WHERE does the notion of the 48-hour week come from? How could anyone seriously propose that the terms of employment between employer and employee should be a matter of European law, regardless of local circumstance, season, or popular desire? Is our new Eurocracy in Brussels not behaving like all imperial rulers have behaved, and are we not incrementally edging towards a single state in Europe, without anyone in Ireland discussing the matter seriously?
Maybe we have nothing to worry about, and Europe will remain a continent of pa tries. But if Europe is to be united from the Bosphorus to the Baltic, and from the Arctic Circle to the Ionian Sea, let us talk about it. It would not be the first time Europe has experienced multinational government.
That has been its history, after all. The nation-state is largely an invention of the 19th century, and for a full century and a half after that invention, Europe has experienced the pleasures of tribal war between and within those states - not least of all on this island.
Surely the idea of a European Union between consenting peoples' represented by elected governments, is better than Europe of the Wars? Surely a Europe governed by an impartial parliament, with servants drawn equally from its constituent peoples, is better than a Europe of feuding states, or the old Europe of competing empires?
Imperial precedents
Put like that, the answer is yes. But history has taught us that kindness and peace are seldom the unmixed consequence of historical processes. All previous empires in Europe thought that they were for the good of the people who lived within them. Admittedly, those empires which were eroded through the 19th century and destroyed in 1918 were autocratic, but they were governed by the rule of law; and their rulers and their central administrators distrusted and despised regional nationalisms, much as the new Eurocracy of Brussels does today.
And like our Eurocrats, those rulers were multinational. The great chancellor of Vienna's Habsburg Empire, Metternich, was not an Austrian at all, but a Catholic Rhinelander. His brilliant assistant, Gentz, was a Prussian. The man who helped to broaden that empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kossuth, was not even a Hungarian but Slovak.
The Ottoman Empire, the most brilliant of all the dynastic confections, and historically the most calumnified, was the most multinational. Loyalty to the Grande Porte ensured promotion not ethnicity, not religion. Jews, Greek Orthodox, Shia or Sunni Muslims, Armenians, Kurds and all variety of Slav could serve in the government of the Ottomans. How little the brilliance of that governance is now appreciated, yet the Ottomans successfully governed many of the most deeply troubled areas of the world today - Greece, Bosnia, Kurdistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Palestine.
Governing tribes
Yet despite the perception of multinationality, despite the loyalty of the multinational governors to the dynasties they served, there was always a central beneficiary, a governing tribe, at the core of each empire. Cut the Habsburgs whatever way you like, you end up with the Austrians on top. Slice the Ottomans however you will and you find it is a Turkish empire. The Romanov Empire and its imperial successor the Soviet Union, depended on a central tribe, the Russians.
As it was, so it is. The central tribe of our new European Union is Germany. And not just the German Chancellor who after all is ultimately answerable to the German people (though he seems quite anxious not to consult them on this march towards empire), but also the Bundesbank, that sovereign re-creation of imperial unanswerability. Like the Habsburgs and the Ottomans and the Romanovs, it is the Bundesbank which knows best, which draws up rules for the governed, even for hitherto sovereign parliaments, and expects those rules to be obeyed, with the same clinical absolutism of a Metternich.
This might be for the best. Who knows? I certainly don't. Maybe a single European currency policed - in reality - by the Bundesbank is a good thing. I haven't a clue, though the precedents are not encouraging: one of the most complex - and ultimately unsolvable - dilemmas which faced the Habsburg Empire was the harmonisation of its currencies. The regional interests of the two primary economic areas within the empire, Hungary and Austria, ultimately defied fiscal reconciliation.
World-player
Peter Sutherland the other day was talking about the benefits of free trade. In this he was undoubtedly correct. Other than the defeat of communism (upon which it actually depended) the creation of the world market is mankind's greatest achievement since the second World War; his role in that achievement probably makes him the greatest Irishman of the century and the only truly world-player we have produced. And he certainly does not share my doubts about the direction Europe is going in.
Which is fine. I hope he's right. But the issue of Europe now is clearly not about trade. It is about government and the governed.
It is, for example, about secretariats in Brussels saying to restaurant owners and their staff in Killybegs, who are dependent on a two month-season, that they may work only so many hours a week, though they have an entire autumn and winter to recover.
And this issue is only incidental; more important is the historical lesson that imperial governments begin with small edicts, acquire enlarging habits of governance, and exponentially grow towards the culture of absolutism.
True, maybe this new European empire will be different. I would love to be wrong. I doubt it. For we must remember the Union's laws and institutions are not being created just for today's issues, which are relatively simple and benign, but for the unimaginably complex and unpredictable problems of 10 or 20 years' time, when those laws and institutions and all their acquired and seasoned flaws can command the destiny of us all.
At the heart of this union, this empire, lies the most brilliant, the most energetic and enigmatic people in Europe, the Germans.
Anaesthetised by EU funds, we in Ireland have somnambulated into bed with this new Germanic empire. Maybe we are right to be there and the Germans will continue to be considerate and generous lovers. But before we engage in further intimacies - such as, oh, maybe one day paying for Poland's motorways, or sending troops to the borders of Belarus - should we not be discussing things in more detail and energy - even if only to conclude with a blooming big yes I will yes?