Republican News · Thursday 24 October 2002

The enlargement myth

As the dust settles on the great publicity scam pulled to date by institutions of this state that was the second Nice Referendum, already it will be apparent to those who voted Yes that the establishment parties and the media placed an overemphasis on the enlargement issue.

It would now appear that our failing to ratify the Treaty wasn't in fact the only 'obstacle' to enlargement. It has been revealed now that foreign ministers in the EU have failed to find a common position on how to pay for enlargement. Denmark's foreign minister (yes, the same country whose prime minister told us all how to vote), Per Stig Moller, has warned that failure to find agreement on the financial package in Brussels could delay the admission of the ten new member states who have been approved.

Could it be that enlargement may be postponed and it won't have anything to do with the selfish backward-thinking Irish, who did their best to hold up the process? It would appear so. You see, it wasn't the case that if we voted No again, the EU couldn't rescue these ten candidates for enlargement - thwarted all the way by our indifference to the suffering of the former Iron Curtain countries.

The EU doesn't want to rescue these countries. It wants their markets, their labour and their natural resources. And it wants them at the bare minimum expense for its main contributing countries.

Already, we have had the 'reforming' Agenda 2000, aimed at cutting back on structural, cohesion and agricultural funds, conveniently, just before our Eastern neighbours come up for membership.

If the EU was executing a massive salvation operation, would there be so much resistance being offered from Germany, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands towards the financial packages (which they term 'too generous') being discussed for the new states?

So it would seem that enlargement, the crux that Nice was fought on, the issue that enabled the establishment parties and the media to label the opposition to the Treaty racist, xenophobic and selfish, wasn't reliant on the Irish people after all.

The Treaty was passed here, and yet the EU is still talking about delays, without being able to blame us for them this time.

d how much coverage did this possible delay receive in the media? A paragraph in the Irish Times on Wednesday. A far cry from pre-polling day editions, which screamed vote Yes to Nice or we will cause unnecessary delays for enlargement.

Now who is causing the delays?