A disturbing absence of consensus as the IGC approaches

EFFECTIVE political discourse is made possible by a common language and vocabulary shared among its participants. Where these elude participants in a political system, it is a sure sign that they, are failing to construct an effective institution.

Such thoughts are prompted by the forthcoming Inter-Governmental Conference of the European Union, whose deliberations will be inaugurated in Turin at the end of the month.

Ireland will have an important, possibly a crucial, role in its deliberations, because this State will hold the EU presidency from July to December.

It must chair not only the many ministerial and committee meetings that make up the sinews of the EU's system of government, but also the lGC's deliberations. As the Union sets about its task there is a disturbing lack of vision, philosophy, and therefore of political consensus about what it is for and how best to describe it.

We hear, rather, of repeated and systematic disagreement on this score - there is more and more talk of a multi-speed or variable Europe, in which one group of states are free to make progress faster than the others.

The most notably antagonistic polarity is that between the German government's advocacy of greater political union on the one hand, and Britain's rejection of such an agenda in favour of minimal change to the treaty, on the other. In Dr Helmut Kohl's metaphor those who are able and willing to make progress faster must not be constrained by the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy.

The IGC's negotiating architecture will tend to crystallise around these positions, especially if France, as expected, comes to the conclusion that its greatest priority must be to protect its interests through a continuing close alliance with Germany.

SUCH an antagonism, if it is put to the test by the German govern during the autumn talks as threatened by several of Dr Kohl's closest lieutenants, would put the "Irish presidency in a particularly difficult position. The

Government aspires to be among the first group making an EMU when and if it happens - and we will hear more about German attitudes to this from the Bundesbank president, Mr Hans Tietmeyer, who visits Dublin next week.

The Government is well aware that the Germans believe such inner core membership will require commitments on foreign policy, defence and justice and home affairs as well on monetary union.

But Ireland is constrained not only by its economic interdependence with Britain on the question of monetary union; but on foreign policy and defence, where it is happier with the British then the Franco-German model; and also on justice and home affairs, where it cannot jeopardise the common travel area with Britain.

Increasingly, too, it may be necessary to balance the aspiration to join the European inner core against the negotiation on the future of Northern Ireland and relations between Ireland and Britain, which has been taking up so much of the Government's time.

It will therefore be in Ireland's interest to avoid having to make too stark a choice in the short or long terms between the German and the British models of European integration. An isolated Britain facing into a general election will not be a stable negotiating partner on the North. And other EU member states would expect Ireland's intimacy with and knowledge of Britain's political leadership to be turned to, advantage. But this will require more flexibility than has so far been in evidence on the British side.

POLITICAL terminology comes into the equation at this point. There is increasing consensus that explicitly federal language appropriate to a fully integrated European polity is inappropriate. The EU is a strange and a new political phenomenon in many respects, which is precisely why there has been such difficulty in finding a vocabulary or metaphors to describe it accurately. It is an original project, seeking unity among European peoples in a post-imperial, voluntary fashion.

The German constitutional court found that it was not a state as such, much less a federal one, but an association of states, which has not yet developed a political process or a finished identity of its own.

Nation states therefore remain central in it as the primary repositories of citizenship, democracy, welfare and identity. These all begin in the nation state - but they do not any more end there in a period of interdependence and globalisation that is putting such states more and more into question.

The IGC's challenge will be to find a formula to describe and to govern this process in a much enlarged Union. The relevant treaty provisions may well be drafted in the Irish presidency. It would therefore be worth considering seriously" whether the time has come to draw up basic principles and values that could define the EU in the context of European enlargement and identity. These should affirm multiple diversities, allegiances and identities rather than seek to, substitute European for existing national ones.

The language of "variable geometry", drawn from aeronautics, has been resurrected to describe an EU in which some states, such as Germany and France, would opt for more integration, others, such as Britain, for less.

Ireland's, and arguably the "Union's interests would be better served by a model which preserved common purposes rather than variable ones, captured in the term "unicity", combining the ideas of oneness and uniqueness.

An alternative metaphor, drawn from ornithology, has been suggested as a happier model by William and Helen Wallace, two British writers on European integration. Flocks of flying geese maintain their normal V formation in a remarkably predictable fashion. The birds fly in family groups. But there is no single leader of the flock, since the birds take turns to fly in different positions in the formation.

The best positions are near but not at the front, and there is provision for stronger birds to help tired or laggard birds.

As they put it, "the members of the flock have a sense of direction and common interests in maintaining momentum, by sharing responsibilities". But are all the member states geese? Some may be eagles, or sparrows. And some may be chickens who cannot fly.