To be-EU or not to be-EU? I wrote here recently about the changing nature of the European Union: that it was once a peace project built on trade, which has turned its economic gaze to military-industrial development. More specifically, that it is drawing in outside powers on a scale never seen before, by way of Canada and Ukraine.
Ukraine is an official European Union candidate, while Canada is deepening its trade, security and defence relationship with the bloc. The last two weeks, however, have shown that Europe is not only changing in size and structure, but in how much power it wishes existing member states to retain.
This new economy is not one in which the Republic is likely to thrive. Reindustrialisation will reward countries that had, at some recent time, a deep expertise in manufacturing and high-value physical output. In other words, the benefits accrue to the factories that France, Italy, Germany and even the United Kingdom can presumably dust off and reopen. Even better if they can be repurposed for defence, one of Europe’s fastest-growing areas of industrial investment. Ukraine and Canada are obviously winners in this new Europe, as they are enormous agricultural and industrial economies with an eye on a permanent defence footing.
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This State, on the other hand, has very intentionally – rightly or wrongly – decided to become the opposite: a services economy with no industrial defence base and a cultural tradition of never building one.
Discussions here of a new defence-oriented Europe are frequently met with disbelief. “Maybe, but it will never happen; accession takes years, so why the panic? And in any case, it will never be voted through.”
That was true of Europe – but of the old Europe, when accession took years. Many member states would have been happy to say no to Ukraine’s agricultural sector and to the corruption that lives deep inside its institutions. But the Europe in which those objections were decisive has changed beyond recognition. In the Republic we do not seem to have noticed this yet.
Unless you look at Europe through its new lens of geopolitical power, you might miss the fact that integration has effectively already happened. The questions people here think need to be answered are now mostly irrelevant: should Canada be voted the European Union’s first-ever associate member? Should Ukraine be voted a full one? Functional integration is already under way, and by the time any procedural integration is needed by way of a vote, it will be little more than a technicality. Granting Ukraine or Canada their new titles will simply be naming something that already exists.
Defence integration is already in train, too.
The EU’s new defence-industrial strategy isn’t just a one-way deal to supply weapons for Ukraine; Ukrainian defence manufacturing is being integrated into the European economy. In addition, Ukraine is already inside Europe’s energy market, its customs co-operation and the European Union’s €90 billion loan architecture. Meanwhile, Canadian foreign minister Anita Anand came to the Republic last month to discuss joining the broad defence financing frameworks Ukraine is already part of.
Now look at EU market access – the precise thing accession used to be for. The European Commission recently announced it will attempt to allow candidates access – albeit conditional and reversible – before being voted in. In the words of commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s top adviser: “Earlier integration would open opportunities for union businesses, strengthen European value chains and reduce strategic dependencies” before any votes are needed.
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These benefits once typically arrived at the end of the process. But today, they are beginning to be transferred beforehand, which changes the meaning of a “no”. In the old Europe, saying no meant preventing integration from happening. In the new model, after integration has already happened, saying no would mean deciding how much of it to unwind.
All of this assumes there will be a vote at all. Commission documents show Von der Leyen will imminently put forward a vote to move from unanimity to majority voting on certain issues involving accession – as vetoes “can delay or prevent timely decisions”.
The commission is also proposing to drop the principle that every EU country has a commissioner, which it believes will be unworkable in a union of 30 or more members. The last time this was mooted in 2013, the Republic was unsurprisingly one of the most vocal opponents of the move.
As always, the trade-offs between speed and proportional democracy are about to come face to face.
However, and ironically, the commission needs states to vote unanimously to abolish the need to vote. This means that we, along with the other states, must agree to this; a matter which will either be voted on via referendum in the Republic or, less democratically, be passed with only both Houses of the Oireachtas approving it.
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So instead of debating whether Ukraine and Canada will join the European Union in their proposed capacities, we need a conversation in the Republic about what it means to be part of this new, larger EU. Giving single market access to countries with comparatively few obligations, and doing so with limited vetoes, surely cheapens the benefits of “full” membership. Needless to say, nobody wants to pay the annual fees for a golf course when non-members can pay as you go. So what does this mean for Irish politics?
The stakes for this State are high as we try to figure out our place in this new Europe. It will require rebuilding the relationship between politicians unable to deliver urgently needed reform and a public whose trust is not guaranteed, for whom right-wing populist politics look ever more appealing. All of this is happening under the spotlight of the State’s EU presidency, at a moment when Brussels most needs us to enlarge its economic and military union – an impetus that is in conflict with the desire at home for the public to have a say in the decisions that will affect the State.
But the danger for this Republic isn’t that we make bad decisions in the coming era – it’s that we don’t realise there are changes to decide on at all.
