Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this afternoon's proceedings and I have had the opportunity of considering the Minister of State's statement. I am very pleased by its content and tone.

The debate on Europe in Ireland has been polarised into a very unreal one between those who have always been opposed to Ireland's membership of the EU and have always sought to get a "No" vote in every referendum on the one hand, and those who, on the other hand, are deeply enthusiastic for the federalist project in Europe. Between those two polar extremes there is a very different and enthusiastic vision for Europe which rarely gets articulated in any Irish debate. There are institutions such as the IIEA in North Great George's Street, which does a great job from one point of view in bringing European speakers here and getting Irish people to think about European topics. I do not want to decry it unfairly but it is very much a Brussels-oriented institution and that may have something to do with how it is financed and the like. There are Jean Monnet professors in many of our universities who are sponsored by the European Union. There are many European movements and funded organisations which are opinion shapers.

The real question, however, is whether it is possible to construct a united states of Europe, the kind of thing the Prime Minister of Italy claimed he was about to bring about, the kind of structure proposed by the Spinelli Group which includes Guy Verhofstadt and various other strong federalists, namely, a unified European super state. Do we in Ireland want the development of such a body? In my view the great majority of Irish people do not want it. When the British were trying to negotiate a pre-Brexit agreement under the Prime Ministership of David Cameron, The Irish Timesconducted an opinion poll on issues such as attitudes to further integration and the like there was a 2:1 or 3:1 majority in favour of a more intergovernmental Europe over a strongly federalist one. Those opinion polls are not published very often. Perhaps The Irish Times, editorially, is not very keen on examining what kind of Europe the Irish people really want. We do not have a deep analysis of what would be involved in the establishment of a federal united states of Europe and whether the Irish people have any interest in being involved in such a project.

Guy Verhofstadt, who came here recently to address various committees in the Dáil Chamber, wrote a book with Daniel Cohn-Bendit called For Europe!, three or four years ago. In it he wrote about the necessity to build up Europe as an empire. He said it would be a good empire. More recently, he published a book called Europe's Last Chanceand the thesis of that book is that we need a strong single state of Europe with a single government to play its part internationally. The present arrangement in Europe, a partnership of sovereign member states which pool aspects of their sovereignty and conduct a lot of their relationship on an intergovernmental level, suits countries of our size and outlook. It may not be very attractive to some people in Europe but it suits us and it suits most of the member states of the EU that this aspect of Europe should be preserved. Therefore, strong leaps towards integration or an idea of a political defence and security union, etc., need to be challenged because we have to ask whether the ultimate aim of that project is credible.

Over the summer I read a book on the Austro-Hungarian empire, I know that is a terrible confession to make. It was a fascinating read because the empire came crashing down in 1918. It was a multicultural, multilingual, multinational empire but the only thing that kept it together was coercion. In the end it was an unnatural thing, which was doomed to disintegrate because there was not a single population or demosunderlying any effort to make it democratic. There was not a single people who would be in a position to understand each other if there were, for instance, a debate for a president of Europe. For example, if there were an elected president of Europe, in the same sense that the Americans have one, how would a Bulgarian person watching the TV debate know what was happening if it was an Irish candidate, or vice versa?There is not a degree of cohesion in Europe to justify the creation of a federated state. Not merely is it an impossibility but it is a dangerous project to pursue because it is improbable. One only has to look to the United States of America to see what huge federal parties did. The Democrats in America became the most reactionary and pro-segregationist party for a long time. At the same time, liberal democrats in New England were an entirely different breed. America was a sort of coalition of people but at least they spoke the same language and could understand the points the other was making.

We now need a debate in which not just short contributions of the kind that are possible here but well worked out positions on the degree of integration this country really supports, and in what areas, are spelt out clearly. Looking at the final points that the Minister of State referred to on the last page of her statement, those are the tasks which I believe deserve our attention. We should say to the federalists that this is the agenda, nothing else, and tell them to get on with it, to stop making noises that frighten everyone, to stop trying to dream up Europe as a single united superpower that can make war on people and the like, and to abandon that concept and stick to what is working at the moment.