EU must face up to real prospect of a second Irish ‘No’ to Nice

Date: 23/05/02

If Ireland rejects the Nice Treaty a second time later this year, the EU will plunge into crisis. So why, wonders Katinka Barysch, doesn't anyone seem to care?

EU ENLARGEMENT is finally within reach, or is it? The candidates have done most of their homework. Accession talks are in their final stages. The most likely first-round entrants have been chosen. A date has been set, at least tentatively. The accession treaty is being prepared. But the EU has yet to reform its own institutions.

The blueprint for this was drawn up at the Nice summit in 2000, and most EU countries have since ratified the changes - with the notable exception of Ireland, which rejected the Nice Treaty in a referendum last year.

After a moment of stunned silence, the EU asked the Irish to think again. The Irish 'no', says the EU, was the result of one-off factors, such as low voter turnout and the government's inept campaign. Surely, as good Europeans the Irish would vote in favour of Nice if given another chance?

Thanks, but no thanks

THE factors that made Ireland reject the treaty in June 2001 will, more likely than not, lead to another 'no' in November, when the second referendum is to be held.

Turnout among the pro-Europeans could again be so low as to hand an easy victory to their opponents. A second Irish 'no' would doom the Nice Treaty and plunge the EU into one of its worst political crises.

And yet Brussels remains conspicuously silent. The issue is so politically sensitive that all the EU can - officially - do is hope that enough euro-enthusiasts will turn out in November. 'There is no plan B', insists one EU official. To second-guess the outcome of the referendum would not only appear undemocratic, it would also present the EU with one of the most awkward choices in its 50-year history.

Although the Nice Treaty deals with a host of issues, its main function is to prepare the EU's creaking institutions and decision-making for enlargement.

If it was scrapped, the accession process might grind to a halt until a new treaty has been worked out and ratified.

This would be hugely embarrassing for the EU, which has promised to be ready for enlargement by 2004.

After ten years in the accession queue, the eastern Europeans are running out of patience. They have undertaken painful reform and invested huge amounts of political capital in their accession preparations.

Another small delay might be acceptable, a big bust-up would not.

The alternative would be to salvage those parts of the treaty that are deemed essential for enlargement.

This is an enticing option. But it cannot be considered in public since it would make the Irish referendum look irrelevant and play into the hands of the'no' campaigners, who claim that the EU is undemocratic and that small countries like Ireland don't matter.

Enlargement without Nice?

COULD enlargement take place without the changes enshrined in the Nice Treaty?

From a legal point of view, perhaps. But politically speaking, no. Enlargement requires, at the very least, an adjustment of the votes in the Council of Ministers (CoM), the EU's main decision-making body, and a reform of the European Commission.

The Nice Treaty contains an elaborate formula for both issues, but the basics were already enshrined in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997.

However, the Amsterdam Treaty also says that at least one year before EU membership climbs over 20 an Inter-governmental Conference (IGC) has to be convened to review the Treaty in light of the institutional changes required for enlargement.

Some lawyers have taken this to mean that enlargement without Nice would be limited to five countries. But since the EU has all but promised ten of the 12 applicants that they would get in in the first round, this is a political non-starter.

Others argue that, strictly speaking, the Amsterdam Treaty only requires that the IGC be convened, not that its resolutions be adopted or implemented. Pointing to the IGC that took place ahead of the 2000 Nice summit, they claim that a 'big bang' enlargement is possible on the basis of Amsterdam.

'This is too far-fetched', says Christophe Hellion from the Centre for European Legal Studies at Cambridge University. Politically, the institutional changes enshrined in the Nice Treaty are a sine qua non for enlargement, he argues.

First, the EU has promised to reform itself before enlargement as part of the so-called Copenhagen accession criteria.

Second, adding ten new countries without adjusting the weighting of votes in the CoM would leave EU decision-making heavily dominated by small countries. Germany and the other large EU countries insist that the new voting formula agreed on in Nice is enshrined into EU law before enlargement.

It appears likely that the EU will try to save the Nice formula even if the actual treaty has to be discarded.

One way of doing this would be to take the institutional provisions from Nice and paste them into the accession treaty, the document that makes enlargement a reality. Whether this would be legally correct is open to doubt. Politically, it may just be acceptable.

Opinion polls suggest that Irish voters are not generally opposed to enlargement or the institutional changes it implies. They are more concerned about other bits of Nice, which would be scrapped.

Mayhem nonetheless

BUT even if the EU chose this option, another Irish 'no' could throw enlargement into disarray.

First, the vote will be held when the accession negotiations are in their most sensitive phase. It is EU tradition to put the most difficult bits to one side and tie up a mutually acceptable package at the last minute. An Irish 'no' would cause chaos and confusion and most probably delay the accession talks beyond their end-of-2002 deadline.

More importantly, it could deflate the political momentum behind the accession process. In the East, public support for EU accession, although still high, is shrinking. Any further hold-up would fuel frustration and cynicism.

This would make it more difficult for eastern European politicians to sell the reforms necessary for accession and may even endanger the accession referenda that the candidates will hold.

Start from scratch

IF for some reasons the institutional changes are not included in the accession treaty, the EU would be back to square one.

Most EU countries are less than thrilled about the reforms adopted in Nice. Some may be tempted to let the treaty die in the hope of getting a better deal.

Their preferred option may be to hand over the question of institutional change to the EU's Convention, the assembly of politicians, civil society organisations and bureaucrats that is currently sorting out the issues for the next inter-governmental conference in 2004.

There are two problems with this. First, although the Nice summit failed miserably at its task of simplifying EU decision-making procedures, there is no guarantee that renewed bargaining would lead to a better outcome.

Second, the question of institutional reform would get entangled with other the problems on the Convention's ambitious agenda.

Meanwhile, accession preparations would be stalled. Even if the next IGC was concluded in time in 2004, it would take another year or so to get a new treaty ratified. Enlargement would then be delayed until 2006 or beyond.

This prospect alone should help to focus European minds and stir up a debate about the implications of another Irish 'no'.

• Katinka Barysch is a senior analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit (www.viewswire.com).

Major feature. Author says if Ireland rejects the Nice Treaty for a second time in November 2002, the EU will plunge into crisis. So why doesn't anyone seem to care?