A pattern is emerging. The Lisbon Treaty is attracting support – or at least acceptance – from the broad mass of people and is opposed by the far left (who see it as a capitalist plot), extreme Nationalists (who see it as a threat to the possibility of making their territories independent), and Irishmen (who will believe any old rubbish that people tell them*). There being no Irishmen in the Spanish Parliament, the treaty was approved there the other day with the votes against of the left Socialists and the Catalan, Basque and Galician separatists (IU, ERC, EA and BNG respectively). Apart from this there is no obvious deep-rooted opposition to the treaty in Europe. Despite the delirious fantasising of Britain’s Eurosceptics there is no mass rebellion in Europe against the EU and all its works – even, be it noted, in France and Holland.
The far left may still object but they lost the argument convincingly in France in 2003, when it became clear that they were mistaken (to place no more sinister interpretation on their conduct) when they insisted that rejection of the Constitutional Treaty would usher in the famous Plan B, with paradise on earth as the next stop. The French left were told at the time that there was no Plan B but they refused to believe it. Now, after another defeat in last year’s presidential elections, they are making an approach to land on the same planet as the rest of us inhabit.
The Nationalists are a different matter. When Sinn Féin, the French National Front, Britain’s Conservative Party and UKIP, the Italian Northern League and the Polish National Catholics with President Lech Kaczynski get together (to say nothing of the political teenagers of Catalonia’s ERC**), then it is time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. The purpose of Lisbon, which is the purpose of the EU itself, is to reduce the power of Nationalism. In view of the horrendous damage that Nationalism inflicted on the world in the last century this should hardly be a controversial position. It is worth noting that the newly-independent countries of central Europe see the EU as a guarantee of their independence; it is the regional parties that see a threat. How can Catalonia be independent if its present position is not only entrenched but the present member states are (unfortunately but inevitably) the fundamental units in the EU? But how is independence compatible with membership of the EU? What does independence mean in this context and how does it fit with the increasing power of regions, including cross-border regions, and their recognition as interlocutors by the EU? These are questions to which I have seen no answer. But I do know that the future of Europe lies in getting away from petty local squabbles between Nationalists.
It is an axiom of British politics, at least among those who support such things, that Lords reform will always stumble on the need to get the House of Lords to approve its own reform, and that electoral reform cannot be introduced because it would harm the interests of the parties that would have to introduce it. Something similar is happening in Europe: the creation of a proper Union to replace the patchwork of squabbling nations cannot go ahead without the approval of those very nations. Some have seen and experienced the horrors of Nationalism and are only too pleased to go ahead. In others, however, people confuse their individual identity with that of a group and see the projection of their own nation as a matter of the utmost importance to their own sense of personal identity. Looked at this way, though, the EU has really done quite well to get the level of support that it has.
*Many voters were influenced by arguments that Lisbon would make abortion more likely, endanger Ireland's low corporate tax rates, put Irish neutrality at risk and lead to conscription to a European army. The Independent 28-6-08.
**I write as someone who was once a teenage politician.
Recent Comments