WORLD VIEW/Paul Gillespie'Enlargement will lay the ghost of Yalta and make a reality of the reunification of Europe, bringing these countries back into the political fold, enabling us to share the European values of peace, stability and prosperity." So said David O'Sullivan, secretary general of the European Commission, at a meeting of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce yesterday morning.
It was the second time he invoked the Yalta Conference this week for an Irish audience, raising the stakes in the referendum debate on the Nice Treaty.
The treaty's opponents say they support EU enlargement but oppose a two-tier Europe. The new arrangements for "enhanced co-operation" will make it easier to divide the continent into a federal core and a periphery consisting of those unwilling or unable to join it, they say.
Enhanced co-operation refers to activities undertaken by groups of states smaller than the whole EU membership, using treaty institutions and laws.
It is a short step (and one its opponents seem invariably to take) to say further that such a division will be inevitable if the treaty is ratified.
Such dogmatism sits very uneasily with the expressed desires of the candidate governments to join the EU as soon as possible on Nice's terms.
It disregards the explicit rules laid down in the treaty intended to ensure such a two-tier system could not emerge.
It also overlooks the concern of its Irish and other negotiators to bring enhanced co-operation (or flexibility as it is often called) into the treaty so that it does not develop outside the EU.
As Voltaire said, "the best is the enemy of the good".
In appraising the two-tier argument about the Nice Treaty, it should be put it in the context of what was politically achievable in an agreement between 15 sovereign governments.
Were it to be rejected there is no guarantee, as David O'Sullivan pointed out, "that the result in any possible future round of negotiations will be as good as last time" - for the candidate states or for Ireland.
The Yalta Conference of 1945 was the ultimate act of cynical statesmanship which divided Europe between East and West, when Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill agreed on spheres of influence at the end of the second World War.
The revolutions of 1989 destroyed that geopolitical settlement. They set the scene for the reunification of the continent under the rule of law for the first time in its history. This is what is at stake in EU enlargement, so far as the candidate governments are concerned.
They accept the terms laid down at Nice and are negotiating accession on that basis. They regard the treaty as their guarantee that enlargement will be agreed according to a very tight timetable which would bring them into full membership by January 2004.
That would give them the political equality to participate in that year's European Parliament elections.
They would be involved as full EU members in the next treaty negotiations on the future of Europe - much more important ones, with a broader focus, than Nice, which could be concluded under Ireland's EU presidency in the first half of that year.
Which would be the greater inequality - disrupting the new member-states' equal participation in the next treaty negotiations or making them subject to the allegedly two-tier arrangements for enhanced co-operation? Voltaire's observation is relevant here too.
To appraise that choice, one should look closely at what was agreed at Nice. It amended rules agreed in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, which brought the subject into European law for the first time.
Once the case for having flexibility formally agreed within the treaty rather than developing informally outside it is granted, the argument became one between multiple speeds and multiple tiers.
Multiple speeds are intended to keep participation in such schemes open to all who want to participate in them (the euro being a good example). A multi-tiered system would be more selective in its membership and more divisive in its effects.
The Nice Treaty makes it easier to apply the basic rules agreed at Amsterdam by removing the right of any one state to veto it and stipulating that at least eight states must be involved, but it gives the European Commission stronger powers to monitor and approve such schemes.
They must be consistent with the EU's objectives, operate only within the limits of its powers, be used only as a last resort and cannot apply to common policies within the EU's exclusive competence. Enhanced co-operation must be "open to all member-states", with as many as possible encouraged to take part.
As a result of these rules, flexibility will not apply to the single market, the Common Agriculture Policy, competition and cohesion policy, which account for most of the EU's activities. It is explicitly ruled out in military or defence affairs. It could be used in areas such as macro-economic management, education and taxation, but, significantly, not one formal proposal to use it has yet been put forward.
It is not possible to conclude on this basis that the Nice Treaty will divide the European Union into more and less equal states. Certainly there is greater and lesser willingness and ability to participate in extra schemes of co-operation. And without credible policies in place enabling weaker or less developed states to catch up, such differentiation could develop within a much larger EU.
The balance of the argument, however, favours enabling the 10 qualified states to join as quickly as possible on a basis of equality.
Ireland could then argue forcefully that sufficient resources must be available to ensure such equality remains substantive and not only formal.