Forum can play vital role in clarifying EU attitudes

".....If we want to increase democratic control we have to find better ways of connecting the national political institutions with the supranational ones. It is the central task of modern politics".

SO concludes Chris Patten, EU Commissioner for External Relations, writing (in the July issue of Prospect) on the "legitimacy gap" revealed in the EU by several recent developments, including the Irish referendum vote against the Nice Treaty.

In a week spent absorbing the lessons of the protest movements against the G8 summit in Genoa, his point applies in a wider field than the EU alone. Globalisation is put centre-stage by these events. If it is to be regulated and eventually governed in such a way as to mitigate the current bias towards neo-liberal free market values and to defend social protection systems built up largely at national level, it will be all the more necessary to address that gap in legitimacy and democracy.

In a White Paper on European governance published this week, the European Commission says many of its ideas for improving relations between national and supranational levels of government "could be tested at global level".

The EU is a pioneer in this respect. How it resolves these issues can provide exemplary solutions to the challenges and possibilities of globalisation. That this will involve profound changes in how it relates the various layers of government - global, European, national, regional and local - is fully acknowledged in the Commission document, especially in its discussion of networking and much greater involvement of civil society. "The aim should be to create a trans-national `space' where citizens from different countries can discuss what they perceive as being the important challenges for the Union."

The White Paper concludes by arguing that "in a multi-level system the real challenge is establishing clear rules for how competence is shared - not separated; only that non-exclusive vision can secure the best interests of all the member-states and all the Union's citizens".

But this is still heavily aspirational, given the fact that national governments control these boundaries - and their abiding temptation to blame Brussels for unpopular decisions with which they have in fact agreed. As Mr Patten puts it, when things go right politicians claim the successes as national ones; unpopular ones are blamed on an alien process quite beyond their control - "Brussels is not `us'. It is `them' ".

This in turn is intimately connected to another effect of EU membership, the reinforcement of executive over parliamentary power in most member-states, certainly in Britain and Ireland. "In Britain, the sovereignty of parliament has come to mean sovereignty of government," Mr Patten writes. He adds that a president of the US has nothing like the power of a British prime minister, nor has Westminster's select committee system anything like the strength of US Congressional committees.

Other EU legislatures (notably the Danish and Finnish) have tackled this problem by creating powerful parliamentary committees to track and mandate government positions in EU negotiations. In comparison, the Oireachtas committee system is feeble and anaemic.

These issues have come into the foreground of Irish politics since the Nice Treaty was rejected. They were highlighted this week by Fine Gael's refusal to participate in the proposed Forum on Europe on the terms set out by the Government. Mr Michael Noonan would prefer to deal with the Nice issue separately from the longer-term debate on Europe's future initiated by the treaty. It is due to continue over the next three years, culminating in another Inter-Governmental Conference in 2004.

How national parliaments plug into the EU supranational institutions is a central part of that discussion. It is simultaneously a question of national and supranational democratic control.

That makes Mr Noonan's reservations about the forum very relevant, in that he would prefer debate on the future of Europe to take place in the Oireachtas and normal political channels rather than be siphoned off into what would, he thinks, become a three-year talking shop not committed to reaching conclusions. He says the Government would still be required to make decisions; and in the run-up to a general election, the Coalition's three-way divisions on Europe would be disguised by submergence in a consensual extra-parliamentary body.

This prompts two questions. Would participation in a forum really dampen political disagreement elsewhere, given that the Dail consensus on Nice was one of the things that turned voters off voting? And would Fine Gael not thereby lose an opportunity to shape the emerging debate on the future of Europe with the extra-parliamentary groups that so influenced the result - perhaps as members of a new government?

The Nice and 2004 agendas cannot be artificially separated in this way. Debate surely needs to draw in wider sectors than are included in normal parliamentary and political exchanges. There still seems to be a remarkable insouciance among the political and entrepreneurial classes about the consequences of rejecting Nice, given that the other 14 governments are determined to go ahead with it.

This opens up the question of whether they would agree to an alternative treaty if Ireland persists in its rejection. That would rapidly marginalise this State, with profound consequences for its economic well-being. With so much uncertainty in the computer and high-technology companies dominating foreign direct investment here, it is as well to remember that their presence is absolutely predicated on full Irish participation in the EU.

The forum has therefore a vital role to play in clarifying Irish attitudes to Europe, if it is properly constituted. It could also examine carefully several of Chris Patten's suggestions about enhancing national parliamentary participation in the EU's supranational structures, so as to close the legitimacy gap.

They include a second chamber of the European Parliament drawn from national ones; holding elections to the European Parliament on the same day as national ones; giving MEPs a much bigger role in national parliaments; and making it clear that the EU's destiny is to work together with member-states rather than to subsume them.

These ideas are neither exhaustive nor definitive. But they do emphasise the opportunity of using this debate to renew and deepen our democracy and not just to find a way to fix an awkward referendum result.

pgillespie@irish-times.ie]