Irish Reject EU Constitution

Ireland has done better out of its EU membership than almost any other country. A poor, almost backward, economy when it joined, the Celtic Tiger is wealthy enough that it no longer gets EU development aid. So, when it came to Thursday’s referendum on an EU treaty/constitution, the casual observer would have thought passage of the agreement would have been easy. Instead, the Irish shot it down, and they may have killed off the treaty. One might think of Ireland as a nation of ingrates, but it would be more accurate to view them as the people who saved Europe from itself.

RTE News reported on Friday, “With results in from all 43 constituencies, the Lisbon Treaty has been defeated by a margin of 53.4% to 46.6%. A total of 752,451 people voted in favour of the treaty and 862,415 voted against. Just 10 constituencies - Clare, Dublin South, Dublin South East, Dublin North, Dublin North Central, Dún Laoghaire, Kildare North, Laois Offaly, Carlow Kilkenny and Meath East - voted in favour of the Treaty.”

The analysts who really know the Irish electorate say that the rural and working class voters opposed the treaty while the middle class and more urban voters favored it. Hillary’s people voted “No,” and Obama’s voted “Yes.” What is particularly amazing is that almost no one in Ireland voted on the basis of actually having read the treaty.

Unlike the US Constitution, a model of flexibility and brevity, the new EU constitution is a redraft of a previously failed attempt at centralization. Ireland's representative on the EU commission, Charlie McCreevy, told reporters in Dublin, “The treaty refers to sub-paragraphs of former sub- paragraphs and other documents and there is no person this side of Timbuktu who would be in a position to understand it.” Mr. McCreevy said he supported the treaty but hadn’t read it.

America learned to its dismay what happens when law is made without people actually reading the legislation when Congress passed the misnamed Patriot Act. Freedoms were lost, privacy compromised, and government acquired unjust power all because no one bothered to read the bill before voting on it in those fear-filled days after September 11, 2001.

In this instance, the people of Ireland have forced the Europhiles to stop and reconsider not what they are doing so much as how they are doing it. Whether the EU continues to centralize is a matter for discussion that deserves revisiting. At the same time, if Europeans choose to move forward in building a federal Europe, they should do so knowing full well what it is they are agreeing to do. Ireland’s “No” may force that to happen.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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