It is inevitable in the course of the negotiations on EU treaty reform that countries will make a virtue of necessity: there is a tendency to mask one's special pleading by focusing instead on high principles and the general good. That said, the Government's case in the discussions about the removal of frontier controls - and incorporating the Sehengen Treaty on passport free travel into the new EU Treaty - does genuinely bear on important issues at the heart of the Union's constitutional debate specifically on the critical question of "flexibility". The Amsterdam Treaty, now under negotiation, has the difficult task of reconciling new arrangements which might allow flexibility, while at the same time ensuring these will not sow the seeds of disintegration.
That the treaty will have to allow for some opt outs is beyond doubt. That Ireland and Britain, who share a common travel area, will be allowed to opt out of certain provisions of the Schengen Treaty is also now broadly, if reluctantly, accepted by our fellow member states. The case for doing so, moreover, is overwhelming. Britain's reluctance to abandon frontier controls means that we would have to sacrifice the common travel area if we were not to march in step with London. But there is also a strong argument for saying that as two island nations, with limited numbers of access points, a passport check at a port or airport is far less intrusive than the likely corollary of Schengen, i.e. ID checks in our streets. The irony is that some of the co operation envisaged in Schengen, such as intelligence sharing between police and customs authorities or common visa procedures, present no difficulty for the Government.
But there are real difficulties. Current proposals from the Dutch Presidency would see the 13 Schengen countries enjoying a veto on the participation of either Britain or Ireland in any future aspect of Schengen cooperation. Yet it is not Ireland which is seeking to join Schengen, but the Schengen countries who would like to incorporate their treaty and its procedures in the Union treaty of the 15. If flexibility is not to undermine the cohesion of the Union, it is important that it be based on the common ownership of the Union's treaty, its procedures, and institutions by all 15 memberstates.
Optouts should be limited and they should be structured to preserve the single institutional framework of the Union. Ireland has no interest in obstructing its fellow memberstates if they want to incorporate the provisions governing their free travel area in the treaty. Indeed, it applauds the idea. The Government is making the fair point that it too has a common travel area whose status could also be incorporated.