Republican News · Thursday 22 November 2001

Cowen signals second Nice referendum

How decisions get taken in the EU is often something of a mystery. We have directives, treaties, protocols, qualified majorities and the occasional but increasingly rare group consensus.

This week's strange tale from the EU concerns the Nice Treaty. Remember that, a majority of voters said No and ever since this exercise in democracy a range of EU power brokers have been working overtime to find some way to negate the implications of the 26 Counties saying No.

EU Commissioner for Enlargement Gunter Verheugen has presented his annual report on the enlargement issue. He has found that with so many potential new members in negotiations with the Commission that it is likely that ten applications could happen concurrently. The EU Commission and our own Department of Foreign Affairs want to get them all in time for the 1994 EU parliament elections and the 26 Counties next holding of the EU presidency.

Foreign Affairs minister Brian Cowen has now decided, armed with this report, to tell us that the argument made by the No campaign during the Nice Treaty that up to five new applicants could join the EU without a new treaty were now "redundant" and that "the Treaty of Nice is necessary for enlargement and that it needs to be ratified by the end of next year".

Isn't it funny that Brian can remember one aspect of the No campaign, but has amnesia on the other aspects such as the reasons we said vote No. They were the loss of a commissioner, the increased powers to unelected committees and bodies, the support for a Euro army.

The report on Enlargement does nothing to assuage these concerns. We are now a couple of weeks into the work of the Forum for Europe and still we have the same smoke screen from the Dublin Government.

What minister Cowen was really saying is that sometime next year the Dublin government is going to have a second referendum on Nice with none of the concerns of voters addressed. What a surprise.