The credit crunch and the European project (12/10/08)

Last week, the European Parliament formally adopted its own flag, anthem (Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’) and an official motto – ‘United in diversity’. The timing was ironic, coming after a week in which the EU showed itself to be anything but united in the face of the global financial crisis. Indeed, the ongoing markets maelstrom has held up a mirror to a deeply fragmented union, with member states primarily focused on saving themselves. Europe was caught off guard, and despite all the belated talk of consultation and coordination, it was each to his own. Ireland’s decision to guarantee bank deposits was initially condemned and then replicated in various forms, as member states scrabbled to come up with a hotchpotch of individual schemes to shore up the banks. The Irish government acted first and asked permission afterwards, protesting that there had been no time to wait for an EU response. And while member states made groundbreaking decisions daily, the European Commission took over a week to look up the rules on state aid and competition law, perpetuating the very myth of red tape and bureaucracy that it is trying to shake off.
All this has implications for that elephant in the room, the thing that won’t go away, the flea in our ear – the Lisbon Treaty. The government is still wary of setting any timeline for a second referendum, although it has indicated that this would be unlikely to happen for another year at least. But officials in Brussels are scared of what they say is the very real prospect of the 26 member states who have ratified Lisbon moving ahead without us. One official confided his concern that Ireland could find itself in the situation of being a’semi-detached’ member of the EU. ‘It’s like this,’ he said, ‘The other countries could just turn around and say “Are you on the bus or off it?” And we’ll be on the trailer behind.’
Fianna Fáil MEP Eoin Ryan says the current crisis highlights more than ever the need to streamline the EU into a more efficient broker on the world stage. ‘We need a stronger base to lobby from,’ said the Dublin MEP, pointing out the horrific situation that Iceland found itself in, practically bankrupt and isolated from the world. ‘Europe is the third largest economic power in the world, and we would be better placed to tackle economic problems as they arise if we can forge a more united structure.’ He also warned that Ireland’s EU membership has been key to our financial stability. ‘We’ve got to realise that the reason US companies invested in Ireland was because we had access to the European market,’ he said. ‘We cannot be sending back confused messages to the States about our role in Europe. We need to say “We are for Europe, and we are at the heart of Europe.”‘
Certainly, the economic turbulence creates an opportunity for the EU to build itself into a more effective player on the world stage. The prospect of not being a fully-fledged member of the EU, for all its weaknesses, is a terrifying one that would seem to court a complete meltdown of our small open economy. Perhaps it is time for Ireland to look at the bigger picture and reconsider Lisbon. And, if Irish concerns about taxation, neutrality and abortion can be appeased through a better communications campaign, voters should at least look the treaty in a spirit of compromise – a spirit that must be central to the European project if it is to continue to evolve in a rapidly changing world.