The Vincent Browne Interview - Pat Cox: It would be loutish, at a time of such extraordinary achievement, to complain about Pat Cox's verbosity. No Irish person has attained such distinction at the European level and to note how even the Europeans remark on the verbosity would be out of place.
Even if it were acknowledged that the verbosity can be relentless at times - each question broken down into various parts and then answered, part by part, at length, at great length (see answers to several of the questions below) - this is not the time. Certainly not the time for unkind mention of his slight pomposity.
Yes, there was more of that "saluting" in his acceptance speech at the parliament on Tuesday but this is small beer compared to the distinction he has won. At least it should be noted on Tuesday there was none of the "eyeballing" - Pat speaks of eyeballing an adversary or even someone with whom one is negotiating; not meeting them or negotiating with them, but eyeballing. Behind the scenes before Tuesday there must have been a lot of eyeballing - you don't get to be President of the European Parliament, especially if you are from one of the smallest groups there and from one of the smallest countries, without eyeballing.
But you don't get to be President, given those disadvantages, without some extraordinary ability as well. Pat Cox led the way in the assault by the European Parliament on the Commission of Jacques Santer (Pádraig Flynn was collateral damage in that war) and he was marked as a leader of the Parliament from then on.
He did a fair bit of eyeballing when he was in the Progressive Democrats, especially in his latter days in the party.
He was incensed that Des O'Malley had given Mary Harney advance notice of his intention to resign the leadership, and when Mary Harney won the top job by a whisker he was even more incensed.
Then, in clear breach of an undertaking he had made when elected to the Dáil in 1992, he sought the PD nomination for the European Parliament election in 1994.
And having lost out to Des O'Malley at the convention, he fought it as an Independent candidate and won. Des O'Malley had been eyeballed.
Cox will be 50 this year in November. Previous Presidents of the European Parliament have included Paul-Henri Spaak (1952-1654), Alcide de Gasperi (1954), Robert Schuman (1958-1960) - all towering figures in the history of the European Union. Also Emilio Colombo (1977-1979) and Lord Henry Plumb (1987-1989).
VB: Did Mary Harney congratulate you on your election as President of the European Parliament?
PC: Immediately after the election, the Irish Ambassador to EU, Ann Anderson, gave me a note from the Foreign Minister, Brian Cowen, and a note from the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Later in the evening the Taoiseach spoke to me directly on the telephone and greatly to my surprise and pleasure, I got a call from Mary Harney that night from what I suppose must be her honeymoon somewhere in Africa, I think it may have been Kenya, but the conversation was so animated I've forgotten the location.
VB: Are you back on friendly terms with her?
PC: We have been on rather good terms for rather a long stretch and under her leadership I was invited, last year or the year before, to address the PD annual conference in Cork, and I did. The Progressive Democrats have attended different functions of the European Liberal Democrat Party with consistency now over a good number of years.
VB: Did Des O'Malley congratulate you?
PC: I haven't been talking to Des O'Malley at all on this so I have no idea what his view is.
VB: Would you like to rejoin the Progressive Democrats?
PC: My focus since 1994 has been exclusively and singularly on my role as MEP. That, in a way, is what started the stepping stones to this week. I was elected the deputy leader of the European Liberal Democratic Group. When a vacancy presented itself in 1998 [for the leadership], I became the unanimous choice to be leader. That eventually rolled over with the same unanimity after the last election in '99 and that combination of circumstances and what followed is what led to this week. That requires a singular focus in European affairs and I just haven't focused on Irish party membership or affiliations.
VB: When you started as MEP you were a member of the Progressive Democrats, so you could resume being a member without losing the focus on Europe.
PC: No, but there was a deviation on the road in 1992, when the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, and the then party leader of the PDs, Des O'Malley, had a falling out at the Beef tribunal. It resulted in a general election. In the first general election [in 1987] the PDs had elected fourteen TDs, in the second [in 1989] six TDs, in 1992 there was a certain existential quality to the election as to whether the party would survive, whether the numbers would go up or down, Pierce Wyse was retiring in Cork and there was a lot of pressure to try to find a candidate to fight that, so I did. So, there was in the first mandate [for the European Parliament] '89-'94 that considerable deviation from the singularly European focus.
VB: What do you hope to achieve as President of the European Parliament?
PC: I hope that the period in office will be marked by a number of significant external political achievements for the Union and a number of internal reforms for the Parliament. Externally, the successful closure of the first and substantial round of enlargement towards central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, with Malta and Cyprus.
Externally, to try to up our game if we can with transatlantic dialogue with the US Congress and with Euro-Mediterranean dialogue. [This is] all the more urgent after the Afghani problem and accentuated by the problems in the Middle East.
The European convention [on a new constitution for the European Union] to be launched in March is an important moment on this question of institutional/constitutional definition to try to find a fabric in terms of how decisions are made, how business is done, fit for Europe's future.
And we have then on the internal agenda in the parliament trying to revitalise how the House itself operates in terms of voting procedures and debates.
VB: Crucial to many of those developments is the passage of the Nice Treaty and crucial to that of course is getting an endorsement from Ireland. Are you hopeful that that will happen given that it was defeated before and that none of the problems that the Irish people had with the Treaty have been dealt with?
PC: I certainly hope that it will happen and I hope that it represents a serious wake-up call to everyone in Irish politics, I include myself in that, who are committed to the Irish integration with Europe. I think there are lots of lessons.
You mention that nothing has changed at all in so far as regards to the treaty but we clearly know from the work done by Richard Sinnott [UCD political scientist who has conducted a survey on why people voted as they did on the Nice Treaty and why so many did not vote] and others that a very large number of people felt they simply knew too little. Too much was taken for granted and too little was explained. So, there is a clear message that those who want to sell it have got to tell the story and sell the story.
VB: One of the problems that the Nice Treaty is that it is so complicated and so dense that people can't be expected to understand it. And not understanding it, they wouldn't wish to endorse it.
PC: I certainly think it hasn't been the brightest euro in the purse full of euro coins by way of treaties. There is no single big idea about the Nice Treaty, as there was with the Maastricht Treaty with the idea of the single currency. It doesn't have the single big idea around which you can begin to try to motivate and mobilise the majority. I think contained within itself, particularly if the question is put a second time will be even a deeper question, which is the state of the Irish psychological mood about its connection and connectiveness to Europe and I think that will be part of the fabric of the next debate in a much more focused and determined way than it may have been the last time.
VB: Shouldn't we be sceptical about giving more powers to institutions in Europe that are unaccountable?
PC: I think that we should always be in favour of trying to improve the quality of democracy whenever we have the opportunity, and I think the exercises that we are concentrating on this convention [creating a constitution for the EU] is an exercise that puts all those questions fairly, firmly and squarely on the table, and they will need to be faced up to.
I have the mpression that an explanation from many Irish people staying at home as distinct to coming out and voting No is a certain degree of fatigue with the European question. I think the next time out the moment must be seized in terms of the convention. But so far as Nice goes, the political reality is that if Nice is not ratified, that it will create political problems for the successful enlargement because of the scale of the enlargement and the weight of its impact on the ability to do business under the current rule books.
VB: One of the issues that concerns many people is the question of what is called "militarisation". Are you yourself in favour of there being a military dimension to the EU?
PC: I have, with consistency, voted in favour of the emergence and development of a common foreign and security policy and of a European security and defence dimension. I accept that in the way the issue is debated at home that it is presented in a highly emotive form. I was in the parliament when the massacres happened at Srebrenica [in Bosnia] in what was meant to be a UN-protected safe haven and I felt such a dreadful sense of conscience. We sent resolution and diplomatic notes but we stood by and we saw it happen [the massacre of Bosnian Muslims]. Ten years later, although this process hasn't matured yet into a Rapid Reaction Force, the EU has been the lead player in bringing stability and the capacity for sustainable peace to Macedonia in circumstances that have presented challenges not dissimilar to a decade earlier [in Bosnia]. I regard that in a very pragmatic way as a measure of progress and it's one of the reasons why, in conscience and in politics, I would promote and defend that policy [of developing a European Rapid Reaction Force].
VB: I note your party in the European Parliament has expressed dismay over the use of cluster bombs by the US in Afghanistan.
PC: In the course of a debate and a resolution in this House some weeks ago, that issue had begun to come to the fore at that time and yes, because I think these things had to be understood in the context, the jump from being willing to engage á lá Macedonia in my earlier example to a presumption that one is militarist is simply a jump which is illogical non-sequitor. An incapacity to do anything is more serious for peace and stability than the capacity to act effectively but proportionately.
VB: You were opposed to the use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan?
PC: At the time in the Parliament when we had that debate, that was the issue of the moment in one of those debates and we had expressed a preference that the military campaign should not lose .
VB: You expressed more than a preference. You called for the use of cluster bombs to be stopped immediately.
PC: Yes. But there is an interesting case. Absent a European presence of substance in that theatre of war, we could call in the same way as the resolutions were we sent to Bosnia and Serbia. If you are not a player, you're not, in terms of democratic accountability, able to play in an effective role.
VB: What stage of your career have you enjoyed most? Economics lecturer, journalist, general secretary of the PDs, Dail Deputy and MEP?
PC: They've all been very rich, if diverse. But from the very first moment I arrived here [in the European Parliament] after negotiating the programme for government with Fianna Fail in 1989, I remember feeling how incredible it was, in terms of political possibilities. The panorama of issues was so vast. But even then I could never have anticipated what possibilities it opened up for me and I could never have presumed or anticipated what has happened this week.