Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak at some length on the new European Union reform treaty, or the Lisbon treaty as it is called. It is unusual to find all the larger parties in this House supporting one another on an issue. Although Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil disagree on one or two issues in respect of this treaty, both are backing strongly the call for a "Yes" vote, and for good reason. While trying to explain to people the reasons this treaty is needed, the manner of its construction and what it will mean for Ireland and the European Union, it is important to place the debate in context.

The European Union and its reason for being change continually. It began as a desperately-needed peace project after two world wars. It was a social and political experiment, as well as being an economic experiment, after the signing of the Treaty of Rome. However, it quickly developed into something else. It began to build trust and faith between politicians and between countries that, less than a decade earlier, had been at war. Moreover, it began to build momentum and to attract interest in other parts of Europe and elsewhere in the world as other countries considered being part of it. Essentially, people then began to see the positive by-products of the guarantee of peace and stability, which were economic opportunity, trade opportunity and the potential for wealth and economic growth. In a relatively short space of time, the entire driving force behind the European project, which was the guarantee of peace and the absence of war, became more about economics, trade and solving political problems in a new form and through new structures on the Continent of Europe. As the project evolved, the institutions which made it possible for the European Union to function also needed to be reformed. Thus, while we initially started with a peace project, we had to introduce the reforms to guarantee a single market for trade and the consequential treaty which made that a reality. We then began a new project of monetary union, which also needed a treaty on institutional reform. After gradually enlarging the European Union over a period of time, the proposition of substantial enlargement by ten new member states required further changes in rules and structures, which were facilitated by the Nice treaty.

The current reform treaty is no different in principle. It prepares the European Union for the challenges that lie ahead and provides political and economic solutions to new problems that did not exist in the past, such as climate change, cross-border crime and the role of the EU in alleviating world hunger and responding to natural disasters that occur elsewhere in the world, and the developing world in particular. It will ensure the European Union prepares itself for energy security. That is why new areas of competency are being proposed so that we can agree, where countries on their own cannot provide solutions, to work together and allow the European institutions increased competency so they can take more influential positions within these areas. At the same time, we will ensure the necessary safeguards are in place so that we do not move towards the super state federalised structure that the scaremongers would have us believe is the future. That is essentially the purpose of this treaty. It is important that people understand there is no hidden agenda to militarise the EU, to offer a political counterbalance to the power of the United States or to give more power to the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg. I have worked in Brussels and Strasbourg as an MEP for three years and that agenda may be held by a tiny minority of people but it is not what drives this treaty.

The Lisbon treaty is a successor to the failed constitutional treaty, the creation of which took five or six years and involved the input of every EU member state. People have asked me whether the treaty is being foisted upon us by people we do not know and have not elected but nothing could be further from the truth. The treaty has been put together in a more democratic way then any other treaty in the history of the EU. My party has had a say on it, as has Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the Labour Party. Influential and bright people from these parties have been at the heart of agreeing this treaty through the Convention on Europe. We are at the end of a process.

When the constitutional treaty was rejected by France and the Netherlands, the institutions, governments and people of the EU had to rethink how the Union could progress. I see that as a positive example of democracy. We have had to repackage the constitutional treaty and make changes. The Irish people will now have their say on the repackaged version, which contains some changes and certainly lacks the imagery contained in the constitutional treaty. Many people had genuinely held concerns that if we put in place a European constitution it might override our Constitution, which is emotionally as well as legally important to us. We have, therefore, returned to the standard practice of amending previous treaties, which is why this is a complex document.

The constitutional treaty could be used as — admittedly dull — bedtime reading because it was a manual or business plan for how the EU should function. This treaty requires a legal draftsperson to translate it because it is in essence a series of amendments. That has given rise to a certain degree of confusion and genuine concerns, but it has also allowed people to deliberately mislead its intent.

I will now address how the treaty will affect institutional provisions, in other words, the changes we will make to the politics of the institutions within the European Union. One of the proposals in the treaty is to establish a full-time president of the European Council. Instead of the current practice whereby every six months a different country takes its turn in the Presidency and offers leadership to the Council, we are proposing a new system which allows for a seamless transition between Presidencies, thereby allowing greater consistency within the Council. That will be the primary function of the full-time president, who will be in place for an initial two and half years and will have the option of being reinstalled for the remainder of the five year term of a European Parliament. That is a positive development in my view. The position will not turn into the president of Europe in the same way that George Bush is the President of the United States. The president of the Council will be a figurehead who represents the EU on the world stage and a co-ordinator who works with member states, the European Parliament and the Commission to ensure coherence on European policy.

In the past, many non-EU countries have rightly noted in respect of major foreign policy issues the importance of having a point of contact within the EU who can set out a co-ordinated position on emerging crises or economic challenges. In many cases, the new full-time president will not be able to achieve a coherent EU policy response because he or she will have only a limited role in the development of foreign policy. In most cases, individual countries will decide on their own respective responses but in the areas where the EU has competency the president will improve co-ordination on international responses on behalf of the EU. The Presidency of the Council of Ministers will also change in structure, as proposed in this treaty. At present, individual member states take on this role for a six-month period but there are always problems when one Presidency hands over to the next in terms of continuity of policy, shared information and so on, although that co-ordination has improved in recent years. Instead, however, we will now give the Presidency to three member states at one time for an 18-month period. Essentially, individual countries will still offer leadership in terms of policy development in the European Union but there will be co-ordination for a longer period and countries will work together to put together a policy agenda. This is a positive, sensible and practical solution to some of the problems of the past ten years or so.

There has been much comment on the size of the Commission and the proposal that Ireland would not have a Commissioner for five out of every ten years. There is much confusion on this issue because the people who spell out this issue as a negative point are in many cases giving half the facts. The following are the facts. The European Union is likely to continue to grow and the Commission, if it were to continue to represent each member state by having a Commissioner from each, would potentially become unwieldy and too big. It would be like having 35 Ministers in a Cabinet and one would essentially be creating jobs so that Commissioners could be appointed to the Commission. Therefore, the institutions and governments have agreed to try to reduce bureaucracy in the Union and slim down the Commission to make it a more efficient body that can make decisions more easily. They have stated that however many states there are in the EU in 2014, two thirds of that number will make up the Commission.

The most important point is that all states will be treated equally. Malta will get the same treatment as Germany, Britain or France, and Ireland will get the same treatment as Spain or Italy. Small states will get the exact same treatment as the larger states. This is because the EU at times deliberately slants policy in favour of small countries to ensure we do not allow a situation to develop in the Union, as developed before the European project began, where might is right and might is dominant on the Continent of Europe.

It is important to recognise how the Commission works. The Commission does not finalise policy decisions for the European Union. It brings forward proposals and it enforces and polices existing legislation and decisions that have been made. The primary decision-making capacity in the EU is a process of co-decision in the most part between the European Parliament and the European Council, with the Council representing Governments and the Parliament representing directly elected politicians from each member state. The Commission is a bit like the civil service of the EU. It makes decisions in a college system, which is why when a Commissioner goes to Brussels from Ireland, such as Mr. Charlie McCreevy, the Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, his job is primarily to make decisions in the interests of the common market across the Union. His job is not to go to Brussels to defend and protect Irish interests as such.

It is in that context that the European Commission needs to slim down and continue to work together in the interests of the EU. Individual member states' interests will be well protected and defended either in the European Parliament or in the European Council, or through the mechanisms in national parliaments, to which I will refer shortly and which ensure there is oversight of what the European Union is doing.

The reform treaty also proposes that we would have a high representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy. Currently, there is a disjoint problem with foreign policy creation within the EU — I have some experience of this as I was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee within the European Parliament. On the one hand, there is a High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and, on the other, there is also a Commissioner for External Relations. One controls the budget and the other dominates in terms of political influence. This is a problem. With the same sort of thinking that has resulted in a new full-time president of the Council, we are proposing that we would have a foreign policy figurehead within the EU who would try to co-ordinate with member states a common approach towards international relations and international issues. This is a positive development which does not sacrifice Ireland's foreign policy or Irish neutrality. It only deals with issues that countries have agreed to work on together and those within the competence of the EU.

With regard to institutional provisions, there is the European Parliament. People have said that Ireland is losing an MEP as well as a Commissioner. The reality is as follows. If a club gets bigger, one's representation gets smaller in percentage terms. It is not possible for Ireland to keep as many MEPs as we had in the past as we move from 15 to 27 EU member states, and potentially 30 within the next five years. There was a choice. Either we could keep making the European Parliament bigger or we could have a cut-off point, which is what has been decided to ensure that the European Parliament does not get too big and unwieldy, which would make it impossible for decision-making to happen.

There is no hidden agenda with the reform treaty. Fine Gael has taken the political decision to support this treaty because it is right for Ireland and for the European Union in terms of dealing with problems that Ireland simply cannot deal with on its own. It would have been politically convenient for us to oppose Fianna Fáil in particular on this issue and try to embarrass it into a failed referendum campaign. We have decided not to do this because it would be wrong from the perspective of Irish interests. I am glad to see all of the main business bodies in Ireland, such as IBEC, strongly come out in support of the treaty in recent days, as I believe other representative organisations will do in the coming weeks. As people understand the facts with regard to what is in this treaty, they will begin to be far more positive about it as opposed to the position that has been held by many people until now, due to the absence of knowledge and understanding of what the treaty seeks to achieve.

See this speech in context