The No Vote Affirms Democracy
The Irish “No” vote in yesterday’s referendum on the Lisbon treaty has sent European leaders on an elaborate finger-pointing exercise. Fears about abortion, neutrality and taxation are blamed as the proximate reasons for the rejection. Anything is blamed other than a dissatisfaction with the direction in which the EU is heading.
To place the blame so squarely with such disparate and supposedly “fatuous” issues is to miss the point. There is deep discomfort among many about the very nature of the treaty and the wider institutions of the European Union. That the No Campaign’s supposed “fear-mongering” was successful is a condemnation of the impenetrability of the treaty. The attempt to pass the treaty by making it so ambiguous, confusing and inaccessible backfired: it made it near impossible to rebut the concerns raised by opponents.
The issues on which the Irish voted were tangential to a larger issue: the arrogance of the institution as a whole. The Lisbon treaty represented the EU at its worst: unaccountable, inaccessible and undemocratic. Many Europeans feel that their leaders are pushing for a European project that is moving too quickly and in the wrong direction. The failure to accept the French and Dutch “no” votes, and the resulting refusals for others to hold referenda on Lisbon, represented an EU that did not care about the opinions of its citizens.
It does not have to be this way: the sensible route for reform in an enlarged EU is to ditch the dream of federalism and work on a smaller, more accountable institution. I doubt anyone believes that the EU is best in its present state. What the No voters object to is the top-down and “more of the same, but better” attitude of reform at present.
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