consciences. The ethnic cleansing of the Balkans revealed to the European Union on its own doorstep the full extent of the gap between its foreign policy aspirations and its foreign policy capacity. Political and diplomatic resolutions which were a constant throughout this period were a poor substitute for a political resolve and a capacity to act. This prompted proposals in the Amsterdam Treaty for the development of EU crisis management. The Treaty listed the 'Petersburg Tasks' that the EU might undertake, including humanitarian and rescue tasks, peace keeping tasks, and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace making.
Tasks require the capacity and resources to carry them out. In 1998 the Anglo French Summit at St Malo concluded that the 'Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible military forces', bringing a new impetus to the idea of European security and defence policy. The 1999 European Councils at Helsinki and Cologne committed the Union to developing its capacity to undertake crisis management tasks known as the 'Headline Goal' process and agreed it was 'important' to develop a rapid response capability. European Security and Defence Policy thereafter was an 'integral part of Common, Foreign and Security Policy'.
The Nice Treaty established a Political and Security Committee bringing together representatives of Member States and the Commission to monitor the international situation, to deliver opinions to the Council, to monitor implementation of agreed policies, and, where tasked to do so, to exercise political control and strategic direction of crisis management operations.
The National Security Strategy published by the Bush Administration in September 2002 propagated the doctrine of pre‑emptive war to justify the invasion of Iraq. In December 2003 the European Union adopted its own security strategy. To quote its conclusion, if I may, Chairman: 'This is a world of new dangers but also of new opportunities. The European Union has the potential to make a major contribution, both in dealing with threats and in helping to realise the opportunities. An active and capable European Union would make an impact on a global scale. In doing so, it would contribute to an effective multilateral system leading to a fairer, safer and more united world'.
Since 2003 the EU has deployed 21 operations in the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East and Asia from classic peace keeping, to border monitoring, to security sector, police or judicial reform. In total, about 10,000 Europeans have been deployed on these operations which are mostly small in scale but conceptually they are quite sophisticated mixing military with civilian instruments in support of a clear political strategy. The vast majority of missions to date, Mr Chairman, have been civilian rule of law missions, 15 in all, nine current and six concluded. The first operation was an EU police mission to Bosnia which is ongoing and which has a continuous involvement of the Garda Siochana. A military stabilisation mission to Bosnia began in 2004. This also has been continuous and has had the continuous involvement of members of the Irish Defence Forces. There have been six military missions; three current in Bosnia, Darfur ‑ which is a monitoring mission ‑ and Chad, and three concluded. Ireland has committed 95 civilians to civilian Security and Defence Policy commitments, over four deployments including 11 personnel in Kosovo.
At present there are 645 defence force personnel serving overseas. 31 in UN missions. 292 on a combination of EU led missions in Bosnia and Chad. 287 are NATO led missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and 35 on other staff assignments.
The numbers in Chad will increase from roughly 250 at present to more than 400, bringing the overall total of Defence Force personnel serving overseas close to the ceiling guideline of 850, as set out in our Defence White Paper. All overseas service, whether on EU, NATO or UN led missions, is in full compliance with the 'triple lock', which also requires UN mission authorisation.
The concept of stand‑by battle groups has been developed to provide a rapid response capability if needed to respond to a crisis situation. These consist of up to 1,500 personnel and two such groups are on stand‑by at any time. Their tasks can include conflict prevention, separation of parties by force, stabilisation, reconstruction, evacuation, and assistance to humanitarian operations. Ireland, as we know, is part of the Nordic Battle Group with Sweden, Norway, Finland and Estonia and is stood by from January to June of this year. Our future commitment in principle to the Nordic Battle Group next will occur in the year 2011. So far, such groups never have been deployed.
Permit me to remind the Forum of some remarks made by Kofi Annan when he addressed you in October 2004. I will shorten the quote but permit me to quote two.
"The EU and its Members pay a lot of the UN's bills and support our work right across the spectrum. I am indeed grateful for that ‑ but I look to Europe for even more. That is why I welcome the development of EU capabilities in the context of the European Security and Defence Policy, and the progress that we are making together in the field of crisis management.
"I want to leave you",he said, "in no doubt of how important strengthened EU capacities are to the United Nations. The EU is in a position to provide specialised skills that our greatest troop contributors may not be able to give us and to deploy more rapidly than we can".
And he continued in that vein at some length, Mr Chairman.
The Lisbon Treaty reflects developments in the evolution of the Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. It contains a number of important innovations across the range of external policies but there is also a strong element of continuity with many existing articles remaining unchanged. Common Foreign and Security Policy is different to other EU external policies in that it remains primarily subject to unanimity among Member States. It is outside the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the role of the European Parliament remains consultative. It leaves its largely sovereignty sensitive political and intergovernmental character in tact. There is scope for a Member State to exercise a right of 'constructive abstention' whereby it can choose to allow the rest of the Union to proceed with a given decision with which it may disagree. In such cases the decision would not apply to the Member State concerned.
In terms of coherence, continuity and international visibility, as we know there is a significant reform to be made in the role of the High Representative who will both take on the functions of the External Relations Commissioner, the permanent presidency of the General Affairs Council of foreign ministers and the Chairing of the Council itself. We can develop that point later if we need.
Permit me to continue by saying the principles upon which the Union's external action will be based as articulated in the Lisbon Treaty are wholly consistent with Irish values, priorities and practice in their respect for democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the principle of equality and solidarity and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law. There is no single thing in those principles and their wider elaboration which in the slightest way offends any priority, policy or preference of this independent Republic.
The Lisbon Treaty allows for a limited expansion of qualified majority voting in Common Foreign and Security Policy, particularly where the new High Representative will bring forward proposals which have been specifically and unanimously requested by the European Council. Even where a decision can be taken by qualified majority a Member State can exercise the so‑called 'emergency brake' for reasons of vital national interest allowing for referral back to the European Council for unanimous decision. The European Council is able to decide unanimously that decisions and other specified cases should in future be taken by qualified majority but this cannot and will not apply to decisions having military or defence implications.
The European Security and Defence Policy will henceforth be called Common Security and Defence Policy. The European Defence Agency is given a Treaty base, will be open to all States willing to be part of it and participation in any of its projects is for Member States to choose to opt in on a case by case basis. There is a change of language in the progressive framing of a common defence policy. But this is subject to a referendum in Ireland and the guarantee of a referendum on this issue is again contained in the proposed amendment number 28 to Bunreacht na hEireann. There is a modest expansion of Petersburg Tasks. And there has been the addition of a mutual assistance clause, introducing an obligation of aid and assistance to any Member State which is the victim of armed aggression on its territory. It is clearly stated that this obligation shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States. No implementation mechanism is proposed leaving it for Ireland to make its own sovereign decision on whether, if and how to come to another Member State's assistance in such a case. The Treaty also provides for permanent structured cooperation on capabilities development among a group of willing Member States. Participation is on a voluntary opt‑in basis. There are also, Chairman, welcome additions on humanitarian aid operations and the establishment, in my view long overdue, of a European voluntary humanitarian aid corps.
To summarise from an Irish perspective, Mr Chairman, it is my view that the standard position on the traditional policy of military neutrality is fully protected in the Lisbon Treaty. Unanimity remains the rule for security and defence. No crisis management mission can be launched by the European Union without Ireland's assent. Common defence cannot be agreed without our support and is subject to an Irish referendum. The specific character of neutral and non‑aligned Member States is recognised and protected in Treaty law. There is no mechanism to oblige Member States to increase military expenditure and Ireland continues to maintain the 'triple lock' requirement for troop deployments.
I would say that the evolution of this policy which continues to develop in response to international needs and in conformity with UN principles is something that Ireland can fully commit to, play our full role, in line with our traditions and values. The Lisbon Treaty in this sense makes relatively modest changes which do not alter our national position.
I have seen in some of the debates, Chairman, issues about cost. Can I just briefly address that as I conclude?
As regards cost, administrative expenditure relating to the implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy is charged to the Union budget, except for expenditure arising from operations having military or defence implications. These costs are borne by the participating Member States, save where the Council unanimously decides otherwise. In such cases, common costs will be borne by Member States in proportion to national income. A Member State which has used constructive abstention in relation to a particular operation is fully exempted from contributing to the cost of that operation.
Speaking of costs, Chairman, in recent years it has become the habit in other arenas in this city to attempt to scope activities by following the money trail. Permit me to do so for Common Foreign and Security Policy. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute provides an annual snapshot of the world's expenditure on armaments and defence. The number one slot in 2007, not surprisingly, as every year, is occupied by the United States with a defence and armaments budget of US$582.7 billion. The sum of national spending by the EU 27 Member States, spent by them not by the EU, amounts to US$301 billion, with two‑thirds of it accounted by the top five European spenders the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and one‑third spread across the other 22 Member States of the Union. It is widely argued, Chairman, by defence specialists that because of fragmentation, the absence of standardisation and of scale economies the capability purchase per dollar spent in Europe delivers only 40% of its US capacity equivalent. This suggests clearly that spending more wisely rather than spending more will add much to the European Union's capacity to act.
For 2008, Mr Chairman, the entire budget of the European Union is worth €129 billion or, in the round, $200 billion. This makes US defence spending 2.9 times larger than the entire EU budget. Within the European budget, of which I have the breakdown in the text, but let me come just to the Europe as global actor part, 5.7% of the EU budget is spent on the EU as global actor amounting to €7.3 billion. This is the equivalent of 2% of the defence budget of the United States. I think it is important to have a sense of proportionality when we have these kinds of debates. And where is the money spent, Chairman, and is it spent in a way that would be hostile to Ireland's preferences? My answer to that is no and permit me to illustrate. The spending includes €1.4 billion in pre accession aid to candidate states; €1.6 billion for our neighbourhood policy to help our neighbours to our east and to our south; 285 million on managing civilian crisis, with 165 million in Kosovo; 300 million to fund Palestinian institutions. We, the Europeans, are the only ones in substance funding Palestinian institutions, stressed and all as they are. We give 2.3 billion from the EU budget to humanitarian aid and a further 2.9 billion spent through the Commission on behalf of the Member States. If there is a question to be asked, Mr Chairman, the direction is not why the EU is spending so much but rather, as the richest regional market economy in the world, why we spend so little in comparative terms.
All of this expenditure is in the form of what I would call a helping hand. All of the 18 EU operations so far under Common Foreign and Security Policy and European Security and Defence Policy have been of a helping hand. All are pacific in nature. All are entirely consistent with Ireland's foreign policy preferences, priorities and values. These are the facts. These are the realities and actions speak louder than words. The amounts and efforts involved are not negligible and all have deepened in recent years but I would appeal for a sense of proportionality which will reveal to us how enormous ‑‑ not how enormous but how modest our contributions are, something that would not be immediately apparent from some of the dramatic polemics and dialectic which often suffuses our Irish debate on these questions.
Chairman, the Union's great strength derives from its soft power, its rules based normative capacity. Its Common Foreign and Security Policy is but part of this normative capacity. Externally this policy has assisted partners not imposed upon them. Likewise, internally it has evolved by proposition not by imposition. By successive Treaties we, the people of Ireland, have helped to define and develop this capacity through our permissive consent in the consecutive referenda. It is a force for good in the world, one we can be proud of, as we can be proud of our real and growing proportionately positive Irish contribution. The Lisbon Treaty enhances our capacity to act together to better serve the global community and to do good in the world. I have not the slightest hesitation in commending Lisbon to the Irish people. (Applause)
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr Cox. Before I call on Mr Noonan could I mention that copies of the relevant sections of the consolidated Treaty on Common Foreign and Security Policy have been circulated for ease of reference so they are with you, if anybody needs them. Mr Noonan, please.
I am pleased to see in the hall this morning a daughter of Ray Crotty. Ray is the person whose personal bravery brings us all here at this moment, 21 years after he succeeded in explaining to the Supreme Court why the Government and the opposition parties were wrong, most of the opposition parties in suggesting that the Single European Act was a mere tidying up exercise; a Treaty of little consequence, nothing to see here, move along. That was the proposition advanced by Senior Counsel on behalf of the Government in the Supreme Court. Happily the court had the opportunity to test that proposition and when they tested it, they found it did not survive very long.
It is interesting to hear similar comments offered reassuringly during this discussion. The characterisation of the Single European Act as a tidying up exercise of little consequence was false. So found. And the characterisation of the Lisbon Treaty in similar terms would be equally false, in my view.
On the contrary, the Lisbon Treaty marks the transition in formal terms from the European communities that we know and love in greater or less measure, the communities are to be abolished and in their place is to be founded a European Union. And we must look at the Lisbon Treaty in its entirety to understand what nature of beast that Union intends to be.
In the context of this morning's discussion, the Lisbon Treaty marks the transition, in my view, of the European Union/European communities from a primarily economic and political body, whose task in the current treaties is to organise relations between the Member States and their peoples ‑‑ and I emphasise that as their task under the current treaties ‑‑ to a quite different sets of goals and objects under Lisbon. It marks its transition from a political and economic body to a would‑be military actor with stated global ambitions. That is what Lisbon says.
It also, from a domestic point of view, marks the transition away from a long‑standing Irish policy of remaining apart from military alliances, and instead Ireland is going along with the provisions in Lisbon which give the European Union the essential hallmarks of a military alliance. The Government claims that this makes no difference to what it refers to as its traditional policy of neutrality do not, in fact, survive a reading of the text.
These are dramatic changes. They deserve discussion and in the brief time available this morning I hope we can discuss them dispassionately and, in some sense, objectively, accepting that we all bring our biases to the table.
Speaking on 4th December last to the Parliament, Commission President Barroso summed up the Treaty. He said: The new Treaty will turn the European Union into a full external political actor, giving the Union legal personality. In particular, the Treaty establishes common principles and objectives for the EU's external action in all its aspects. In more specific areas, the President of the Commission said: it will allow the emergence of a true, common European defence. It will introduce a mutual defence clause and a solidarity clause.
I agree with the President's analysis of the effects of those aspects of the Treaty of Lisbon.
I will look in a moment at some of the novel elements in the Defence Foreign Policy in security area, including the foundation within the Treaty for the first time of the European Defence Agency, the role of the High Representative in foreign affairs, known under the Constitution as the Union's Foreign Minister, but that title was deemed a bit too sensitive for some and changed in Lisbon after the Period of Reflection. The fact that under Lisbon we have a mutual defence clause, the fact that under Lisbon all civilian and military assets of the Member States can be called in aid under certain conditions, and the predominant fact under Lisbon that its purpose is to add muscle to the political body that currently exists and that muscle is military.
But I think I would first like to acknowledge and agree respectfully with what Dr Garrett Fitzgerald said in the relation to the Treaty that we are being asked to vote on. He said: The most striking change ‑‑ and he was speaking here about the difference between the Constitution as rejected by the people in France and Holland two years ago, three years ago and this present version ‑‑ is perhaps that in order to enable some governments to reassure their electorates that the changes will have no constitutional implications, the idea of a new and simpler Treaty containing all the provisions governing the Union has now been dropped in favour of a huge series of individual amendments to two existing treaties. Virtual incomprehensibility has thus replaced simplicity as the key approach to EU reform. As for the changes now proposed to be made to the Constitutional Treaty, most are presentational changes that have no practical effect. They have simply been designed to enable certain heads of government to sell to their people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action rather than by referendum.
And in addition to Dr Fitzgerald's view, we have, I think, an important contribution by the former President of Germany Dr Roman Herzog who also, in a former life was the President of the German Constitutional Court, and he spoke about what he sees Lisbon doing in the following terms:
It is true that we are experiencing an ever greater inappropriate centralisation of powers away from the Member States and towards the EU.
And he goes on to explain how in his view Germany, in fact, can hardly now still be called, in an unqualified sense, a parliamentary democracy for that reason.
He says: The proposed Constitution does not contain the possibility of restoring individual competences to the national level. Instead it counts on the same one way street as before, heading towards ever greater centralisation.
And he makes a statement that I completely agree with. He says: Most people have a fundamentally positive attitude to European integration but at the same time they have an ever increasing feeling that something is going wrong. That an untransparent, complex, intricate, mammoth institution has evolved divorced from the factual problems and national traditions grabbing ever greater competencies and areas of power that the democratic control mechanisms are failing. In brief, that it can not go on like this.
And, of course, President Sarkozy in France has explained to us, and you will be familiar in this room with his comments to the effect that when the French voted no that they were just ahead of all the other countries in voting no. It would happen in all Member States if they had a referendum. There is a cleavage, Mr Sarkozy said ‑‑ he would know that word quite well ‑‑ between people and governments. A referendum now would bring Europe into danger.
We are fortunate that we have that referendum. The quality of the votes that we cast on 12th June will be informed by the level of debate, discussion and the amount of information that we have access to between this and then. It is, therefore, the more disquieting to see, not one, not two, but a series of media reports about little events suggesting that not everybody who has the information is too happy with sharing it with the Irish people just at the moment. Maybe after 12th June but not just at the moment.
Jamie Smith in the Irish Times on 5th February reported that the Slovenian Presidency ‑‑ Slovenia holds the Presidency of the EU at the moment ‑‑ had been told by the Irish government to zip its lip. We didn't want to have anything here from the Presidency about advancing the EU defence agenda before 12th June, thank you very much.
There was an interesting British note in relation to a briefing by foreign affairs. There have been noises off. Why should this be? What are people afraid of? Why can we not level with people and explain why we should vote for this Treaty and the changes that it brings? If we believe in them, explain them candidly, argue for them, put them out there and accept the people's verdict.
One of the wonderful tasks that has been accomplished by Mr Peadar O'Broin, to whom great credit is owed, is the preparation, it must have been immensely painstaking, of a combined version of the treaties which he has done not in a way that simply brings together the old and the new into a consolidated text so that you can see what it will be at the end, but much more helpfully even than that; he has prepared a version of the Treaty as it is and he has cut into it the changes, and he has done that in a way that you can see the changes as they operate. And I would recommend that really to anyone who wants to get to grips with any particular area of the Treaty. It is published, I think, through the auspices of the Irish Institute for European Affairs. It is available on the web. It is colour coded showing in yellow the changes brought in by the Treaty of Lisbon and showing in blue subsequent changes brought in in the intergovernmental conference which tweaked the draft Treaty in 2007. It also shows what is going out.
And I would like to turn, for a few minutes, to the document that Mr O'Broin has prepared and draw your attention to just some aspects of them.
The common provisions in title one set out the Union's aims and roles. It describes the values, which are admirable. It replaces the objective that I described earlier of existing communities which was to act as a focus for organising relations between Member States and their peoples. This Union now is a unitary body with singular focus. While it goes on to give expression to the objective and ambition of taking decisions as close as possible to the people, saying, for example, every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union and decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizens, I have to say the noble ambition set out there remains to be delivered. For example, in the negotiation process for this Treaty it is my understanding that the Irish government was opposed to the changes in the Commission that are in Lisbon Treaty, but failed to persuade a sufficient number of other Member States of the merit of its case. And it is my understanding that that was the position. Of course, we don't know that, those of us who are private citizens who were not in the room, and the government is not telling. Instead what the government is doing is assuring us that everything in the Lisbon Treaty is rosy . And I think as citizens entitled to be involved as closely as possible in the life of the Union, it is difficult to find a reason why our Government would be in a position where it can, if it chooses, withhold information from us about its negotiating position on such a fundamental issue as the Commission and then come and tell us something potentially 180 degrees the opposite is fine afterwards. I don't think that is open or transparent.
The detail contained in Mr O'Broin's document under the heading of general provisions on the Europe Union's external action and specific provisions on the Common Foreign and Security Policy are very yellow. They are very yellow because they are new. There are several yellow pages and they are all new. They are new and they matter.
I saw a quotation attributed to Mr Cox a couple of days ago about how this Treaty is very long and complex because it is a legal document and they had to get it right, and that is quite so. And any legal document that is long and complicated with lots of new things, you can be pretty sure of one thing, it changes things. It is not the same as the document that was there before. And I would ask people to bear that in mind when they are listening to Government assurances that it does not change our traditional policy of neutrality. It does.
It changes the nature of the Union that we are a whole hearted member of and it changes the nature of our obligations within that Union. Some of those obligations are financial. We have already, without any popular vote, joined the European Defence Agency. That happened in 2004, 2005. There is no mention of the European Defence Agency in any previous Treaty. We were told after we had joined it that we had joined it. The Government took that decision at a cabinet meeting and then implemented it and then told us about it.
The European Defence Agency, if you look at its website, is a very impressive organisation. It sets out a wonderful range of goals which would do the Pentagon proud. I would recommend that you look at its website and see, for example, its long term vision for a European defence capability and capacity needs. And if you are concerned about your local hospital or some other budgetary line that you have a particular wish to preserve here, you might just consider whether you think this is a right turn for Europe to be making at this time.
The budget for the European arms market, according to the defence agency is 200 million, sorry, €200 billion and this agency is moving in on it. None of us in this room need to be reminded of the level of corruption associated with the arms market. It is interesting to consider the level of money sloshing around in terms of arms production, arms trading and arms exports.
An American writer has recently published a study suggesting that whatever we may idealistically think about the European Union as a way of moving away from corrupt practices at national level, in fact, in her analysis, the opposite is the case. It becomes so vague and so removed and so fuzzy around the edges, in fact, that corruption thrives.
The European Defence Agency is a body that takes itself very seriously. They have some interesting looking job vacancies on their web site. If you are looking for a new job have a look at that. The agency is set up for the purposes contained in the Treaty. It pre‑dates the Treaty. If we vote for the Treaty we are voting for the agency. It did not have a treaty basis up until this. It is said in some of the Government material that it was based on the Treaty of Amsterdam, but if you look back at the Treaty of Amsterdam all you see is a vague line about: in the progressive framing of the common defence policy Member States may cooperate among themselves in the field of armaments. Great oak trees from little acorns grow.
There is no question but that this is a difficult and complex area. It does not surprise me, although it saddens me a little bit, that there is, in fact, a significant error in the National Forum's Summary Guide to the Treaty of Lisbon in this particular field. The document says: Pending any European Council decision to move to a common defence against external aggression, the treaty provides for 'closer cooperation' between willing Member States on mutual defence. That would oblige those states to the go to the aid of a fellow EU country which was a participant in such cooperation and came under armed aggression.
That is not correct. If you look at Article 27, sorry 28.A.7 of the Treaty, you won't see those terms closer cooperation or limiting mutual defence obligation to those states. I think it may be based on an earlier draft of the Treaty. The obligation that we are being asked to take on by voting for Lisbon in Article 28.A.7 is to render all aid and assistance in our power to a Member States that suffers armed aggression on its territory.
The remaining fig leaf, increasingly threadbare, held out by Government is that: well, we will decide what way we will respond, it might not be militarily. But it is an interesting exercise to compare the wording of that article in the Lisbon Treaty with the very similarly worded Article 5 in the NATO Treaty. And there you will see a similar provision allowing each Member State of NATO to decide for itself what way and whether it will respond. This is a characteristic of a military pact, not a disqualifier.
One of the strange phenomenona that dawned on me as I was preparing for this morning's discussion when I look back to the Single European Act and how little it was, just a few pages of roneoed type and we saw the amount of documentation that was produced by the government at the time, it was a very long document, it was blue originally, it became white later, a very good document explaining in detail what the Single European Act was obliging us to do and committing us to do. And when I contrast that with the much greater detail and the phenomenally greater changes that this Lisbon Treaty is bringing about and I look now at the type of documentation that is available to us, supposedly telling us all about it, we have a nicely presented and graphically designed white paper which has far less information than the blue paper did on the Single European Act, a much smaller Treaty. And I have to say, with regret, the tone and tenor of that document is that of a salesman, of a doctor reassuring a patient. Having read it, it is not, in my view, an objective, thorough or complete description in layman's terms to us as citizens of what it is we are being asked to sign up to.
For instance, in relation to the vexed question of a European army, I think Ms Crieghton here has been somewhat in the news in relation to a former comment in relation to European army and it is a matter of some controversy. It is worth recalling that in 2007 for the Jean Monet working paper published by the New York University School of Law the comment was quoted approvingly from the BBC that the EU has quietly acquired what might be described as a standing army. That was approvingly quoted by two gentleman who wrote that working paper Nickel and Kiel. I don't know either of them, but I did notice that Mr Kiel's name was down as the author of the briefing paper published by the Directorate General in the European Commission on External Policies to the European Parliament on what the defence aspects of Lisbon meant. In his briefing document he candidly explained the nature of the mutual defence obligations being taken on.
So, in conclusion, I would summarise by looking at where we started in that little Single European Act with a promise to try to cooperate with our partners on foreign policy. The promise we made was to endeavour to cooperate, to endeavour to coordinate, and yet that promise, couched in such soft language, was, nevertheless, legally binding on us. Not in my opinion alone but in the opinion of the Supreme Court because the court said that is the language the international relations and that is the language of international law. And it is not acceptable then, it was not acceptable then and it is entirely unacceptable now to countenance any suggestion that we can somehow sign these types of commitments with our fingers crossed behind our backs intending indefinitely to say no whenever it comes to the crunch. That is not being fair to our European partners and saying we are intending to go into Lisbon with that mentality is not being fair to the people of Ireland.
Law is about power. The Lisbon Treaty is about the redistribution of power. This is a significant reshaping of the European Union's priorities and so far, in my view, it has not been shown to be in our interests. Thank you, Chairman. (Applause)
CHAIRPERSON: Now I have about 20 people asking to speak and we have a little over an hour and I need to give the speakers time to respond, so I would appeal to people to be as brief and focused as possible in their remarks and questions. Minister Roche, please.
MINISTER ROCHE: Thank you very much. I was interested in both contributions, particularly the latter contribution.
Mr Noonan, of course, suggested at the outset that we should avoid atmospherics and then succeeded in launching more atmospherics than we have seen in the cyclone in the recent past in south east Asia. He referred to Europe in the most cataclysmic terms, in the most extraordinarily negative terms.
He started off his contribution by making reference to the Single European Act. He, of course, failed to remind us that the Single European Act was the Act that finally brought about the European market from which Ireland, more than any other state in Europe, has gained. He failed to remind us that had the Irish people actually taken advice of himself and others who'd taken a negative view of that particular Treaty, we would not be in the happy position that we are in with two people million people employed, with vast export markets available.
But my focus would be more on the individual distortions rather than on the generality. The reality of this Treaty, particularly insofar as our military neutrality is concerned is precisely the reality that was outlined by Pat Cox. Pat Cox's contribution here was not just more accurate but infinitely more truthful than the second contribution that we received. It was truthful because, of course, the negotiations that have taken place on this issue have always been transparent, they have always been open, the Irish position has always been very clear. And talk about Ireland having its fingers crossed behind its back is not just utter tripe but, in fact, it is assails common intelligence. Our position in relation to this Treaty is well‑known. It is well‑known by all of our Member States. So to talk about our position somehow being "unfair" to the other Member States is not a reality that the other Member States would recognise.
I take it, in fact, that Mr Noonan has read the proposals that are to be put to the people and that he would be able to attest to the truthfulness of Pat Cox's characterisation of those proposals.
The other point I would make is his contribution about the massive transfer, and he chose, I didn't know whether he recognised it as well as I did, this well‑trodden approach by opponents of this Treaty to make a quotation which is not specifically relevant. He choose to refer to a reference of a previous German President speaking about the Constitution and, of course, one of the changes that was made in the period between the Constitutional treaties and rejection by the people of the Netherlands and France was precisely to change its character. So the reference to the work, to the proposed constitution being a one way street is not just mendacious but it is deliberately selected to mislead this particular Forum because, of course, the German President was talking about the Constitutional Treaty. And in this particular area, as those who have read either Mr O'Broin's superb text produced, incidentally, with the support of the Department from Foreign Affairs, so much for the conspiracy that there is an attempt to hide issues by the Department of Foreign Affairs, but (inaudible) the point that of course one of the great benefits in this Treaty is we have the clearest exposition ever of the rules of conferral, that the Union only has those powers which the Union is given by the Member States and, of course, on this occasion the Member States can take the powers back.
Let's not deal all the time with the clouds and the shadow and the shades which have been cast, let's just deal with the facts. The facts are, for example, in this Treaty that we are producing a Treaty which will make Europe more efficient, which will make Europe more effective, which will make Europe more focused. And yes of course Mr Noonan is correct, this Treaty will give Europe a clearer voice on the world stage. But it will give a clearer voice on the world stage to expound the very values that we in Ireland hold dear ‑ democracy, rule of law. I can't see what is sinister about that.
On the issue of the Commission, he again made this extraordinary and bizarre claim about the Commission arrangements being cobbled together behind closed doors by mysterious people. This is oldest ploy of any hack anywhere in any debate in any part of the Union. The reality, of course, is that the Treaty, these provisions were brought together in the assembly of 205 men and women who were elected by the people of Europe. I am not sure what democratic mandate Mr Noonan has, but these were 205 men and women who were elected by the people of this Union. These were people who worked long and hard for well over a year to produce this particular set of arrangements. And the benefit, and I will finish on this Chairman, and the benefit, of course, about the arrangements on the Commission is that, in fact, it takes up the work that was commenced in the Nice Treaty, something which Mr Noonan again forgot to mention or simply didn't bother to mention to us. It takes up the work that was commenced there and what it does is it gives an expression of how a Commission will be appointed into the future and the benefit of that appointment is on the basis strict equality.
I would wish to have more time to deal with Pat Cox's frankly more factual, more truthful and infinitely more accurate contribution, but I compliment Pat for the accuracy he has brought this to debate. Thank you, Chair.
CHAIRPERSON: Lucinda Creighton, please.
I have to say, though, I would agree with Minister Roche in that my view is quite clearly that we have seen a very disingenuous and unbalanced view point represented by Mr Noonan here this morning. And I would just like to take issue, I suppose, firstly with his remarks in relation to my being associated with support for a European army. And I would say very clearly that if Mr Noonan, and indeed other who have scurrilously I would say referred to the comments that I made had actually read the article and taken the time to read the context of my remarks, they might discover that it was in the context of a discussion and interview based on the massacre that took place in Srebrenica where 8,000 men and boys were slaughtered indiscriminately and the EU stood by idly and did nothing. That was the context and I am certainly not ashamed of that.
Mr Noonan said that most Europeans are pro integration and I agree. But again it is disingenuous for people who have campaigned consistently against all forms of EU integration over a period of decades to say that they support European integration. We need a little bit of honesty about this and I would ask Mr Noonan what his alternative is. We hear this argument from people on the no side all the time, go back to the drawing board, Ireland deserves a better deal. What is that better deal? How is that better deal going to be struck between an EU of 27 sovereign states? It is unrealistic and extremely disingenuous to suggest to the Irish people that we are going to get a better deal if we do go back to the drawing board. That is not realistic.
The complaint about the Government not being open about its negotiating position; well firstly that is not a reason to vote no to Lisbon, that is a reason to tackle the Government and I would advise you to do that. But it is disingenuous to suggest that we should vote no on the basis of allegations about the Government's position.
We all know that you go to the table, any negotiating table, anybody in business will tell you this, anybody in politics, anybody in any walk of life will tell you, you go to the negotiating table with a high benchmark and you negotiate and you reach consensus and you reach agreement in order to get the best possible deal for whatever interest you represent. In the case of the Government it was the interests of the Irish people. And I have to say that I am not fully satisfied with all of it, I am not 100% happy with the outcome, but I think it is a pretty good deal. And I would stress again the fact that this was negotiated in the most transparent fashion through the Convention on the Future of Europe. People from civil society, people from national parliaments, people from government getting together, knocking heads together and coming up with solutions; positive solutions for Europe. And I would challenge people on the no side to, for once, proffer some positive arguments and positive alternatives if there are any, of course.
In relation to the European Defence Agency, I think that Pat Cox dealt with this in a very comprehensive fashion. But I would just say that the choice, it is disingenuous to suggest that the choice that rests before the Irish people is increased spending on militarisation, arms and defence and so on, or saving their local hospital. I mean that is the most emotive and disingenuous and I would say preposterous suggestion. We all know that every Member State has their own defence budget, including Ireland, and it is important in terms of protection of and the security of our armed forces and our defence forces who go abroad to represent our country and represent it proudly and very well I would say, I would suggest. And we have to improve capabilities. We have to improve the protection and the security of our defence forces when they go abroad on EU missions and I am happy to support that.
Reference to corruption in the arms trade again is disingenuous. If you want to raise the issue of corruption in the arms trade, then of course it makes more sense to try to regulate it at a European level rather than working or operating in a subterranean fashion.
In relation to our mutual defence clause, Pat Cox also stated that the clear express reference in the Lisbon Treaty is that the defence clause shall not prejudice the traditional defence policies of any Member States. That is very clear and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. It is very clear that the traditional policy of Irish neutrality is protected.
We in Fine Gael have been very clear. We do support a deepening and strengthening of European defence policy but this Treaty, unfortunately, does not achieve that. So to suggest otherwise is disingenuous as well.
I just finally say in summing up, Mr Noonan has referred to the reshaping of the EU's priorities as though that is a bad thing. I mean in relation to everything from common foreign and security policy to environmental policy, to the challenges of the reduction of CO2 emissions, peace keeping, tackling global poverty, these are new priorities, they are new challenges and I am proud to support a Treaty that is going to enable us to try to deal with those challenges in a globalised world because to do otherwise is to bury our heads in the sand.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Mitchell McLoughlin ‑‑ sorry, wrong party. Michael McLoughlin, please.
MR McLOUGHLIN: Thank you indeed. Chairperson, I think normally the tradition is that the solicitor gives people advice, but I wonder could I give some advice to Joe Noonan and indeed the entire no campaign. If they have evidence and if they can show that the Government has breached the Constitution and has agreed to a EU common defence, I would what I would do if I was in their shoes, I know I would go straight to the Supreme Court and I would win that case and I would stop the whole process and I would have a great victory. So if they are confident in their case, I don't know what they are going to the Forum on Europe for, or why they are going around the country, I would be straight into the Supreme Court, as was the case in 1987, and make that case if they believe it. That be would the obvious thing to do. If they fail to do that, we can only assume they don't have confidence in the case they are putting forward.
I think it is welcome that the European Union has a legal personality. If it didn't have a legal personality it would not be able to sign legal instruments. For example, it would not be able to sign up for the European Convention on Human Rights, which is one of the most progressive human rights instruments seen in western Europe in the post war period.
But I have to say that again if I asked my own solicitor for advice about a contract or a treaty or a complex document and they came back to me and they talked about what Garrett Fitzgerald said and what Mr Barroso said and what Mr Sarkozy said and what Mr Herzog said and what the Slovenian Presidency said, what Jamie Smith said, what the Irish Times said and what the BBC said, I would be a little bit disappointed because I would like to know what the Treaty said.
You said you were going to talk a lot about that but you only mentioned two articles, 28A where unanimity in Section 4 of the Article says quite clearly that unanimity applies to the entire article. So that is game, set and match. Unanimity applies to the entire article. It is there in black and white along with the specific character. So I would be a bit disappointed in that. I would also be a bit disappointed that if you want an open government, that I think a Treaty that, for the first time ever provides that the Council of Ministers negotiate and do their business in public and can't hide behind what goes on in Brussels and can't pretend they are doing something they are not doing and can't blame the European Union for things as was suggested, I would be very much in favour of that Treaty. I would be very much in favour of bringing about open government in that way. We don't have a treaty basis for every single agency. We don't have a Constitutional basis in this country for the veterinary agency or the IDA or for everything. It is not the way things work. But it is being given a Constitutional basis now and people can see it.
I think, if I could finish maybe and just ask two questions, it is what we are supposed to do. I apologise for the first one because I've asked it. I ask it week in and week out at the Forum and I never get an answer so I suppose I could ask it again. Which of the 21 missions does Joe Noonan and the no side disagree with? Which of the 21 missions or certainly which of the number of missions that Ireland is involved with will they withdrew from? Will they withdraw the Gardai from Bosnia? Will they withdraw the military forces that are going to Chad? I think we need an answer to that question. I think we need an answer to that question before the debate goes much further because there are many people out there, members of the defence forces, members of the Gardai, people who have family and friends and relations and they would like to know what we think about these things. We sent those people in good faith. We sent them under a UN mandate. We sent them in a spirit of cooperation to solve desperate problems in those countries. So I'd like an answer to that question at least before June 12th, if possible.
Can I ask also maybe Joe Noonan to comment on the United Nation's Brahimi report on peace keeping and what he believes is in that report and how he believes that report applies to the European Union's work at the moment? Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Mr Brian Meaney, please.
CLLR MEANEY: Thank you, Chairman. I would like to welcome the presentations by both speakers.
Mr Chairman, climate change is a relatively new policy challenge for the European Union but it is becoming, it is a key policy area for the European Union. This is because climate change is a problem, it is global in nature and necessitates cooperation between states. The EU as an organisation has experience in cultivating cooperation between Member States and has an established institutional framework to develop policy. It is well equipped to overcome obstacles between Member States and I think the question I would like to put to Mr Noonan is: is it not to be welcomed the fact that Europe is going to become an external political actor so it can give weight to its responsibilities in formulating a culture of meeting the climate change challenge head-on at an international level? Because at the moment it appears that all the European Union can seem to operate as is an international organisation with no real clout.
I want to make it clear also that the arguments that have been articulated here and at regional meetings that Lisbon is an extremely weak document when it comes to dealing with climate change are incorrect and, to be quite honest, I think they are dangerous. Lisbon is an extremely important document in meeting the challenge of global climate change. I had a grand‑aunt that used to say never attribute to malice that can be adequately explained by stupidity, but I won't apply is it here because I do know an awful lot of people on the no side and they are not stupid people.
For example, in relation to Lisbon, energy becomes a whole now title area and we can't move the fact that energy is directly linked to the production of green house gasses. The energy Article 194 in one small way it just says, in Article 194, paragraph 1, section (d) promotes the interconnection of energy networks. This is something that is absolutely vital for this country to ensure we have a viable wind energy system, we have the highest wind energy resource in the European Union, we cannot efficiently exploit that unless we have an ability to sell that load into the European Union when we are producing excess here. It is a very simple infrastructural notion and I think it is important that that is recognised. Thank you, Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Eoin O Broin, please.
I would like to thank both speakers for very good speeches and while I disagree with much of what Pat Cox says, I am not going to use words like disingenuous because I am assume that Pat firmly believes in what he says and does so with good motivation. It is simply that I disagree rather than I am going to insult him because I have a different view of these things.
I want to look at just kind of the general context of the Treaty because I think it is important, and this is probably my biggest disagreement with Pat because in terms of his description of the Treaty most of while I think is accurate, it is the context in which he places it and how it will be used that for me is the centre of disagreement. I am always amused when people talk about the EU as a kind of peace process that we have had, you know, since the ending of the Second World War no conflicts in European territory, yet, of course, all of the major European powers have participated in conflicts around the rest of the world with devastating consequences from Korea to Vietnam, to various other conflicts in Africa to Central America, to Afghanistan and to Iraq. So the idea that European integration had led to a more peaceful world for European states, whether individually or collectively behaving more peacefully I think simply does not stand the test of facts.
I also think when he talks about new threats that it is very interesting and we hear this idea of failed states and increase in so‑called terrorism and various other issues. Of course, the biggest threats globally today are the global instability, the poverty and the inequality that often drive many of the conflicts, particularly interstate conflicts in Sub Saharan Africa.
I also have to say the arms trade fuels many of those conflicts, and one of the great tragedies of this Treaty is it does nothing to try and address the small arms trade, the European continent being the largest producer of small arms and those arms finding their way in many cases to conflicts in parts of the world which then the European Union said are very dreadful things and they need to respond to.
For me the issue, of course, is whether we deal with the causes or the effects of these things, whether we try and address and resolve conflict or whether we respond with security and defence responses to conflicts once they emerge. And it is here I think that the Treaty is most dangerous. And I am glad Pat mentioned Palestine and Israel because I think this is a clear area where the behaviour of the European Union collectively in recent years demonstrates the types of negative policies we are going to see accelerated if this Treaty is introduced. The great difficulty, of course, with Palestine and Israel is on the hand because the European Union, like the US, was unhappy with the outcome of the last Palestinian authority elections, it withdrew its development aid funding, with devastating consequences for people living in many parts of the occupied territories. At the same time the preferential trade agreements with Israel, which contain human rights compliance clauses are not being challenged despite the fact that it is very clear that the state of Israel is in clear breach of those compliance clauses.
So it is all very well to say that the European Union and its common foreign and security policies and its defence policies are founded on a set of values such as respect for human rights and democracy, yet, in fact, the practice of the European Union to date, and Palestine and Israel is a good example. It tells a very different story.
I also think it is important to look at the different approach that the European Union is taking towards Chad and Darfur, because again for me this is very clearly an area where you are seeing a very different application of rhetoric and reality. I am deeply uncomfortable with Chad and I will respond to the colleague from the Labour Party ‑‑ this is a personal view. I don't think that we should be involved in that nation as it is presently constituted. While I firmly believe that the Irish defence forces are engaged in legitimate humanitarian intervention, the central element of that mission is, of course, the French's government's propping up of an undemocratic, a dictatorial and brutal regime that is not only abusing human rights in its own country but is stirring up conflicts in neighbouring countries. And why are the French doing it? Not because they have any real interest in democracy and human rights in Chad or elsewhere, because they are protecting their own economic interests. I think that is deeply worrying and something which we are not hearing enough debate about.
And what are we doing about Chad? Nothing. Or, sorry, what are we doing about Darfur? Excuse me. Nothing. What is the European collective individually and the Member States doing individually with their political and economic power to force China to shift its position to block any real action through the United Nations? Absolutely nothing. Why? Because it is not in our economic interests.
So again I think it is all very well to talk about human rights and democracy ‑‑ and I will conclude shortly, Chair ‑‑ but I think again when you look at the practice there are real difficulties. And for me the biggest problem is that I think in terms of international relations we are entering an era where we have two sets of choices; whether we want to see the development of regional military blocks or whether we want to reinvigorate UN led multilateralism. And I think despite the fact that the Treaty talks about the aims and objectives of the United Nations, it is very clear that by developing its own regional military capability it is bypassing, and in my view, undermining any attempt to secure real UN reform. And it is also about whether or not we address the causes of conflict or simply respond to their effects to defence and security and I would urge people to read the pamphlet by AFRI on all of these issues. It is interesting to note that Fianna Fail in a statement after the pamphlet was launched attacked the pamphlet but were not able to produce a single factual inaccuracy contained in it. And, indeed, many of the core points are the same as those of Pat's, they just take a very different interpretation of them.
I want to end with a question.
CHAIRPERSON: Could we leave it at that, please?
CLLR O BROIN: I would like to ask both speakers and it is very brief.
CHAIRPERSON: Briefly, please.
CLLR O BROIN: To do with military expenditure. Article 28 contains three aspects of military expenditure. You have also got the military structures of the European Union as they are currently developed. I am interested in both speakers to comment whether either under the terms of constructive abstention or structured cooperation were the resources invested from this State and its tax payers into any of those elements of the EU military capabilities could be used even when this State opts of such military interventions?
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Victor Boyhan, please.
Firstly I want to welcome both speakers here, particularly Pat Cox, a former party colleague of mine. Is it great, as always, to see him. Basically I think both speakers have posed many, many challenging issues for us this morning and I want to really make a few comments and ask two questions.
And basically I want to firstly say how refreshing it was for Pat Cox to be here this morning reassuring us, because if anything I felt he reassured us at the National Forum in relation to foreign policy, European policy and neutrality. But I took from his speech the key word a capacity to act and a force for good. And I actually do believe Europe is a force for good. The capacity to act is sometimes a difficult one. It is a frustration by many people. And I recently looked at a Euro barometer poll and one of the things that was the very top of that issue for people, particularly younger people, was humanitarian aid, humanitarian response, care, internationalism. And these are big, big issues affecting everybody but particularly young people. And we see this time and time again in our deliberations at the National Forum on Europe. People are concerned about a humanitarian response. Pat touched on Bosnia, the Balkans, Africa and just the sheer global scale of natural disaster and I think we need to differentiate that between maybe a military and a conflict. And I want to talk about conflict resolution. People are interested. These are issues that people who are seriously interested in Europe and the project of Europe are interested in.
I just want to ask two simple questions and the first- both speakers talked about the Petersburg Tasks and currently the Petersburg Tasks deal with humanitarian aid, rescue aid, peace keeping, crisis management, et cetera. Now is this going to expand under the Treaty? I would just like some ‑‑ it is really just to pose that question because it is a question that has been asked time and time again. Will the Petersburg Tasks or the list covered by the Petersburg Tasks, will that expand in any way and I would like your thoughts on that?
And question number two, legal personalities, a legal term, a legal definition and we currently know that the European community has no explicit, and I say no explicit legal personality which the European Union does not have. So currently the European Community has an explicit legal personality and the European Union does not have that. Will this change if the Treaty is ratified and what are the effects of this change, if any?
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Senator Fergal Quinn, please.
SENATOR QUINN: Thank you, Chairman. I wasn't here last week, I was in Washington DC and this time of the day my wife, my son in his 20s and I walked Arlington Cemetery and for the first time we saw the Vietnam memorial where the 58,000 names of those who died were all engraved. There is another memorial to those who died in Korea, I think 58,000 as well. It was very emotional and those Americans who were visiting there clearly were expressing the tragedy of an army that went to the far side of the world for a reason that its government thought was correct.
I don't have a problem with the idea of a mutual defence policy here in Europe, when I think of the threats that could come to us at some point in the future, even it may seem far‑fetched at this stage. So my concerns about the Treaty, the Reform Treaty may be there but they don't include the defence policy.
And my query to Joe Noonan, I found very interesting to hear his expression, but I wonder have you voted against every Treaty? Have you opposed every Treaty in the last 21 years? Because in 1987 my daughter left university, 38 in her class, 37 emigrated the following day. The world and Ireland has changed in those 21 years and I believe we owe a great deal to the Europe that we have been part of for those 21 years. But if Joe Noonan tells me that he has actually voted or opposed every Treaty, then I think the arguments you are making today do lose some of the power that you might otherwise have had.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Could I appeal to people to keep it to about two minutes now if we could so that I can get as many as we can in. Mr Michael Geary, please.
In the context of the Common Foreign and Foreign and Security Policy, as we know unanimity is required and there is a veto for national interests. In the context of the European Social and Defence Policy, the Petersburg Tasks, which we have heard also requires unanimity with a triple lock provision and our own neutrality is protected by the Seville Declaration. The question is, therefore, why is the impression being given that poor little old Ireland is being dragged into a war mongering monster when other countries, mindful of their own independence and sovereignty, including Sweden with a very well defined neutrality policy can see merit in such considerations? Thank you, Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON: Mr Roger Cole, please.
MR COLE: As I have often said before, well over a million US troops have passed through Shannon Air port on their way to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The core point of saying that, of course, is that that means that Ireland and Irish neutrality no longer actually exists. We are actually an integral part of George Bush's war machine. So constant references that we should defend our neutrality has no basis in reality. This State is not a neutral State. And this war, by the way, has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of soldiers from the United States and its allies. It has cost the United States and its allies well over three trillion dollars. It has caused a massive global economic crisis. Now, some people might describe the government that supports this war as, and just a few words off the top of my head, extremists, lilac, head bangers. However I wouldn't want to do that. I think a more accurate description would be neo redmondite imperialists, because not content with having already destroyed neutrality, they now support this Treaty, which would give a legal obligation to spend money on weapons. Not on the health system or education system, but on weapons. A Treaty that puts into law the creation of the European Defence Agency.
Nick Whitney, who was then the CEO of this agency told a meeting of the Institute of European Affairs in September '05 that Irish based companies or in the electronic sector, by coordinating their procurement could put them in a better position to sell more weapons. So you can see why IBEC are in favour of this Treaty if it helps their members make weapons to kill people. This Treaty institutionalises EU battle groups, which are well armed military units whose function is to go to war, not to be involved in humanitarian missions. It is a Treaty that includes references, extends what the Petersburg Task is about, to fight terrorism by supporting third countries and supporting combating terrorism in their countries. I mean, you know, when we are fighting for our national independence and Lloyd George had terrorism by the throat, sure wouldn't he love a Treaty like this? It is a Treaty that commits us and I quote, to the vitality of a renewed NATO. You are actually signing a document that is committing ourselves to be really pleased that we are helping NATO, which is a nuclear arms military alliance.
This Treaty ‑‑ one last bit coming up. This Treaty commits us to a mutual defence and solidarity clause, which the rapporteur of the Treaty on the Lisbon Treaty in the European Union himself has said that the western European Union as a ‑‑ the western European Union is effectively redundant.
So I mean, these are very serious issues and there are people who want the formation of a centralised, militarised, neo liberal super state allied to the United States. And if that is what you want then I think you should vote yes. If you want a partnership Europe, a partnership of independent democratic states without a legal dimension then you should vote no.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Blair Horan, please.
I think in the Treaty Article 3 Paragraph 5 and Article 21 are very important because they set out that the EU's relations with the wider world would be guided by the principles that have inspired its creation. It sets out peace, sustainable development and eradication of poverty, democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for human dignity, and Article 3(5) actually places values ahead of interests and that is important.
If you look back to the Copenhagen Council in 1992 which set out the priorities for Common Foreign and Security Policy, two of them were human rights and Russia. Now on human rights the EU has been a global leader against the death penalty, torture, support for international criminal court. It has done exceptional work. In contrast, relations with Russia have largely been a failure because of diverging interests among Member States. The External Relations Commissioner recently called it the greatest foreign policy challenge for Europe.
Now, on security, if you look at ten years ago, the EU's global role could be put in the context of the US fights, the UN feeds and the EU funds. Today the security policy after the Balkans catastrophe means the UN will also protect. Pat Cox spoke about this contrast in security strategy and I agree with his analysis. The US 2002 security strategy prioritised pre‑emption and unilateralism. In contrast the EU security strategy is prevention and multilateralism.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Ms Patricia McKenna, please.
MS McKENNA: Thank you, Chairman. I would like to thank both speakers. I am sure, Pat, you will not be surprised that I disagree with you. In fact, you might be more surprised if I said I agreed with you. But I mean I suppose Joe Noonan must have hit a chord because I have not heard Dick Roche spit as much insults for a long, long time. Not only, you know, he called you a liar, it was utter tripe you were talking about, you know, he even questioned your intelligence and he said you were deliberately selective to mislead this Forum. Well I suppose if you look at the Government's White Paper, he is an expert in being deliberately selective in trying to mislead people.
But I mean as well as that in relation to ‑‑ it was insults, I suppose, more than anything and this happened as well with Bonde and I suppose sometimes when people say something that is actually factually backed up in the Treaty it is very difficult for those on the yes side to counteract it other than to throw insults. I mean Lucinda Creighton, I don't know how many times she accused you being of being disingenuous and the one thing she said you were unbalanced. Now, I don't know whether that had to do with the fact that you were giving one side of the argument, which is what I assumed you were here to do, or unbalanced, are you mentally unbalanced or something. I mean the kind of comments that came out, but the one that was most disturbing out of all actually today was from Senator Fergal Quinn when he asked you how you voted on previous treaties. Irrespective of how you voted on previous treaties, we are talking about here today is the Lisbon Treaty and he did not ask Pat Cox, and I'm sure, Pat, you voted for every single treaty going, as have Fianna Fail and Fine Gail, did not ask them. So he said that your credibility in relation to what you said is somehow put into question because of how you voted on previous treaties. But we look at the people on the yes side, the main players here and we don't question what they are saying because they voted in a particular way in previous treaties. I think it is very unfortunate those kind of comments and particularly from Fergal Quinn I was most disappointed.
Just on the one issue I want to ask on because I think it is very important, that is the European Defence Agency, which I noticed in the briefing that was sent out by the Forum it does not actually cover this. And I think people forget about the European Defence Agency and the role this has and the whole issue of neutrality it is not just about being neutral, it is about what role we will play in the future in relation to boosting the arms industries or being involved in the arms industries ourselves, and where those arms go to. And the European Defence Agency is basically the European armaments agency when you actually look at who is controlling it and who is behind it. And I would like to know from both Pat Cox and Joe Noonan in relation to the role that this will play in the future. Because when you connect it into the fact that Member States will undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities and then you go on to see what the agency shall do, it shall identify operational requirements, it shall promote measures to satisfy its own requirements, shall contribute to identifying and, where appropriate, implementing any measure needed to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the defence sector. It shall participate in defining a European capabilities and armament policy and shall assist the Council in evaluating and improving military capabilities. And then you look as well at what it says in relation to that these, that the European Defence Agency will put forward to the Council, you know, its findings. It says that it shall assess Member States' contributions with regard to capabilities and in particular their contribution. And then these assessments may serve as the basis for Council recommendations and decisions. And I just wonder, you know, what either of you would foresee in relation to the role this agency is having in this area in relation to the future involvement of Ireland in the arm industries or in military spending.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Professor Mulcahy, please.
PROFESSOR MULCAHY: Thank you to both speakers. I think, even though I wouldn't agree with much of the line taken by Joe Noonan, I would protect his right to say it and make some of us think a little bit about what is going on. But unfortunately I think that a lot of the debate that has been conducted on the no side comes under the category of what I could call rational ignorance. And I think that was a very good question about whether Joe Noonan votes no every time. He says if we all bring our voice to the table, but some voices are heavier than other voices.
I put this question to Joe Noonan. Where does he see representative democracy in this whole process? Because the idea seems to be that if our representatives as elected go and have deep debate about something important, end up, after a lot of discussion, with what basically must be some kind of compromise that there is then something wrong with it. As I see it, the Lisbon Treaty is a result of an intellectual engagement that led to what is a political compromise and for me it is about let not the perfect be the enemy of the good, and all this business about referring back is only putting us back into a recycle of the old thing. So where is representative democracy and where is compromise?
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr John Cushnahan, please.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr John Cushnahan, please.
To Joe Noonan who has debated this issue with me many times, I want to pose a number of questions. You said on a number of occasions that the Government is engaged in some sort of conspiracy and therefore one must be careful about listening to the Government. Is it not fair to put the same yardstick to you, because I have a sense of deja vu sitting at the top table with you because we have argued the same issues time and time again in previous treaty debates. I am not going to say you are disingenuous but my memory of those debates was that you were saying exactly the same things ‑ neutrality was about to end, there was going to a European army, there was going to be conscription. I think you said all three things or at least a combination of them. So instead of accusing you of being disingenuous, I am accusing you of being wrong. So, therefore, if you have been wrong in every other previous treaty debate, why should be people listen to you on this particular one?
You said the EU is developing global missions. I welcome that. There is nothing wrong with that. It depends on what the missions are for. Many of us argue that the EU should be as big a giant on the political stage as it is on the economic stage. And Pat Cox alluded to this earlier -the EU objectives under CFSP and ESDP came from the previous treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam and I quote them and it is important to quote those objectives again. This is what this global ambition would be for, the safeguarding the common values and of the integrity of the Union in conformity with the principles of the UN Charter, the promotion of peace and international cooperation, the development of democracy and the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. I want the EU to have major ambitions in implementing those objectives.
You then went on to say Ireland is going along with the development of the EU as a military alliance. Once again we heard this before. I want to quote from an article written by a person for whom we have great respect, the External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten, and he said it in an article in the Irish Independent on 16th October 2002 on the Nice Treaty debate:
One allegation I want to deal with is that the EU foreign policy is somehow at odds with Ireland's own traditions, yet CFSP is rooted in values that Ireland shares with the European partners in respect for human rights, in support of democratisation, free trade and sustainable development and in the primacy of conflict prevention and diplomacy over militarism. Ireland's active involvement in EU foreign policy has been valued as an invaluable contribution to the promotion of these values.
Now Mr Cox will agree and also Minister Roche, I can speak about some experience of this because the same gentleman appointed me, I spent almost two years in my last term in the European Parliament in South Asia's trouble spots leading --
CHAIRPERSON: Could we move on?
DEPUTY CUSHNAHAN: -- to implement those things.
CHAIRPERSON: It is not a biography.
DEPUTY CUSHNAHAN: So you are absolutely wrong in terms of what the objectives of the EU are.
The other thing too, and I will also respond to Councilor O Broin --
CHAIRPERSON: I am trying to get other people in.
DEPUTY CUSHNAHAN: Just a final point. He totally missed an important element of this Treaty which deals with conflict prevention which Councillor O Broin talked about and that is this Treaty introduces for the first time a specific legal base for humanitarian aid. The Treaty clearly states that the primary objective of the Union's development cooperation policy is a reduction and the eradication of poverty and that this objective must be respected when the Union implements policies likely to affect developing countries. Development policy becomes a policy in its own right and not an adjunct to CFSP, that is the precisely dealing with conflict.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I think we will have to leave it at that, please. Mr Joe Higgins, please.
Certainly, Minister Roche has acquired not just a new boss but a new quantum of averments after his affirmation in his old job yesterday. Obviously Deputy Creighton needs no such affirmation, but she should extend her vocabulary beyond disingenuous. And as for Councilor Meaney and his contribution on global warming, well I am not surprised he did not have anything to say on militarisation and the armaments industry because what must be acute embarrassment of the utter U‑turn the Greens have done on those issues.
But it is not at all disingenuous to counter-pose increased spending on militarisation and armaments as opposed to spending on services that enrich human experience and provide the crucial needs of humanity. Sure it is a truism, for heaven's sake, that the armaments spending on a global scale is an obscene wastage of human resources. How can it be other? Tens of thousands of the best minds, scientists and technicians doing nothing all day except designing, or trying to, ever more fearsome weapons to reak ever greater destruction and millions of industrial workers doing nothing but implementing that. Is anybody here saying that that should be lauded and should be entrenched and encouraged, which is what the European defence agency is about? Nothing disingenuous about that whatsoever.
Now Pat Cox I interpret your contribution when you counterpose the armaments spending and military spending in the United States with that of the European Union as really saying that we should have new arms race, but this time instead of between Stalinism and western capitalism between two major world blocks. And I absolutely refute the idea that the creation of another powerfully armed economic unit with a military wing, ie the European Union, on the world stage is somehow going to contribute to the advance of a peace for humanity. The opposite is the case surely.
And, you know, we have to go beyond the fine words in the European declarations with regard to security policy. Can I remind you that the United States Constitution and various declarations are redolent with the most flowery fine words about the future of humanity, democracy and human rights. Unfortunately in action it has not stopped them from supporting every dirty dictatorship that advanced their economic interests over many decades. So it is to action and what happens on the ground.
And I put it to Pat Cox as well that any massive economic unit dominated by big business interests, which the EU undoubtedly is, and now with a powerful military wing, at some stage in the future will not use that military power in order to advance its economic interest just as the United States military has been used for. That is quite clearly implicit in the situation.
The last point is a question, Cathaoirleach. By the way, Senator Quinn, I mean to say, you know, what America was doing in Vietnam just about every commentator world wide agrees now was utterly disgraceful.
CHAIRPERSON: If you can avoid the side step and put the question.
MR HIGGINS: My last question is the two speakers but particularly to Pat Cox. Do you knowledge, Pat, that the provisions for permanent enhanced cooperation in common foreign and security policy and military action is a massive development with huge implications and that those Member States which are more powerfully militarily capable shall have a, if you like, an alliance between themselves, they may then be entrusted with tasks abroad by the Council and, in carrying out those tasks, the decisions rest within that particular group only, as I read the Treaty. Now, isn't that at least, whether you are for it or against it, a huge change with huge implicit ramifications for the future? Go raibh maith, Cathaoirleach.
CHAIRPERSON: Mr Proinsias de Rossa, please.
MR DE ROSSA: Thank you. What strikes me about the no campaigners is two things. One is that they want to take all the benefits of the European Union but they don't want to take any of the responsibilities. The constant demand for opting out of this, opting of that, opting out of the other, we mustn't do this, we mustn't do that, but, of course, we must continue to get the money, we must continue to get the right to do this, that and the other ourselves and so on and so forth.
The other thing that strikes me is lack of consistency. Not only lack of consistency between the different elements of the no campaign ranging, on the one hand, from Libertas who wants to have a single market and no social dimension and Joe Higgins who wants to abolish the market regardless. And it seems to me that, you know, talking about the possibility that if we say no that we will renegotiate in some way a better deal, is utter complete nonsense. Who on the no side is going to present the no case in the negotiations? Is it not far more likely that the deal we have now between 27 Member States is about right in terms of what can be achieved now between the 27 governments, the 27 parliaments and the European Parliament who have negotiated this deal over a seven year period? Not over the last twelve months or the last two years, but over a seven year period where Sinn Fein were conspicuous by their absence, as indeed was Joe Higgins, as indeed was all of the no campaigners who sat on their hands and with their mouth shut over the last seven years until a Constitution was produced and then they declared it was too long, too complicated to read and now they are saying the current Treaty is too long and too complicated to read.
It seems to me that what we need here is a bit of reality, that Ireland is a Member State of the European Union. We have a right to participate in that Union, a right to participate in the decisions, a right to lay down the red lines that we have laid down and to stick by them.
I want to quote two things which have not been mentioned at all so far in this debate on the Common Foreign and Security Policy. It has been touched on in terms of generality. Joe Noonan mentioned a report to the Security and Defence Committee of the European Parliament, of which I am a member, and he indicated that a Dr Gerarrd Quille prepared this report. In fact he didn't. He is the official in the Commission who sponsored the report. The report was actually prepared by a Dr Antonio Missiroli, who presented the report to a committee, a meeting which I attended and participated in a couple of months ago and about which there was a very large debate and disagreement about his conclusions.
But what he said was, and one of the keys things he said was, there are two new declarations attached to the Lisbon Treaty, number 30 and 31. They underline inter alia that the new provisions, including the European external action service, and I quote, do not effect the responsibilities of the Member States as they currently exist for the formulation and conduct of their foreign policy nor of their national representation in current countries and international organisations. Neither do they, and I quote, prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of the Member States nor, and I quote further, the primary responsibility of the Security Council and of its members for the maintenance of international peace and security. It goes on in particular ‑‑
CHAIRPERSON: Could we ‑‑
MR DE ROSSA: ‑‑ not only ring fences the existing legal basis, responsibilities and powers of each Member State in relation to the formulation and conduct of its foreign policy, its national diplomatic service, relations with third countries and participation in international organisations including Member States membership of the Security Council of the United Nations. It also reiterates that no new powers in this domain are therewith given to either the Commission or the European Parliament.
Now what more guarantees do the no campaigners want that Ireland's independence in terms of the foreign policy and security policy is absolutely maintained.
CHAIRPERSON: Could we leave it at that?
MR DE ROSSA: They are there in black and white in the Treaty. I want to make one final short point.
CHAIRPERSON: Please, I am trying to get other people in.
MR DE ROSSA: Very short. Because it constantly is repeated here by Sinn Fein that the money to the Palestinian people has been stopped by the European Union. It is untrue. I am a Vice‑Chair of the European Parliament's delegation to the Palestinian Council. The amount of money being given to the Palestinian people at this point in time is twice as much as that which was being delivered to the Palestinian people at the time that Hamas won the election. That is a reality. And the reality, too, is that on the one hand Sinn Fein and Joe Higgins and others are demanding that Europe is more effective in the Middle East. We will be more effective in the Middle East when we drop the veto on foreign policy. You are demanding a veto on foreign policy, so long as unanimity is demanded within common foreign and security policy, we can never get an effective position in relation to the Middle East. That is the reality.
CHAIRPERSON: I think ‑‑
MR DE ROSSA: With QMV there is a possibility we might.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Naoise Nunn, please.
CHAIRPERSON: Well please, if we could take, you have about a minute and if you concentrate on your ‑‑
MR NUNN: Apologies. Just if I may introduce another quote into the debate. It is one that goes to the heart of my position on this, our position on this and it is from Margot Wallstrom, who is the Vice‑President of the European Commission and she said ‑‑ this is in regard to the loss of a Commissioner per Member State. She said: What we gain in efficiency we might lose in legitimacy. I think that is an argument that goes to the heart of the debate about this Treaty, because whatever one's view about how Ireland should participate or otherwise in external action, whatever one's view about the over noble aspirations such as climate change in the Treaty, the fact is that there is a lack of legitimacy at the heart of the process from the fact that the previous referenda have been disregarded in the Netherlands and France. There has been a denial of any new referenda on the issue. The foreign minister and indeed President under the Lisbon Treaty will have no popular mandate, they will be elected by qualified majority by the Council. And in all of this Ireland's influence over policy decision making is significantly reduced. Our voting weight in qualified majority votes is reduced from 2% at present to 0.8% under the Lisbon Treaty. And the combination of that and the loss of a Commissioner for five out of every 15 years is a significant diminution of our ability to influence policy. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Brendan Kiely, please
MR KIELY: Thank you, Mr Chairman.
You mentioned the expansion into QMV in certain areas and in practical terms can you outline how that will allow the EU improve its role in peace keeping missions?
Mr Noonan, I am not convinced by the thesis you put forward here today. I thought it was rather thin. I found it be to a general critique of the EU woven around a number of conspiracy theories that we have heard again and again and again from both yourself and your friends in the People's Movement and other anti European groups. I also fail to find much or any positive comments in it really.
So my question to you is in Ireland we have a long and proud tradition of peace keeping, do you think we should abandon this tradition? If so, given the UN's position on its needs, how should we continue this tradition? Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Alan Coleman, please.
On the much maligned defence agency, the European Defence Agency, would the speakers not agree that it is good that when we send Irish troops out into a theatre of action that is dangerous that they will have interoperable equipment with those that are on the mission and equipment that is compatible with other equipment there and that this is what the defence agency will lead to in future so that our troops when they are operating in missions will be in a much safer situation and a much more compatible situation? And would they also agree that through the defence agency we will have a much more cost efficient way of arming our army and other armies in Europe and release funds for that quite emotive local hospital that you issued, the issue that you raised in your contribution, Mr Noonan, and that these are the positive things that the European Defence Agency are going to bring to the future through this Lisbon Treaty?
And on our position on neutrality, would the speakers also clearly agree that there is absolutely no change to our Constitutional position and our Constitution remains paramount? And unlike what Mr Noonan said, there is no change to our position on neutrality and there is no diminution of the Constitutional protection that is there.
CHAIRPERSON: Maire Ni Bheaglaoich, please, and then I will bring the speakers in.
MS NI BHEAGLAOICH: Go raibh maith agat. Tá tionscal na n‑airm ag fás go tréan sa tír seo. Tá dhá mhíle miliúin earraí míleata ag teacht amach as an tír seo gach aon bhliain agus táimid anois sa Partnership For Peace agus is ait an rud go bhfuil na focail seo á úsáid, “síocháin” á úsáid i gcóir cogadh, cuir i gcás, bhí saighdiúirí na hÉireann sna Náisiúin Aontaithe, ag coimeád na síochána. Anois, tá siad ag déanamh síochána agus ag cuir i bhfeidhm síochána agus ní aontaíom le Proinsias De Rossa mar gheall ar fitiú a chaitheamh uainn ar pholasaí eachtrach, mar is mithid dúinn cúnamh sibhiallach a scarúint ó chúrsaí míleata agus ba mhaith liom tuairim Joe Noonan a fháil ar sin. Go raibh maith.
CHAIRPERSON: Go raibh maith agat.
I suppose the sense I get from the contributions from the political figures around the table focuses really on the question that Minister Roche floated out there in my direction: I don't know what democratic mandate Mr Noonan has. And I suppose the only democratic mandate I have is that I am a citizen of Ireland. That is all. But under our Constitution that seems to be enough to entitle me and Mr Roche as a citizen and everyone else as a citizen in this room to examine this Treaty and to come to our own opinion about it.
Professor Mulcahy asked a related question, put in more general terms, where stands representative democracy in the context of this discussion? And I think that is a very, very important question. Because I think, listening to the contributions and the tenor of some of the contributions, which has been somewhat surprising, it appears to me to be the case that representative democracy may not be standing in a terribly healthy light in this debate. It appears to me, from the way the question was put by Professor Mulcahy, that we as citizens are being asked to take it that once our representatives have done their best, as I accept they have done, that we must vote for whatever they present to us. And I am sorry that is a proposition as a citizen I will not accept.
That is just a general context, I think, that feeds into a number of the questions, contributions and comments that I have heard from around the room.
Mr Cushnahan says: But Joe has been wrong before so he must be wrong now. Well let's think about that one. Along with my partner Mary Lenihan and some others, we were young lawyers in 1986 when on Christmas Eve Mr. Justice Barrington injuncted the Government against depositing the instruments of ratification of the Single European Act in a manner that would have bound Ireland irrevocably to the terms of that Treaty. When it went to the Supreme Court it turned out that the argument that we had worked up was found to be correct. That is history now. But the Government was wrong and those of us on that particular side of that particular debate at the time were found to be correct by the Supreme Court.
I had no further involvement in any further Supreme Court challenges touching on these matters, but two of them did occur and they are worth mentioning in answer to Mr Cushnahan.
Patricia McKenna in the room risked everything personally to go to the Supreme Court on the question of spending of public money in favour of advocating a particular vote with citizenship cast in a referendum and the Supreme Court agreed with her. The Government was wrong again. Anthony Coughlan went to the Supreme Court in relation to the manner in which the State broadcaster was allocating broadcasting time to political parties during referendum campaigns. The political parties were wrong, RTE was wrong and Mr Coughlan was right.
So if there is a pattern, it is not quite perhaps the pattern Mr Cushnahan thinks it may be. Mr Cushnahan is asking me to recycle for his benefit things that I said in the past. I have just done that so far as the Single Act is concerned. He has suggested that I said we will be conscripted and he has not produced any source for that. He won't be able to find one.
In the remaining six minutes I am going to do a quick run through some of the questions that you have asked to the best of my ability. You are going to have to forgive me but I am not going to be able to get to them all.
In relation to the step changes, the incremental changes that each Treaty brings in this area of defence and security policy, all one has to do is look back at what the Government said at each Treaty moment about what was not happening and compare it with what has happened subsequently. In 1992 Minister for Foreign Affairs Andrews explained that he was happy because that Treaty drew the firm distinction between security which was okay by us and defence which was not. That distinction is now gone. In 2002 the Government, in briefing newspaper editors issued a briefing document purporting to explain what common defence meant when we were putting this common defence provision into our Constitution which remains there and will remain there under this referendum. And in the course of that briefing document the Government said common defence is generally understood as being an arrangement involving a mutual defence commitment. But we don't hear very much about that definition of common defence now, nor is that a surprise because now there is a mutual defence commitment. So we are left casting a little bit in the dark about what it is that this common defence now means that we can't get into under our constitutional bar. It would be interesting to hear an official explanation from the Government as to the meaning of that term. It is not defined in the Treaty.
In relation to these incremental changes, Mr Gormley it was, I think, two years ago, I believe speaking to the Forum, said the following. He said:
Minister for Defence Mr O'Dea and his government colleagues would have us believe that Ireland can sign EU Treaty after EU Treaty with their increasing defence commitments and remain as neutral as we ever were. They have a credibility problem.
I agree with that.
The question is what are the alternatives. The first alternative, of course, is the obvious one, the alternative of the status quo. The organisation is working efficiently, repeated studies have known that ‑ Helen Wallis of the LSE in December and others. In terms of efficiency this is not a necessity. This is a change in emphasis and a change in focus for the organisation that we have been members of since 1973.
Senator Quinn asked me how I voted in the past. I was too young to vote in 1972 in the referendum. I encouraged my parents to vote yes and I am glad that I did. I don't know how they voted, I wouldn't ask them. But that was my view then and in principle it remains my view. However, in 1987, after my experience of the Crotty case and the changes in the Single European Act and the down playing of their significance in the teeth of the Supreme Court which after it rendered its verdict was shelved from Leinster House, I voted no. In relation to 1992 and subsequent changes where I saw this incremental ratcheting up of the defence issue I am not happy about that and I said so. When I said so in public I expressly reserved my position in relation to the economic issues about which I was not expressing an opinion.
The defence spending. We spend 0.6% of our budget on defence. The European Defence Agency gets to be our school master if we vote for the Lisbon Treaty. Under Lisbon we are required to progressively improve our capabilities. And who gets to scrutinise our spending to make sure that we do? The European Defence Agency, not the comptroller and auditor general, not the minister for defence, the EDA.
Go to the table, we are told, have your say. It is outside the scope of this morning's discussion, but we are being told we should stay away from the table for five years out of every 15 as far as the Commission is concerned. If there is inconsistency it is certainly not all on the no side.
Mr Meaney asked about why it should be considered a bad thing that the community is to be a greater actor on the global stage and he mentioned climate change. I would wholeheartedly agree with him. If this Treaty had as much about tackling climate change as it has about improving military capability I would be ecstatic if it had as little in it about improving military capability as it has about tackling climate change. But we have to take the Treaty as we find it and that is the emphasis that the Treaty drafters have chosen to place.
Mr Boyhan asked whether the Petersburg Tasks are being expanded and the answer is simple and direct ‑ yes. The Petersburg Tasks were limited in their scope and under Lisbon that limitation is removed. It is accepted ‑‑ Tom Cloonan in the Irish Times, for example, has said that under Lisbon the Union and its military capabilities are now capable of doing anything they want to do. There is no limitation on them. There is, in particular, no obligation on EU military interventions to have the benefit of a UN sanction. Therefore, to suggest that all of these measures are going to be entirely consistent with Irish policy, Irish policy which requires a UN sanction, for example, falls flat on its face at the very first hurdle.
It seems to me that we still, for the benefit of having this National Forum and the resources that are put into it and the hard work of its Director, its Chairman and its staff, have not figured out a way to have the national conversation that we need to have about Europe and that is a pity after twenty years.
I had hoped during the course of this morning's discussion that we could look at the changes that are being proposed, maybe even think about changing our mind about our attitudes that we brought into the room. I have to say I have not been encouraged by what I have heard. But I have been glad to come up from Cork to say my piece to you and I hope it has made some little impression on some of you. Thank you very much. (Applause)
I listened with great care to the presentation of Joe Noonan and I listened in particular because he is a legal expert, which I am not, and I listened to the small number of citations to actual law in the Treaty as distinct from the large number of quotations of prospective by many others. One of those citations, and it has come up among many speakers, is in relation to Article 28.C.7. This is the question of the so‑called solidarity clause. And Joe Noonan correctly says it is a clause that is somewhat similar in NATO, and there was clause that was somewhat similar in WEU. There is, I would remind him, of course, and it is in the Treaty citation also, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter where the same class of words is used. What he omitted to do was to quote the last sentence of 28.7 which reads: this shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.
This is not an accidental tourist as a clause, it was placed there by negotiation and the negotiation on it was led by the Irish Government and it is a clear legal formulation of the boundary that we have placed in law on the evolution of any policy in this area. So if we want to cite the law, let us cite all the law and not just selectively the bits that matter. I think the last sentence is an inconvenient truth for those who argue that this clause will exercise an oppressive weight on Irish interest.
Permit to me to stay on Article 28 to the question on the European Defence Agency. I want, if I could, to make a small number of points about this. The experience ‑‑ so I want to come to fact and experience -- the experience inside the European Union with requirement for unanimity between States which remains in the Common Foreign and Security Policy is that we make progress frequently at a snail's pace precisely because of the diversity of views and interests. I regret to tell you for all of the debate we are having about this, and the not inconsiderable passion, I suspect the rate of progress will remain rather at a snail's pace because of the unanimity rule.
But having said that, one of the issues we have discovered is we spend many months, sometimes longer, finding unanimity to do something, but then many years to discover the capacity to act. So I am very much among those who supports the enhancement of the capacity to act. Article 28.C.3 has been again part quoted so let me go to it: Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities.
This has been misrepresented here as costing us hospitals in Ireland. I think it is a gross misrepresentation and one which I entirely reject. The progressive improvement of military capacity, and permit me to go back to my opening remark, can include most likely and inter alia in European terms, the fact that for any given expenditure we get very poor value in capacity terms for that.
In the case of Ireland ‑‑ and I want to make this as clear as I can ‑‑ there is no overriding force in any article in this Treaty in this regard which requires the Irish Finance Minister, the Dáil, the Seanad or the Defence Minister to engage in any specific or given expenditure on any specific or given act. Indeed, the clause as written, permits Ireland to opt in or opt out of any given arrangement.
I know some of these things take on very dramatic qualities when we are having debates, but let me tell you one case that I'm aware of. I am pleased to see and it was mentioned here earlier this morning, we have invested in hard shells and armoured personnel carriers to keep Irish troops, as far as possible, out of harm's way when they are serving us abroad and I am pleased we have done that. But one of the issues that came up at the European Defence Agency when we were making the purchase was to try to ensure that when we were working in the field with armoured personnel carriers, that we don't need 40 different kind of engine oils to service those. Some of these things are actually very basic things and they are very much common sense.
Mr Chairman, Joe Noonan in his opening remark talked about the Single European Act as being European political cooperation just being a small amount, and then what has happened since and how elaborate things are. I am pleased with the elaboration because it is explicit, not hidden. It is transparent and open and so it should be and then we can debate it as we please. But permit me to recall to the Forum that a few modest things happened since the Single European Act.
The Soviet Union collapsed. The Warsaw Pact disappeared. The Berlin Wall collapsed. Germany was reunified. Bipolarity and uncertainties disappeared. The former Yugoslavia exploded in bloody ethnicity. All of those things were responded to as acts of rationality and those acts of rationality, to my mind, make great policy sense.
Eoin O Broin of Sinn Fein made a number of points. Briefly to comment on them if I may. I quote a phrase I took down from you, Eoin, when you spoke, that you are amused to see the EU described as a peace process. I'm amused at your amusement. You went to talk about Vietnam. Vietnam is not an operation of European Common Foreign and Security Policy nor is Korea. I agree with you that poverty and inequality are powerful threats and I remarked earlier not about how much we do in Europe, but when you look at our weight actually how little we do. But the little that we do is actually the largest humanitarian contribution in global terms. About four million people have died in conflicts since 1990 when we started to develop these policies. Most of them have been in internal civil strive in terms of nations breaking down and turning in on each other and virtually all of them have been civilians and I think it is right and proper that we should seek, where we can, with prudence to try to engage in this.
I agree with Prionsias de Rossa on the Palestinian funding. You are simply, absolutely and entirely wrong. It is now larger than it was before, Hamas included. You characterised the Chad mission in one part as propping up a regime. I think this is a complete travesty. Our troops in that mission are in a border area dealing with people who are refugees from Sudan, from Darfur, who are subject to all sorts of violations by roaming militias in a region that has absolutely no writ of any government. It is perhaps one of most dangerous missions we have ever sent troops on. I would salute the courage and integrity they bring to it and it is a travesty to suggest that they are doing anything but that in terms of the mission.
You also mentioned that you would support re‑invigorating UN multilateralism. I quoted the former and greatly respected Secretary General. He told us how to do it. Develop European defence and security policy and that is what we are doing.
Joe Higgins characterised my citation of statistics as suggesting in some way that I would support a new arms race. I wholly reject that interpretation and permit me to say, as you may gather from my contribution whether you agree or disagree with it, that I am perfectly capable of putting my own words in my own mouth and your words and your interpretation are not mine.
As regards the issues about Common Foreign and Security Policy, there were a number of questions, Chairman, and I will try to close on that if I may. About the Petersburg Tasks, yes, they are expansions. But let me say this, no operation under any Petersburg Tasks can happen without unanimous approval of the Council. We are there, we have a full say and, if we wish, we can exercise a veto.
The question was asked of me about permanent structured cooperation by Joe Higgins, what happens to us? Well the answer is we can be in or out of it, this is our choice. But again let me go to the Treaty. Any decision in operational terms about deploying the capabilities of permanent structured cooperation requires unanimity. We will be there. We can decide. And these are the facts of the matter and these are in the Treaty.
So, Chairman, I conclude really as I have begun earlier today, it is my convinced view that the European process has been a force for good in terms of Europe's history, has been a force for development and good in terms of our country's history. It has been an enabling framework of a highly positive sort for our small country. How it has evolved in foreign policy and security terms is entirely consonant with our values and our interests and we have, by the multi‑facetted locking down through unanimity, every option should we wish not to do things to block them and in most other instances the right to opt out if we don't want it. It is a good deal for Europe, it is a good deal for Ireland and it can do a great deal of good as good global citizens and that is why I am passionately for voting for this Treaty. (Applause)
I am sorry, too, for the slight overrun in time. It must be a habit gained from travelling on the railway.
Members will have received a schedule of meetings which complete our programme of public information. And Monday next we will be in Galway and the speakers are Sean O Neachtain MEP and Declan Ganley from Libertas. And the following evening in Bray with Deputy Aonghus O Snodaigh and Raymond O'Rourke. Next Thursday we will be in Dublin Castle to hear from Deputy Ruairi Quinn and Mr Joe Higgins on the theme of Social Europe. And the programme of activity before the referendum will conclude with a final Plenary session on Thursday, 22nd May and the speaker will be the Taoiseach Mr Brian Cowan.
Sin a bhfuil ann. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.
Slán abhaile.
THE SESSION CONCLUDED
National Forum On Europe, Fóram Náisiúnta um an Eoraip © 2010