OPINION:If the Lisbon Treaty is rejected, the main beneficiaries are likely to be the far right xenophobes, racists and euro-sceptics - Irish and European, writes John Palmer
THE IRISH Times/TNS mrbi poll, predicting a clear rejection of the Lisbon Treaty on June 12th, is generating something closer to despair than mere shock throughout the entire European Union.
The simple fact is that the Lisbon Treaty is a watered-down version of the original "constitutional" treaty which - in turn - was the very minimum needed to ensure that the EU can manage the complexity and gravity of the challenges which the 27 member states now confront in an increasingly turbulent global environment.
There is no plan C on a desk in Brussels designed to avert a truly serious crisis in the entire European project and none is in sight.
The fact that 15 EU countries have already approved the treaty and some of them have already voted Yes in referendums to approve the constitutional treaty will count for nothing. As matters stand, if Ireland rejects the treaty, it will do so not only for the people of this State, but it will also deny the right of any other country to implement the treaty on their own since it can only come into force if all member states ratify.
It is not entirely clear that a No vote would - in the longer run - leave Ireland's EU membership itself unaffected.
In the real world, an Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty would give a massive boost to the euro-sceptic British Conservative party - which seems increasingly likely to form the government in London. An Irish No will strengthen the Tory determination to renegotiate some key aspects of Britain's EU membership. Such a renegotiation, though, could very well lead to Britain having only a limited future involvement in the European Union - outside its core policies and projects. Ireland would then face an unpalatable choice between some basic rupture in its relations with Britain or with the rest of the EU.
Perhaps Irish membership of the British Commonwealth might then beckon.
But who will emerge with the biggest smiles on their face if the No campaign triumphs? The No campaign is a very broad alliance of forces on the hard left and around Sinn Féin to the extreme right. But the galvanising role of the Irish Thatcherite New Right around Libertas seems to have also drawn supporters from both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
It was similarly broad populist campaigns which produced the No triumphs when previous EU treaties were put to referendum in Denmark (Maastricht, France and the Netherlands (constitutional treaty). The initial rejoicing of the Danish, French and Dutch left at rejection of these treaties soon turned sour, however, when it became clear that it was the right - and notably the anti-EU, anti immigrant hard right - which subsequently reaped the biggest political harvest.
The French left-wing No voters had no sooner stopped celebrating than they were stunned by Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential election triumph. The Dutch left have been depressed by the rise of the racist far right since their referendum. In Denmark, the left-wing Peoples' Socialist Party was so shocked at the way xenophobia had been made respectable by successive anti-EU campaigns that it has switched to a critically pro-EU stance and now commands more opinion poll support than the Danish Labour Party.
No one in their right mind would deny that the EU needs substantial and continuing reform. Some of that has to do with strengthening internal democracy. Without the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the new powers for both the Dáil and the European Parliament - including the election of future commission presidents - which come with the Lisbon Treaty, democratic reform will be harder to achieve. Equally alarming, without the treaty the EU will confront global warming and the energy/food crises with one hand tied behind its back.
Although to listen to some "neutralists" you would never realise it, the treaty also offers a path to a more independent European foreign policy. No wonder the beleaguered Bush administration hardliners are preparing to toast an Irish No, since they know this will reinforce US hegemony over its wayward European allies. Only last week one of the neo- con hard men - John Bolton, the former Bush UN ambassador - told a conference in Britain that countries like Britain and Ireland were already "too close to the European Union".
The Yes referendum campaign in Ireland has been lamentable. Thrown on to the defensive by the obsessive and frequently dishonest focus on non-existent threats to Irish "sovereignty", the supporters of the Lisbon Treaty have thus far failed to articulate the European (indeed the global), as well as the Irish, case for ratifying and building on the Lisbon Treaty.
Is there still time to avert a major European crisis?
John Palmer is a writer specialising in European affairs. Between 1997 and 2006 he was the founding political director of the European Policy Centre in Brussels
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Ann Marie Hourihane is on leave