ANTHONY COUGHLAN,
Sir, - Alan Dukes (July 29th) misunderstands how the Nice Treaty militarises the EU. He is being disingenuous in ascribing to me the view that there are on no grounds for opposition to Nice because of concern about neutrality.
As he should know well, the Nice Treaty turns the EU into an alliance for military offence, not defence. The potential offensive actions that Nice envisages are the "peace-making" and "crisis management" tasks to be carried out by the 60,000-soldier EU Rapid Reaction Force, which was declared operational at Laeken last December and to which Ireland has pledged 850 men if called upon.
"Peace-making", in the jargon of the so-called Petersberg Tasks, requires the EU to go to war to establish peace between two belligerents. Nice gives the EU itself direct responsibility for military interventions of this kind, rather than delegating them to the Western European Union (WEU), on which Ireland has observer status, as was provided for by the treaties of Amsterdam and Maastricht.
There is no requirement in the Nice Treaty that such military operations by the EU undertaken beyond its borders should have a United Nations mandate or be in accordance with international law, although the Irish Government promises that it will not take part in a particular operation unless it has such a mandate.
I am not aware of any organisation on the No side in last year's Nice referendum which said that the Treaty of Nice entailed a commitment to a mutual defence alliance. Eleven of the 15 EU states are already members of such an alliance, namely NATO, so that turning the EU into a mutual defence alliance as well - the situation addressed by the Government's irrelevant extra clause to the Nice Treaty ratification amendment - is quite redundant for the present.
An EU alliance for mutual offence is, however, another thing entirely. That is surely inherently more dangerous in itself and more likely to make Ireland a pawn in the military-political power play of the bigger EU states. The Government says we won't go to war to defend Germany, France and Britain if someone should attack them, but we will commit ourselves through the Nice Treaty to joining them in attacking others. This is "neutrality" Irish-style, as the Government now defines it!
Article 1.5 of the Nice Treaty establishes a political and security committee to "exercise political control and strategic direction" of the military operations of the Rapid Reaction Force. This commitee will supervise the EU military committee and the EU military staff, whose functions are set out in report and annexes referred to in Declaration 1 attached to Nice. Irish military personnel now serve daily on these Brussels-based bodies. They would continue doing so while the Rapid Reaction Force conducted future military operations that did not have a UN mandate, or in which Ireland did not directly participate with fighting troops.
These provisions of Nice clearly militarise the EU by giving it direct military functions it did not have before. They are incompatible with a policy of meaningful neutrality, in that they commit us to an EU alliance for mutual offence in certain circumstances. We can be confident that such military operations, when they occur, will be spearheaded by the big EU states which will be able to use NATO resources if required. Denmark secured an EU treaty protocol opting out of these military arrangements entirely.
We can do the same by reaffirming our No vote to Nice in October, thereby forcing the Government to do its constitutional duty of renegotiating these and other objectionable features of the Nice Treaty, rather than seeking to overturn last year's perfectly democratic constitutional referendum result.- Yours, etc.,
ANTHONY COUGHLAN, Secretary, The National Platform, Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9.
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Sir, - Recent correspondence on this page has referred to the establishment of the Convention on the Future of Europe. I would like to point out the following. On October 11th, 2000, the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted by a large majority the Duhemal report on the constitutionalisation of the treaties. In this report, the draftsman clearly sets out a formula for the establishment of a Convention on the Future of Europe.
The European Parliament, including all the main political groups, subsequently adopted, by a majority of three to one, a resolution restating this formula during its plenary session on October 25th 2000 - two months before the Nice Summit and fully seven months before the Irish referendum.
Both of these documents are available on the European Parliament's website (www.europarl.eu.int). - Yours, etc.,
PAT COX, MEP, Crawford Hall, Western Road, Cork .