Ireland: On the edge of Europe
Will our past experiences influence Ireland's relationship with Europe?
As the Lisbon Treaty steadily rises to prominence on the Irish political agenda, you would expect it to be a widespread hot-button topic. But ask ten Irish people on the street what they think and chances are at least eight of them give non-committal shrugs; shrugs of either uncertainty or indifference. Because unless you're a political aficionado, a farmer, a bureaucrat or an uber-nationalist, the general thinking is that Europe is an abstraction, with little direct effect on people's everyday lives, positive or negative.
But Ireland's odd relationship with Europe – a relationship from which it has undoubtedly benefited yet still struggles to consider itself part of – is just the latest in a long line of instances involving the Irish people and international fence-sitting.
Historically speaking, Ireland has never been too fond of being part of any large group. After the Act of Union in 1801 for instance, when Ireland became part of the United Kingdom and we had to transfer our local representatives over to Westminster, the response over the next 120 years or so was that of, to understate wildly, mild disapproval. Three major mass political movements, several attempts at insurrection (not to mention the multitude of insurrections before then) and general default hostility towards the British for well over a century was the result of that not-so-civil union, hostilities that have haunted this island for decades.
But that's not the only example we have of our national distaste for being absorbed into international confederations. In 1949, in the first heartbeats of our status as an independent republic, the then-External Affairs Minister Sean MacBride turned down an offer to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the reason given was that becoming a member would mean we would have to recognise the sovereignty of Northern Ireland amongst other reasons. He did also say though that they agreed with the ideas of NATO and that he'd be willing to co-operate with them to fight for shared goals, mainly fighting communism, in fact anything short of actually joining. Which just about sums up our attitude, really.
After a few decades of relative calm (facilitated in no small part by the monetary benefits of being one of the poorer countries in the European Economic Community) then came the Nice Treaty. It seemed that just around the time we were getting comfortable as a member of the EU, they wanted to expand it. But it didn't just initially fail because of the proposal of new members. Nice hit on another topic that is of paramount national importance: neutrality. The potential violation of our neutrality that the proposed Rapid Reaction Army Force would have created was a major factor in our turning down Nice initially. It was also why our involvement in U.N. duties abroad have always been in a strictly peacekeeping capacity in places like Kosovo or Lebanon. We eventually passed the Nice Treaty second time around, but only after certain guarantees about our military activity were ensured.
So while once we're in we may revel in it, we have an initial tendency to drag our feet when it comes to international co-operation. It's not that we're hostile to foreign elements or anything, as our prolific emigration and worldwide proliferation of public houses might suggest. If anything it's a psychological issue, a national stand-alone mentality (Hell, we still take pride in the fact the Romans were too afraid to even try to come get us) and there are plenty of reasons and contributing factors to our current relationship with Europe.
By: Paddy Duffy
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