The American Spectator

Special Report

The Irish Exception

By Doug Bandow on 7.8.08 @ 12:07AM

The Lisbon Treaty was supposed to be a done deal in Europe. After the embarrassing rejection of the European Union constitution by Dutch and French voters three years ago, EU officials repackaged the document as a "treaty" and proclaimed that no referenda would be necessary. "There will be no treaty at all if we had a referendum in France," explained French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The one speed bump was Ireland, since the Irish constitution required a popular vote. But Irish politicians, heads of most of the other 26 governments that make up the EU, and every Eurocrat living well in Brussels launched a concentrated propaganda campaign. Never mind the fine print. All of the right-thinking people in Europe believed this to be for the benefit of the Irish people, so just sign on, thank you very much. Alas, the Irish people voted no.

That should be the end of it. The constitution, er, treaty requires unanimity. Ireland said no, so the deal is off.

However, voters increasingly are irrelevant in Europe. They get to choose their governments in a quaint and old-fashioned way, but those governments of whatever ideological stripe increasingly have ceded authority to Brussels.

The Lisbon Treaty represents the apotheosis of rule by international bureaucracy: the European elite have decided that consolidation is the wave of the future, and they certainly don't intend to allow the ungrateful Irish to stand in the way. Observed German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble: "a few million Irish cannot decide on behalf of 495 million Europeans."

No, a few million Irish certainly shouldn't decide the fate of 495 million Europeans. That's the job for a few thousand politicians, bureaucrats, and other members of the New Class across the continent, intent on creating a new Europe irrespective of the people's desires. Polls indicate that three-quarters of Europeans-and majorities in all 27 countries-would like to vote on the expansion of EU powers. And if such referenda were held, a majority of people would vote no in 16 of them, including in Germany. No wonder the Eurocrats won't allow anyone else to vote on their futures.

It's tempting as an American to bid the Europeans well as they embark on their grand experiment at continent-wide aggrandizement. Frustrated with America's continuing global dominance, European elites want their own super-state, with a president and a foreign minister, as well as a governing structure that can crush disagreement -- or, to put it more politely, override dissenting minorities. To some degree the Europeans want to telescope two centuries of American constitutional development, which also led to national consolidation, into a decade or less.

Yet the big difference between North America and Europe is that all of the original 13 American colonies, as well as the new states that followed, began from more or less the same political, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic stock.

To be sure, immigration enlivened the American body politic, but the Great Melting Pot, at least until recently, created a common tradition and experience.

Europe is attempting to turn 27 very different nations into de facto states. Consolidation was a painful experience in the U.S., and required a bitter civil war to finally subordinate state sovereignty to the national government.

In Europe peoples ranging from Spain to Romania are being asked to toss aside their national identities for a new creation centered in Brussels. National identity would not disappear, of course, but eliminating the requirement for unanimity would destroy the most important protection for national sovereignty. And the Eurocrats have only begun. The Lisbon Treaty is a starting, not ending, point.

ANYONE WHO BELIEVES in individual liberty and limited government should care about the European experiment, since neither principle is likely to escape unscathed. Still, as a matter of official international relations it really is the business of the Europeans. The Bush administration has affirmed its support for the Lisbon Treaty, but doubtless no one in a policy-making position has read the monstrosity. (Of course, few European policy-makers likely have read it either.) Anyway, Washington's opposition wouldn't change anyone's opinion in Europe and would just aggravate relations already rubbed raw over Iraq and other controversies. But why are U.S. officials encouraging the process?

European consolidation offers at best a mixed bag for the United States. On the positive side, in a world in which increasingly authoritarian Russia is reasserting itself and undemocratic China is growing in influence, a more influential capitalist and democratic Europe should provide a positive influence.

Frankly, if Moscow is a problem, it is a problem for Europe, not America. If Georgia's control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia matters to anyone, it is to Europe, not to the U.S. If someone desires to midwife the independence of Kosovo, it should be Europe, not America. If North Africa can be drawn away from the influence of the Middle East, it will be by Europe, not America.

The European Union has a larger collective economy and population than does the U.S., so let the EU start carrying its geopolitical weight.

Letter to the Editor

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