Subscriber OnlyOpinionIreland's 50 years in the EU

Irish people have played important role in EU, but not always in a way that pleases Brussels

Analysis: The EU is not effective enough in offering viable solutions to ever-growing problems

Flags in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. File photograph: EPA

Stefan Auer
Sun Jan 1 2023 - 05:00

Ireland joined the EEC, as it then was, in January 1973. This is one of a series of articles exploring our evolving relationship with the European Union – and its past, present and future

“All is quiet on New Year’s Day,” sang Bono 40 years ago. New Year’s Day is meant to be a day of hope as we think of possibilities for a new beginning. Not so back then. With their sombre song U2 captured the mood of a generation at a moment when Europe – and Ireland in it – was in trouble: “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day”.

December 1982 was one of the low points in the Cold War. It was just a year after the defeat of the Polish Solidarity movement, which led to the imprisonment of its leader Lech Wałęsa. The song was in fact inspired by Wałęsa and his enforced separation from his wife Danuta. With its deeply personal story of desire – “I want to be with you, be with you/night and day” – New Year’s Day was also a love song that young Bono wrote for his wife Ali. Reflecting the political gloom, the accompanying music video, which U2 recorded in snowy Sweden, included black and white footage of Russian soldiers and their tanks enduring the cold winter. And here we go again. Like in 1982, we are finishing 2022 in a sombre mood, not expecting much to change on New Year’s Day. Only this time there is a very real war in Europe.

Bono’s hit is a fitting metaphor for the Irish love affair with Europe and a timely reminder that our post-Cold War expectations may have been too optimistic. For today the footage of Russian tanks and soldiers is a semi-permanent fixture of the news bulletin, not just a music video.

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How much better the future used to be! Wałęsa’s fight was vindicated, with Poland becoming the first nation to free itself from the Soviet (and thus also Russian) tutelage. What followed was the spectacular success of Ireland in Europe in the 1990s and then the EU’s expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.

To many of the prospective members Ireland in fact served as an example, showing how a small nation state can prosper in Europe. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke for many a Central European in her recent address to the joint Houses of the Oireachtas when she claimed that “all other Europeans look up to Ireland”. Gracious to her hosts, she went on to thank Ireland for everything its people “have brought to our union”.

To be sure Irish people have played an important role, but it was at times not as pleasing to Brussels as von der Leyen would have us believe. When the people rejected the Treaty of Nice in a 2001 referendum their decision was seen by EU elites as an act of sabotage that could derail EU expansion. The Irish had their doubts whether an ever-wider union should also be “ever closer”, in other words whether the EU’s widening had to be preceded by deepening. A year later the result was reversed in another referendum, and on May 1st, 2004, the EU took on 10 new member states.

The people of Ireland were in fact not alone in their scepticism towards further integration. The EU’s attempt to give itself a quasi-federal constitution was defeated by referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005. The union we have today is an in-between polity that is strong enough to constrain its members – undermining democracy at national level – but not effective enough in offering viable solutions to an ever-growing number of problems.

The vision for a post-sovereign and post-national Europe in which all conflicts can be solved through negotiations has been damaged

In the Irish case this is best explicated by the trauma of the euro zone crisis and the humiliating bailout in 2010. As this outlet opined, “there is the shame of it all”.

“Having obtained our political independence from Britain to be the masters of our own affairs, we have now surrendered our sovereignty to the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund” (November 19th, 2010).

Today the euro zone crisis seems a distant memory, but the vision for a post-sovereign and post-national Europe in which all conflicts can be solved through negotiations has been damaged. For democracy to work, demos is needed and this is still found primarily at the national level.

And just as European democracy is unattainable without European demos, the euro will remain dysfunctional without further fiscal federalisation – an impossible task in a Europe of sovereign nation states. At any rate the problems of the euro zone will not go away as long as the single European currency remains an incomplete project. The union itself is an incomplete project – a quality that has been seen as one its major assets. Increasingly it is becoming a dangerous liability. Not just in the euro zone, even more so in relation to Ukraine and Russia.

The EU is not – and is unlikely ever to become – a credible military actor

To be clear, first and foremost, the Russian aggression against Ukraine has had horrible consequences for the people of Ukraine. But especially as it comes after a long decade of crises, the war also presents an existential challenge to the project of European unity. While the Russian invasion overshadows the European Union’s dramas in its most recent past, it does not make them go away. If anything the war has made some of Europe’s challenges more intractable. For example, the euro zone crisis might be revived as the economic situation deteriorates owing to the energy crisis.

But the biggest challenge the war has created is to Europe’s self-understanding. “Soft power Europe” has proved rather powerless in confrontation with Putin’s Russia. The ideal of economic interdependence leading to perpetual peace might have worked well within the EU, but not towards its neighbours.

Ukraine would no longer exist were it not for the heroic struggle of its people and the support they have received primarily from the US, UK and individual member states of the EU, such as Poland, rather than the EU as a whole. This is not to understate Europe’s contribution. EU sanctions on Russia are important, as is the financial support for Ukraine and humanitarian assistance to refugees. For the first time the EU has even provided financial resources for the purchase of weapons; more recently still, the EU took a coordinating role to train up to 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers – unprecedented steps, which would have been unimaginable even just a year ago.

The danger is that the EU – alongside Nato and the collective effort of the West – might prove strong enough to maintain Ukraine’s ability to fight against Russia, but not sufficient to help it defeat the aggressor

It is worth noting in passing that even Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald recently praised the EU for having “sent a powerful message to Putin that Ukraine is not alone – that Europe will stand up for what is right”. Somewhat incoherently, McDonald in the same speech decried the EU’s “growing militarisation”. This followed von der Leyen praising the Irish people for having “made Europe a better place”.

Will it prove good enough for Ukraine, though? The EU is not – and is unlikely ever to become – a credible military actor. The more French president Emmanuel Macron talks about “European sovereignty” or the EU’s quasi-foreign minister Josep Borrell about a “geopolitical Europe”, the more obvious the gap becomes between the EU’s capabilities and the expectations it raises.

The EU’s in-between nature has unwittingly exacerbated Ukraine’s predicament. Already in 2014, Europe’s soft power proved sufficient to trigger the Ukrainian “revolution of dignity”, but it was impotent when it came to protecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity vis-à-vis Russia.

The situation is even more dire today. The danger is that the EU – alongside Nato and the collective effort of the West – might prove strong enough to maintain Ukraine’s ability to fight against Russia, but not sufficient to help it defeat the aggressor. The result would be a bloody, protracted war of attrition on the EU’s eastern border, making rhetoric about Ukraine’s rightful place in Europe sound increasingly hollow.

The prospect of nothing much changing on “New Year’s Day” in Ukraine and Europe is as disconcerting as it is likely.

Dr Stefan Auer is associate professor in European studies at the University of Hong Kong and author of European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency (London: Hurst/New York: OUP, 2022)

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