An tAontas Eorpach agus Gaelige

On Tuesday, it was reported in the Irish Times that the Irish government wasn't living up to the responsibilities of promoting the first official language, Irish. The financial crisis seems to have weakened the government's commitment to Irish, with the Irish Language Commissioner, Séan Ó Cuirreáin, and his office launching more official investigations to investigate complaints. I think that this is a very telling finding from an investigation:

"The practice of actively removing every síneadh fada from the names and addresses of newborn children being registered for child benefit payments was found to be in breach of a commitment in the Department of Social and Family Affairs’s statutory language scheme."

Actively removing fadas (á, é, í, ó, ú)? Why? Why bother?

If the Irish Government is failing to ensure that language rights are protected, then what is the condition of Irish at the European level? Irish has been a treaty language since Ireland's entry in 1973, which meant that all of the EC/EU's Treaties would be in Irish as well as English, German, French, etc. However, Irish has only become an official language of the EU since 2007 (before this legislation didn't have to be translated into Irish).

Despite this status, only legislation produced by co-decision is translated into Irish, as per Regulation 920/2005, though this will be reviewed after 4 years and then again every 5 years.

Earlier in the week I attended a jobs talk, and one of the talks was by university professor, who had done freelance work for the EU institutions as a lawyer-linguist, on job opportunities in the EU. Apparently they are crying out for people with English as their mother tongue (and the Irish are doing quite well out of this since people from Britain simply don't seem to want to work for the EU), but the situation is much more serious for Irish, despite the limitations on translation requirements. It seems that, so far, not one person has passed the Irish part of the concours. Naturally, legal Irish is very different from every day Irish, and those who are capable of being lawyer-linguists in Irish are based in the Dublin administration, which does a lot of the Council translation for Irish.

Which is a real pity, since, despite the complaints about translation costs, I do admire how an effort is made to respect the different languages.

Unfortunately, my Irish doesn't go much further than a few phrases (though the accent helps), so it doesn't look like I'll be able to take advantage of it.

The Irish EU law site is here.

Is the Croatian Solution legally possible?

In order to reassure Ireland on certain legal matters raised in the Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign, the plan was to attach the legally binding guarantees to the Croatian Accession treaty. The idea was that this would prevent the need to reopen the ratification process all over Europe.

However, doubts have been raised about the legal possibility of this route: MEP Andrew Duff has suggested that general revisions of the main treaties cannot be achieved through accession treaties. He cites the Danish opt outs being included in the Amsterdam Treaty as an example.

If this is true, then it's a big blow to the strategy of the Irish Government in obtaining the legal guarantees politically (though not necessarily legally) vital to getting a Yes vote in the second Lisbon Treaty campaign.

Meanwhile, the government has re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-affirmed (again), that it will not be complacent in the next referendum. Why are these statements still treated like news? It was issued during a EU debate in the Dáil, where it was shockingly revealed that more work needed to be done on the guarantees.

Referendum Strategies

EUobserver has reported that the Irish Government isn't being firm about the date of the referendum, to say the least. I'll take this opportunity to outline my thoughts on setting the date.

1. The guarantees must be agreed on, and have been laid down in writing. The polls showing a swing in favour of the Treaty ask questions based on the assumption that satisfactory guarantees will be, well, guaranteed. To put the Treaty to the vote without anything to show for the reviews and negotiations of the last year would be a major political weakness. The Irish people need to be offered something new, even if I don't believe the guarantees are necessary, apart from the one on the status of the Irish Commissioner.

2. There needs to be a clear run up to the election. All pro-Lisbon parties need to work together effectively in the next referendum - this means there needs to be a clear start, and a joint campaign launch. Keeping the date unclear could be damaging to the coherence and unity of the pro-Lisbon side even if it's intended to weaken the anti-Lisbonites.

3. Rule out May and June - and therefore April too. May and June will be taken up with the EP elections, and it will just be providing free publicity to the anti-Lisbonites to bring up the issue so powerfully so close to the elections. A win for anti-Lisbon candidates will strengthen the anti-Lisbon position when it comes to the referendum. For reasons of giving a good run up to the vote (and the reasons in 1 & 2), this also excludes April as a possible referendum month.

4. A good run up is needed. (Linked to 2) Obvious, in my opinion. The case for needs to be made clearly, and the contra side needs to have enough space too. There should be no snap referendum, like last time. A "no means no" and "they're bullying us" doesn't work quite so well if there's a good run up and a long debate. A longer debate would draw out more practical questions and get past all the knee-jerk no-ism. At least, that's my theory.

5. It should be as soon as possible, provided that the conditions above are met. July or August would be good, in my opinion. The government can be punished in the local and European elections, which may clear the political air of the need to punish the government (though I wouldn't underestimate this government's ability to enrage the public). The political air needs to be as clear as possible to ensure as reasoned a debate as possible.

So for me, July-September (and maybe October) is the best window of time for the referendum, depending on the political conditions. That's my current thinking, anyway.

Ireland will not opt out of the ESDP

The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs has ruled out a complete opt-out out of the ESDP, as the Danes did after Maastricht. The debate seems to be moving on to the membership of the European Defense Agency.

The impression that I get when people point to the EDA as an example of the militarisation of the EU is that it always seems to be made out to be more than it is. The EDA is supposed to ensure a freer market in military goods, and aims to ensure that military hardware is cheaper for national governments and that the military technology of the member states armies, etc are more compatable, so on joint missions (such as in Chad where Ireland leads the EU mission) EU countries have similar military hardware so they can work together more easily and aren't hindered by unfamilarity and/or incompatability with each other's hardware. It is not entail defense committments.

So an agency that will help ensure bigger bang for our (Euro) bucks and mean that on common missions it's easier for our soldiers to work together and be well equiped. Sounds like a good deal, doesn't it? Member states get to benefit from cheaper and better military hardware while spending similar amounts on defense so that better defense does not have to mean cutting down on the welfare state.

Unless you have a moral aversion to co-operation in terms of military technology and markets, this does not represent a significant militarisation of European countries. If anything, it's a mechanism designed to make defense cheaper and better without the military and political integration that is advocated by some (on the basis that it would reduce the wasteful duplication of national defense budgets).

I wonder if the EDA would make it cheaper for Ireland to increase the size of our navy to help patrol our coast and prevent successful shipments of drugs. Ireland has a very small navy (is it only 9 ships officially or something now? Of course there would be several small ones too...), and as this Tagesschau report says (in German), we're not exactly winning the "War on Drugs". [There are nice parts of Limerick, by the way...]

In other news, the big oilslick off the Irish coast is Russia's fault. What exactly was Russia's flagship doing around there anyway? Is it common practise for the flagships of major powers to just sail about to show the flag?

Ireland and Lisbon

It has been reported that there is a poll showing a majority in favour of Lisbon:

"The Sunday Independent / Quantum Research survey carried out last Friday showed that 55 per cent of the 500 people asked would support the treaty while 37 per cent said they would oppose it and 15 per cent said they were undecided."

However, as the article also points out, confidence in the government and the Taoiseach has collasped (and with good reason in my opinion).

While Fianna Fáil have been the senior partner in the government for more than a decade now, leading to the natural political reaction of blaming them for the state of the economy (and it is in a state, with reports that the government will have to borrow €45 million a day to sustain its budget this year), I think the collapse in support for the government has little to do with Lisbon (not that this was implied in the article). Most of the backlash began in September when budgetary proposals threatened to slash public spending in very uncomfortable ways (the issue of means-teasting free medical care for over 70s (Ireland isn't famous for it's "welfare state" in the first place) led to particularly bitter protests). The poor leadership of the government since hasn't improved matters, and probably indicates a collapse of confidence in itself, never mind on the side of the voters.

So the big question is can the referendum be won dispite this. The Irish public are very... sensitive, or rebellious if you want to put a more glamourous spin on it (and I make this generalization as an Irishman), so there are a lot of things for us to take "offence" at. (I will try to post later about the Irish Referendum in detail). The organisation and effectiveness of the No side (which is very good) in making the appeal to this side of the public will probably be the deciding factor. Though never underestimate the incompetence of the Yes side...

In other news, Declan Ganley has failed to find a local to wear the Libertas badge in the Czech Republic, at least so far. The Free Citizen's Party has been set up by Petr Mach to campaign on an anti-Lisbon platform. Ganley has declared that he is pro-EU, while Mach is eurosceptic, so that's ok then.

Of course, I know nothing about how their talks were carried out, but that they were talking about Mach running on a Libertas platform come election time gives me the impression that the "vetting" stage should have already taken place. So if it's important that Libertas is both "pro-europe" as well as anti-Lisbon, then it has clearly only become important recently.

Mind you, vetting isn't really needed when all they have to do is get elected, and then... well, nothing. Libertas sets itself up explicitly as a protest vote (and supposedly a very specific one at that), nothing more.

Besides all the arguments based on democracy,* why should taxpayers pay people not to do their jobs for 5 years?



*Including, but not limited to: Shouldn't the people have a voice during the 5 year term of the EP? Does it not damage the democratic legitimacy and effectiveness of the EP if its members are sent there without any policy platform? For a party which claims to want the EU to be reformed to have more democracy, is it not counter-productive to say the least to stand on a platform which will dent the effectiveness of the only directly elected institution in the EU?