Beware the doomsayers (30/4/08)

Once when I was living in France, I was knocked off my bike one morning by a large chauffeur-driven car. I was completely unhurt, so it must have been shock that had me in tears when the passenger of the car came back to see if I was alright. He was a tall, elderly man dressed in high-ranking military uniform, who was kindly and concerned and apologised for the accident – I forget whose fault it was. But he failed to understand why I kept crying if, as I insisted, there was absolutely nothing the matter. After a minute or two of him frowning and me weeping, the light dawned and he said, ‘Ah! It is an excess of emotion.’
There is an excess of emotion, I believe, attaching to the current debate on the Lisbon Treaty. Both the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps can be accused of hype and scaremongering and harrying the witless public like anxious parents in a custody battle. How can we expected to make up our own minds when we hear such different doomsday scenarios from both sides? When government ministers and upstanding businesspeople infer dark meanings and motives with loaded terms like ‘sinister’, ‘cowardly’, ‘propaganda’ and ‘the pariahs of Europe’? There is a marked difference from the measured approach of European politicians such as EP President Hans-Gert Poettering, who has said he would not presume to be so arrogant as to tell Irish people how to vote, and our own politicians who are crying ‘Vote this or that!’ from the rooftops. Or maybe from the pulpit. There is an unfortunate moralising element creeping in that is muddying any chances of mature, rational debate.
The Treaty will not open the door, as some on the ‘No’ side have claimed, to a flood of horrors from euthanasia, birth control and (dare we say it) abortion, to militarization and a looming superstate sapping the lifeblood of a diminished Ireland. By the same token, we should not be browbeaten or guilted into voting ‘Yes’ just because other EU leaders want us to. The argument that it would be somehow ‘ungrateful’ to vote against the treaty, that we would biting the hand that feeds us, that it is ‘our turn to give something back’ is spurious and irrelevant and unfair.
The treaty should be considered calmly and dispassionately as a business document which puts forward certain proposals for reforming the EU. Reform is necessary, we all agree, but is this the best route? A ‘No’ vote does not mean you are ‘anti-Europe’ – it may mean you think the Lisbon Treaty does not go far enough. If Ireland rejects the treaty, it would be a pain in the neck for those who would have to draft an alternative, but it will not change our status within the EU or our relationship with our European neighbours.
The fundamental distinction that needs to be drawn is that the Lisbon Treaty is not the EU. However we vote, life will go onwards the same. The public is best advised to seek information from a neutral source, such as the Referendum Commission’s website, http://www.lisbontreaty2008.ie/, or the site run by the Citizens’ Information Bureau, http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories/government-in-ireland/european-government/eu-law/lisbon-treaty.
And can everyone just calm down a bit.