State may be tempted to avoid referendum

Following Denmark's rejection of the euro in Thursday's referendum, governments elsewhere in the European Union will think twice about putting such issues to the popular vote if they can avoid it. None more so, arguably, than the Irish Government.

The Taoiseach and his Ministers have not so far committed themselves to hold a referendum on the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) set to conclude at Nice this December. This is because they believe it may not be legally necessary. Politically they do not relish the prospect of having to convince voters to agree a package that could be portrayed as losing Ireland influence in the EU's decision-making structures to streamline it for a continental enlargement.

The possibility that new defence and security clauses might be inserted in the treaty is a serious additional concern. The Government is strenuously resisting any such change in the IGC negotiations.

It draws comfort from advice by the Council of Ministers' legal service that new clauses are unnecessary to implement the extensive developments currently under way in this sphere. According to this advice, these were fully authorised by the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, which was passed by referendum here in June 1998 by a margin of 62 to 38 per cent. But it may not be possible to sustain this position politically.

Every other EU treaty has been put to referendum; and the Government would be vulnerable to a court challenge if it decides not to on this occasion. It is all the more puzzling in this respect that the Taoiseach's apparent endorsement of critical references to further integration by Sile de Valera and Mary Harney should have so set up those who oppose it in principle and who will be emboldened by the Danish result. If a referendum should be held it will be necessary to campaign vigorously in favour if it is to be carried.

Fianna Fail's U-turn on joining the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace (PfP) scheme for military co-operation with non-alliance members - and on holding a referendum on that question - is also a factor in this debate. The decision was taken by the Government and endorsed by the Oireachtas and is now being put in place. This coincides with the current implementation of the EU's Rapid Reaction Force of 60,000 troops and 5,000 police decided upon by the Helsinki European Council last December.

The extent of the activity and overlap involved became more clear during a briefing visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels this week. Defined as a "voluntary political alliance of sovereign nations for collective defence", NATO has 19 members. Its headquarters staff of 10,000 international civil servants has an annual budget of some $1.2 billion - a tiny proportion of the memberships' overall national military expenditure. It works by consensus and through political and military committees - an estimated 350 of them, with a bewildering series of acronyms to describe them.

NATO faced an existential dilemma after the end of the Cold War. Deprived of its main enemy, the Warsaw Pact, what was to become of the alliance? Primarily organised to provide territorial defence against a land invasion from Eastern to Western Europe, this function underwent radical redefinition in the last decade. While hard collective defence remains at its core, security has been redefined to cover a wide variety of threats to its members' priority interests and values.

Crisis-management and the preparation for it have become much more important. Potential threats are defined to range from weapons proliferation to ultra-nationalism, ecological disasters, ethnic conflict, mass migrations, religious extremism, terrorism, even organised crime. Clearly these go far beyond traditional collective defence. And they call for new methods of working together and co-operating with non-members. NATO is seen by its senior officials as a regional organisation, not a global policeman. Effectively, that means working together in Europe, especially to provide security in - and against - its geographical and underdeveloped peripheries.

One US diplomat stressed that the Partnership for Peace is seen as by far the greatest NATO achievement during this period of change. "Alliances come and go, but this is unprecedented - an alliance that reaches out to its former enemies and involves them in a partnership." Set up in 1994 "to forge new security relationships" in Europe, it now has 46 members, including nearly all the members of the former Warsaw Pact and all the neutral and non-aligned states. Ireland and Croatia are the latest to join. Nine of these have applied to join NATO, while most of the others have no intention of doing so.

PARTICIPATION in PfP is voluntary and "self-differentiating". Individual states select their level of participation from a general menu of military functions and operations. There are some 1,200 of them this year. Ireland's participation is set out in the presentation document submitted when it joined. It will be further defined in an individual partnership programme and in a forthcoming Planning and Review Process (PARP), setting out the precise means of co-operation and the mechanisms to agree the achievement of the "headline goal", the creation of the EU's Rapid Reaction Force.

Thus the two processes of NATO and EU adaptation are intimately linked and enmeshed in a complex web of relationships. The neutral and non-aligned states, Sweden, Finland, Austria and now Ireland, are concerned to use the PARP process to ensure there is no duplication between military planning in the PfP and EU frameworks.

Given the radical change in security definitions, it is clear they are considered to have a lot to offer in achieving the so-called Petersberg tasks of peacekeeping, peace-making and humanitarian interventions. Their expertise is widely recognised and respected by NATO officials.

These relationships are being defined more precisely in negotiations between the EU and NATO which are expected to conclude in November. Thus they will coincide with the IGC and with a pledging conference to commit troops and resources.

Ireland's representation in the PfP and EU political-military and security structures is currently being put in place, as diplomats and officers take up positions in relevant committees of both organisations. Some see this as the end of neutrality, the militarisation of the EU. That is at best a premature argument. It could as validly be argued that two different principles, collective defence and co-operative security, are competing for priority. No one involved foresees an end to NATO or a systematic duplication of structures, but rather a set of complementary ones within which the Europeans take on much more responsibility after the long US political hegemony.

The Government acknowledges the facts of securitisation, but emphasises its voluntary nature and the absence of any commitment to collective security. It faces a very tricky task in the IGC to ensure the new treaty does not expand the scope of these activities beyond what was agreed at Amsterdam.

France and Spain, for example, have been pressing for the use of flexibility clauses in the foreign policy and even defence areas, with considerable support from other states. If agreed, that would make a referendum even more difficult to avoid.