REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE UCC CONFERENCE ON IRELAND AND EUROPE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE UCC CONFERENCE ON IRELAND AND EUROPE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK FRIDAY 22ND JANUARY 2010
Dia dhíbh a chairde, it’s a great pleasure to be back in University College Cork where it is now “business as usual” after a very unusual and unwelcome spell under water. I would particularly like to thank Dr Michael Murphy for the kind invitation to join you here today and compliment him and the UCC community for the way in which they coped so effectively with the recent floods. They were devastating for the college and the city but those floods provoked a matching tidal wave of mutual support and community spirit which were inspirational in helping people to cope, to clean up and to face the future with hope and determination again.
Today’s conference invites us to take a broader look at that future. It marks the culmination of three years hard preparatory work by Professor Dermot Keogh, and his team and its timing could not be better for it invites us to interrogate the relationship between Ireland and Europe just as the European Union enters a new phase with the coming into effect of the Lisbon Treaty after a bumpy journey to ratification in some member states among them Ireland where an initial rejection was, after some adjustments, followed by a decisive endorsement of the Treaty. The outcome of the second Lisbon referendum seemed to answer comprehensively those who saw in the earlier rejection a fundamental Irish malaise with membership of the European Union rather than simply unease with specific aspects of the Treaty as they applied to Ireland. Post Lisbon, it is clear that Ireland is as it has been from the beginning, an enthusiastic participant in the great European project. It is where Ireland’s future lies. Already the transformative potential that the then EEC offered when we joined in 1973 has more than begun to manifest itself, vindicating Jack Lynch’s signature on the Accession Treaty exactly thirty seven years ago yesterday and vindicating those founding fathers of the Union who believed that collegial action between member states would be an epic and historic game-changer in advancing the economic and social progress of Europe.
In this recessionary phase with its high levels of unemployment and indebtedness, its anger and disappointment that processes heralded as wealth creating carried the virus of poverty creation, it is important to remember just how much has been accomplished and changed for the better since we first joined the Union. This conference will help us contextualise Ireland’s relationship with Europe in its broader historical context and to see how important that context is and will be to us as we try to find a renewed momentum towards prosperity.
The transformation of our economy over the past three decades could not have been achieved without the European context. Corkonians, coming from a port city that has a centuries long role in our international trade, will particularly appreciate the benefits that exporting to the massive, high-purchase power, European market have brought. Today, as we seek to stabilise our domestic economy and reposition for the upturn, participation in the European Single Market and in the Eurozone are essential conduits to sustainable economic growth. We have seen clearly and in chastening circumstances in recent months, the reassurance that membership of the Eurozone provides in these difficult economic times even allowing for currency fluctuations which have until now impacted negatively on exports and helped to encourage the bargain-hunting kind of cross-border shopping which is a downstream consequence of freedom of goods and services.
However as the Irish experience around the Lisbon Treaty reminds us the European project is about considerably more than trade and I know that this weekend’s conference will be an opportunity to reflect on other aspects of its influence, including in the social, employment and equality-related areas.
Since its foundation, the European Union had a unique set of structures, that evolved and developed over time into something of a patchwork quilt of arrangements which began to look frayed as it enlarged from Six to Nine to Twelve to Fifteen and then to the Twenty Seven of today. Looking back at a Union which expanded not just its membership but its remit it is perhaps not surprising that so much time and effort were invested in creating an effective and efficient, fair and accountable institutional framework.
The process that began with the Maastricht Treaty and continued with the Convention, the Constitutional Treaty and finally the Treaty of Lisbon now gives the Union what the European Council recently described as, “a stable and lasting institutional framework.” Importantly the huge effort that galvanised behind drafting and ratifying the treaty is no longer needed, freeing up time and effort for investment in the things which preoccupy Europe’s citizens, from jobs to climate change to conflict resolution, development aid and disaster relief and many more issues which impact on our daily lives. It is worth pointing out that following the failed 2008 Irish referendum, significant insights of Europe’s wide import, were gained from the research into Irish attitudes and opinions on Europe and on the provisions of the treaty. The wide national debate in Ireland both in the political domain and especially in civil society were absolutely essential. Essential too was the process of listening and responding by our European partners when it became apparent that the problems Irish voters had with the Lisbon Treaty were real and could be addressed with the right goodwill and in compliance with the spirit of consensus and collegiality which is the hallmark of the Union.
It was especially important in the debate in both the political and civic spheres that there was input from leading thinkers and experts which could steer the discourse towards information and analysis which was scholarly, informed and accurate. Our institutions of higher learning, not least among them UCC were essential sources of credible views and voices. It was also important for not just Ireland but for the Union itself that the concerns of the Irish people were taken seriously and accommodated as far as they could be. The European Council’s provision to Ireland of legally binding guarantees in relation to taxation, neutrality and ethical issues and its revised provision for a Commissioner per member State, was as much a vindication of the Europan project’s fidelity to consensus as it was to Ireland’s insistence on being taken seriously as a fully equal sovereign member of the Union.
Now a new, yet to be ratified, Commission and a Council headed by a new President head out boldly into the post-Lisbon landscape. Among the strategists who will help guide the Union’s future steps is our own Máire Geoghegan Quinn whom I congratulate on her nomination to the new Commission in waiting. I am sure we all wish her well in developing Europe’s research and innovation for these are areas of key importance to the future prosperity of Ireland and Europe as a whole. In the light of the debate in Ireland about the proposed reduction in Commissioners it will be interesting to see how a Commission with continuing participation from each Member State will function. Although the Commissioners act on behalf of the Commission and not their own homelands there is at some deep and inchoate level an issue here to do with sovereignty and I see that sovereignty will be among the issues that you will address at this conference though it will span a wide agenda indeed. The exercise by Member States of their sovereignty in pursuit of consensus around the Union table has been the life blood of Europe’s strength and its internal and external solidarity. For Ireland that exercise of sovereignty has given us the opportunity to contribute on the European and world stage in much more ordered, consistent and powerful ways than would have been the case had we stayed outside the Union. However there can be little doubt that sovereignty remains and will likely always remain a potential source of neuralgia throughout the Union as part of the healthy checks, balances and tensions that inevitably arise where equal partners each in possession of 100 percent of their own sovereignty, though unequal in size, different in identity, history and perspective, and moving at different paces, gather around a table of equals and a shared agenda which includes some things and excludes others. In many ways the miracle is that issues to do with sovereignty have not been much more problematic than they might have been. Cumbersome though processes may appear, it is evident that the entire process of participating in and contributing to the EU project has been accompanied by a growth in experience and confidence in our dealings with our partners.
A particularly significant transformation has been effected in our relationship with our nearest neighbour, the EU providing a wider, safer and better structured framework for the development of Anglo-Irish dialogue across a range of issues including issues which were historically divisive. That transformed relationship created a wholly new and fresh dynamic which was essential to the eventual partnership approach between Dublin and Westminster to the Peace Process and which led to the Good Friday and St Andrew’s Agreements. It should be noted as well, and with the deepest appreciation, that the EU has been persistent in its absolute commitment to peace and prosperity on the island, in particular through providing meaningful financial and practical support for the patient often tedious but very necessary work of reconciliation at community level. That is where in the words of Ulster poet John Hewitt, “we build to fill the centuries arrears.” It is surely no accident that the peace which had eluded all past generations over centuries was eventually constructed by the generation which volunteered to partner each other in a Union which itself defied the judgment of history by making partners of enemies and equals of winners and losers.
In a world where so many difficult and dangerous issues can only be meaningfully faced down through shared, consensual global action, the European Union stands as witness to the massive potential that can be unlocked by truly respectful partnership and the pooling of specific elements of sovereignty in order to advance the good and the wellbeing of all.
Allow me to close by recalling the celebrations late last year marking the 20th anniversary of the events which ended the Cold War and tore down the Iron Curtain. Those events of 1989 reshaped contemporary Europe liberating many people from the stranglehold of imposed communism and opening up the space through which a democratic future could enter those parts of Europe for whom World War 11 had effectively never ended. Was it inevitable in that giddy moment that there would or could be a smooth transition to democracy, the rule of law and peaceful cooperation? The stories are very different if one is talking about Slovakia or Serbia, Kosovo or Slovenia. History will show, I believe, that the decisions made by political leaders at the time and the policies adopted, in particular by the European Community and by those countries that set their faces firmly towards membership of the Union, were utterly vital in delivering the peace and stability that the European continent enjoys today. The colourful ceremony of welcome of ten new member states which took place at Áras an Uachtaráin on a gloriously sunny afternoon in May 2004 was a relaxed, happy and emotional affair which very few pundits, historians, political scientists or analysts could have believed humanly possible just a few short years before. It did not happen by accident or clatter together by some cosmic coincidence. It happened because the Union had made itself a strong credible centre of gravity, had made itself a place of welcome and homecoming to Europe’s estranged nations and a place unafraid of taking risks in order to secure a peaceful and prosperous new egalitarian Europe.
In his poem to mark that very special day, Séamus Heaney juxtaposed the myth of the Phoenix as a symbol of rebirth with the Gaelic name Fionn Uisce. In so doing, he not only marked the occasion as a new departure for the European Union, but also reminded us of the great overlap between the past, the present and the future:
Move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare,
Like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak,
From middle sea to north sea, shining clear,
As phoenix flames upon fionn uisce here.[1]
Today’s European Union is an entirely new type of entity, a sui generis model for cooperation and the most successful peace project in the chequered history of our continent, indeed our globe. It is still only in its infancy and so in the absence of familiar landmarks or clear precedents, it is natural to look for guidance from the beacons of history. They are almost all, if not all, entirely a case of negative education, a wasteland of greedy imperialism, miserable dictatorships, endemic conflict, poverty, dissipated energy, and cruelly wasted lives. The European Union distilled all that barely digestible wisdom and from it charted a pathway out of the savagery of a long-standing conflict-centred, competitive model of international relations. Forged out of death, the Union chose life oxygenated by shared democratic values and an unshakeable belief that the dreams of all for equality, prosperity and opportunity could be achieved by working together to an agreed agenda. It is no perfect place that is true but as earthly places go, membership of the Union has given us a better Ireland than any Ireland known to our forebears. It is still a work in progress which is why such a conference as this is so important. The potter’s wheel is in ours, the clay that shapes the union is in our hands. Only with the best help, insight and guidance will we shape it to the best it can be.
In closing, I wish you the very best for this weekend’s conference and look forward to your collective wisdom guiding our hands and shaping our Ireland our Europe to a future of equally cherished European children.
[1] Séamus Heaney, Beacons at Bealtaine