The EU's Commissioner for External Relations has warned that a second rejection of the Nice Treaty will halt European Union enlargement and have serious political consequences for Ireland, writes Denis Staunton, in Brussels
Mr Chris Patten also rejected suggestions that Europe's emerging defence identity constitutes a militarisation of the EU.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Mr Patten said the Irish people should have no doubt about the effect of a No vote in a second referendum on Nice.
"It will stop the enlargement and some people, with whom I do not have any sympathy, will inevitably say that here is a country that has done well out of membership of the European Union over many years but is not prepared to extend those benefits to countries that have suffered from the division of Europe for 50 years. You cannot believe that this will not have political consequences," he said.
Mr Patten will deliver the Newman Lecture at University College Dublin this week, examining the relationship between national sovereignty and multilateralism.
Mr Patten is the first member of the European Commission to spell out in such stark terms the consequences of a second rejection of Nice. He dismissed suggestions by some anti-Nice campaigners that the Commission should avoid any participation in Ireland's debate about the treaty.
"You cannot stop me from saying what I honestly believe passionately by arguing that by declaring this, the European Commission is trying to bully the Irish people into voting in a certain way," he said.
The Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, said after last year's referendum that legally enlargement could proceed without the Nice Treaty. However, Mr Patten said Mr Prodi was speaking before EU leaders announced at Laeken that 10 candidate countries would be ready to join by 2004.
Mr Prodi had acknowledged later that regardless of the legal position, the treaty was a political prerequisite for enlargement. Mr Patten said all 20 commissioners agreed that failure to ratify it would derail the process of enlargement.
Mr Patten dismissed arguments by some anti-Nice campaigners that the EU's Rapid Reaction Force represented a step towards the militarisation of Europe and back-door route for Irish membership of NATO. He said defence budgets had been shrinking in most EU member-states and that the new force would only carry out the so-called Petersberg tasks - mainly peace-keeping and policing operations.
"Nobody could honestly look at Europe today at the proportion of GNP that is spent on defence and argue that we are seeing the Spartanising of Athens. It defies sensible analysis. What we are speaking about in the Petersberg tasks is something that is clearly within the tradition of Irish foreign policy," he said.
Criticism of the EU's opaque decision-making machinery was valid and he expressed the hope that the Convention on Europe, which begins on February 28th, would propose significant changes.
EU ministers should meet in public when legislating, he said, and national parliaments should be bound more closely into the decision-making process.
Mr Patten repeated his call to the US to resist a retreat into unilateralism, adding that even the most powerful nation on earth needed allies to pursue its goals.
"Let's recall that the successful ejection of Iraq from Kuwait, the successful though painful defence of the people of Kosovo against brutality, those things were managed with a great deal of American fire-power but also with a large number of friends and allies.
"They were successful operations . . . because people identified with the United States and were led by the United States. It wasn't assumed that we would simply tag along," he said.