Dublin’s delicate balancing act

Date: 06/06/1996

As Ireland prepares to take over the EU helm in less than a month, Rory Watson examines the course it has charted for its six-month presidency.

IRELAND is set to break a pattern which has increasingly dogged the Union when it takes over the six-month EU presidency on 1 July.

For the Dublin government will be the first for more than two years to take over at the helm of Union business without facing a domestic election.

The need to concentrate political energy on wooing a fickle electorate, and the general uncertainty and nervousness brought about by an approaching election, have hung over the past four EU presidencies of Germany, France, Spain and Italy in turn.

The combination led to a slowdown in Union business and, in France's case, an almost unprecedented seven-week moratorium during which no Council of Ministers meetings took place.

The Irish, preparing to take over the running of the Union for a fifth time, confidently expect to avoid that pitfall. But they face a challenge of a very different kind and one which none of their EU partners has had to negotiate.

They will have to ensure that the Intergovernmental Conference does not languish in the doldrums, despite the certainty that a final agreement on EU reform will not be reached by the end of the year.

In addition, they will have to prevent any frustration and acrimony spawned by deadlocked negotiations from spilling over into day-to-day policy areas.

Neither Italy, which launched the IGC, nor the Netherlands, which hopes to conclude it, face such a delicate balancing act.

Irish officials readily accept that maintaining the IGC momentum will be far from easy. The difficulties inherent in the task were underlined by the cautious tone adopted by Foreign Minister Dick Spring last week in a speech outlining his country's presidency goals. Referring to the IGC, he said simply: “Our aim will be to advance its work as efficiently and expeditiously as possible.”

Ireland plans to follow Italy's example and signal concrete changes to the Union by tabling specific articles for the revised Maastricht Treaty. Dublin's target is to secure agreement on all but a handful of the most contentious issues in the hope that the latter can be settled by its Dutch successors after a British general election.

If there is one major political uncertainty for the Irish presidency, it is the future of the UK's Conservative government. Current wisdom suggests that Prime Minister John Major will battle on until the last possible moment - spring 1997 - before calling a general election.

It is that logic which has raised fears of an ever-more vocal tide of Euroscepticism in the UK - already at fever pitch because of the continuing dispute over the EU's ban on British beef exports - and of agreement on key aspects of the IGC being blocked by UK opposition.

But another school of thought suggests that Major, wrapped in the nationalist Union Jack he has donned in the battle over beef, may gamble on an autumn election - or may be forced into one by losing his slender one-seat parliamentary majority.

If that happens, the probable change of government in the UK could have a major impact on progress in the IGC and possibly persuade the Irish to be more adventurous in the package they hand over to the Dutch.

As he prepares for the challenging six months ahead - which will include 40 Council of Ministers' meetings, seven informal ministerial gatherings and at least one (and possibly two) European summits - Spring is confident that Ireland will “maintain its record, developed over our four previous presidencies, for managing the Union agenda successfully”.

Ireland has placed the fight against unemployment at the top of that agenda. The government is keen to inject much-needed impetus into European support for national action and will remind its partners of the strategy they adopted at their Essen summit in December 1994 to combat the problem.

This included a pledge to promote vocational training, turn economic growth into jobs, improve flexibility and competitiveness, and help those groups hardest hit by unemployment.

Examination of the extent to which that strategy has been implemented so far will be a key element of the Dublin summit at the end of the year.

“We have identified this as a major task of our presidency. What we want to achieve is a single, substantive, incisive analysis of the measures taken so far and the effect they are having,” Spring told a meeting of the Trans-European Policy Studies Association.

The priority is fairly standard EU fare - even if a yawning gap remains between hope and reality - given that almost 20 million citizens are unemployed.

What is more surprising is the second priority the Irish have set for themselves and the Union: the fight against drugs.

The phenomenon is one which affects not just users, but also the victims of crime associated with the drugs trade.

The Irish have already discussed their intention to focus on the problem with Commission Secretary-General David Williamson and have established an interdepartmental committee in Dublin to examine all the health, crime and international issues involved.

Spring acknowledges that the fight against drugs is not one which can be won in a single six-month EU presidency.

Nevertheless he insists: “Each country has its own approach to suit its own society and culture. But by acting together and by taking into account the effect of our particular policies on others, we can achieve far more as 15 than we each could on our own.”

The Irish will also be called on to play their part in maintaining the impetus behind moves towards a single currency.

Although European leaders determined last December that stage three of economic and monetary union (EMU) would begin on 1 January 1999, the decision to do so must be formally confirmed when they meet in Dublin in December.

In addition, Irish Finance Minister Ruairí Quinn will be pressing for agreement on two far more substantive issues facing those charged with turning the EMU plan into a reality.

The Union must establish the rules which will define the relationship between currencies inside the Euro area and those outside. It must also decide how fiscal discipline will be ensured within the single currency zone.

On the external front, Ireland finds itself facing a traditional Thomas Cook-style tour of the world as the Union develops its relationship with North America, Russia, South Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean.

One major novelty of Dublin's six-month presidency will be the ministerial review of the World Trade Organisation in December, which will test the Union's ability to make a coherent and effective input into this first opportunity to fine tune the operations of the global trade referee since it was created last year.

As he surveys the months ahead, Spring has already spelled out his strategy for a successful presidency.

“The essence of a presidency is good management and the secret of good management is to be in command of all the issues, large and small,” he insists.

Ireland has spared no effort in trying to ensure its presidency runs smoothly - even taking the almost unprecedented step of consulting the European Parliament to ensure meetings of ministers and MEPs do not clash over the next six months.

Having made their preparations, the Irish must now keep their fingers crossed that the unexpected does not blow them off course.