Vigorous campaign needed to highlight reform treaty issues

World View: The eyes of the world will be on Ireland next year as we vote in a referendum on the European Union's reform treaty, soon to be known as the Treaty of Lisbon when it is signed in that city next month.

Since Ireland is almost certain to be the only member state holding a referendum, it will become a focus for those elsewhere in the EU who wanted one. It will also be an anxious test case for the governments that retreated in haste from the constitutional treaty that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 towards this more orthodox (and much less comprehensible) legal text, which keeps most of the previous one's institutional changes.

The Government foresees a campaign stretching from January through to the early summer, with voting probably on a date in late May or early June yet to be announced. It is not clear whether another referendum, on children's rights, will be run on the same day.

The Government's campaigning will overlap with public information, awareness-raising and political argument for and against the treaty. The usual three- to four-week intensive campaign will precede the voting. The Government will seek to - and needs to - engage all Ministers and departments, and a wider pro-treaty civil society, in both aspects of the campaign, not only those directly concerned with its major issues. It can't all be left to Dick Roche. And they will hope Opposition parties favouring the treaty will support it and follow the slogan adopted by the Labour Party during the second Nice referendum in 2002: "Hold Your Fire. Fianna Fáil Can Wait. Europe Can't".

That raises the question of whether such referendums should best be seen as "second-order" political battles in which the key factor is support for, or opposition to, the government of the day. Or do they reflect underlying attitudes towards the EU and its policies?

Typical of the second-order approach would be a recent remark of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's that the last EU referendum "was about everything but Nice". On quite a different tack Eugene Regan of Fine Gael said in the Seanad on November 14th that given his record on the economy, health and the Mahon tribunal, "I just wonder, with the present Taoiseach, can this referendum be passed . . . In my view, the referendum will fail if the present Taoiseach is still in power next year".

That comment got under Mr Ahern's skin, not least because he has a sense of ownership of the treaty, having completed the 2004 negotiations. As he says, this is "not as sweet a document" as that was. But he believes it can be presented convincingly as an effective way to secure a better-functioning Europe in a wider world.

If a second-order contest about the Government's record in office rather than the EU treaty is to be avoided, it will be essential that a vigorous and confident campaign is mounted. Research into the two Nice referendums using indicators from EU Commission surveys after them have convinced political scientists that European issues were stronger predictors of voter choice than those seen as plebiscites on the incumbent government. But that requires a strong campaign.

In fact a striking feature of the 2001-2002 experience was that a general election was held between the two Nice referendums and the issue figured in it hardly at all. This was because the shock among the political establishment of defeat in June 2001 led rapidly to a cross-party agreement on forming the National Forum on Europe and improving Dáil scrutiny as a way to raise public awareness and channel political debate.

The issue was astutely parked into the October 2002 referendum, when the Yes side mounted a far more vigorous and broad-based campaign. It mobilised some half a million more voters in favour of the treaty, pushing the turnout up from 34.8 to 49.5 per cent and yielding a 63 to 37 per cent margin of victory. Nearly all of these voters had abstained in the first referendum, largely because they were not convinced by the utterly lacklustre campaign in favour. Many said they did not know enough about the issues - responding by abstention to the slogan "If you don't know, vote No". In contrast, the No bloc remained relatively constant between the two referendums.

Irish opinion towards European integration, as measured in Eurobarometer polling, is - comparatively - very enthusiastic, but quite thinly spread. There is much indifference and a relatively low level of knowledge. A lot depends on the questions asked.

Attitudes towards the euro are more pragmatic and better informed than those towards the treaty, for example.

Those who abstain or vote No come disproportionately from manual and unskilled occupations, women, the less-educated and farmers. There is a clear relationship between greater knowledge and favourable attitudes; and positive engagement is stimulated by political debate.

This pattern is readily seen in the contrast between the Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll on attitudes to the proposed constitutional treaty in March 2005, which found 46 to 12 per cent in favour with 42 per cent Don't Knows, and last month's poll, which found 25 per cent Yes, 13 per cent No and 62 per cent Don't Knows. The collapse of political debate on the treaty over those two years is faithfully reflected in the falling away of support and the increase in those with no opinion.

Official Ireland is thereby challenged to respond by reviving political debate on what is at stake in this treaty. Rather than argue its merits in boring detail about policy processes that are often banal, and therefore not salient for most citizens, they will need to concentrate on the broad purposes of this latest phase of integration. Mostly this has to do with making the EU more effective in a more interdependent world and how Ireland best contributes to and gains from that.

That makes debate easier, more focused - and more interesting. External interventions will add spice to the debate, but overbearing ones can create resentment. Opponents of the treaty will aim to project their own agenda into this debate, including such diverse issues as US troops' use of Shannon, Tara, neutrality, immigration, farm cuts, abortion and the dangers of neoliberal economics for social and job security.

One attitudinal pattern to emerge from opinion research across member states, including Ireland, is a clear division between those claiming only a national identity and those who say they are national first and European as well. The latter group has been growing faster than the former for the last 15 years. Those sharing such plural identities are more willing to support deeper integration in selected fields like climate change, defence and foreign policy, immigration, cross-border crime and globalisation.