There are very serious questions to be asked about the claimed linkage between the Nice Treaty and EU enlargement.
As the chairman of the independent referendum commission, Mr Justice Thomas Finlay, has stated, the legislation for the referendum "makes no reference to the enlargement of the EU". The objective information booklet produced by the Referendum Commission does not mention enlargement, emphasising instead that the treaty is concerned with changes in EU decision-making procedures and with the assumption of EU responsibility for military affairs.
Despite this, many proponents of the treaty claim that rejection of it in Ireland will slow the pace of EU enlargement. Even if that were true, it would need to be placed in the context of serious brakes already being placed on the enlargement process by other countries. The Spanish government is threatening to block enlargement unless Spain is guaranteed continued access to EU structural funds, a demand also being taken up by the new Italian government.
The French government is throwing up barriers to Polish accession as a bargaining chip to protect the high level of EU subsidies to French farmers. The German and Austrian governments are insisting they will accept new EU members only if workers from those candidate countries are denied free access to the EU jobs market for a prolonged period.
All of this stalling and foot-dragging will go on whether Ireland accepts the treaty or not. The argument that Ireland could single-handedly sabotage EU enlargement by its rejection ignores the extent to which many other EU states are already blocking enlargement to protect their own economic interests. One such economic interest is, for many governments, the arms industry. The Nice Treaty states:
"The progressive framing of a common defence policy will be supported, as member-states consider appropriate, by co-operation between them in the field of armaments". Such co-operation is already apparent. The Financial Times recently reported that the French government is opening up its weapons procurement policy to other EU countries, to ensure that French companies are viewed more favourably in their bids for contracts from EU states.
The French Defence Minister has framed these initiatives against the background of the emergence of the new EU Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), and EU-wide procurement ventures such as the development of the A400M military transport aircraft. Rather than seeing this commercial co-operation as necessary for European military structures, it is at least as plausible to see commercial interests as helping to drive public defence policy.
The massive military "upgrading" being carried out by new NATO members, and by states preparing for RRF participation, represents a bonanza for armaments companies. The Irish Government, in preparation for RRF, has already purchased 40 armoured personnel carriers for £1 million each, and a further 40 are likely to be purchased, along with 80 "light tactical" vehicles and some helicopters.
Such investment diverts funds from other areas, such as our cash-starved health services. Given that the formal assumption of EU responsibility for military matters is part of the Nice Treaty, such allocation of resources is a matter of legitimate public debate.
Broader commercial considerations will also help drive EU security policy in the coming years, for example access to areas around the Caspian Sea, with their rich oil and gas resources.
According to the New York Times: "The strategic implications (of the Caspian area) hypnotise Western security planners as completely as the finances transfix oil executives".
There is no need for an elaborate conspiracy theory here. EU policy is not entirely driven by these considerations, but nor are they entirely absent from the political calculations now being made. State elites act on the basis of perceived self-interest, as noted above, in relation to governments' concerns about EU enlargement, and it is to be expected that self-interest (and the interests of corporate supporters) will help determine military and security policies also.
It is this economic self-interest that, at least in part, underpins the militarisation of the EU confirmed in the Nice Treaty. But this agenda does not correspond to the interests of most Irish people, or to the interests of many people in the applicant countries or further afield. Genuine security would be better promoted by the satisfaction of basic needs - such as food, shelter and environmental protection - than by aggressive militarism. AFrI believes that a more progressive agenda based around the real security needs of ordinary people - rather than those of arms dealers and oil companies - would be advanced by rejection of the Nice Treaty here.
Andy Storey is chairman of Action from Ireland (AFrI), an Irish organisation which lobbies on justice issues.