Irish Miracle

From The Wall Street Journal
By Norman Stone

The Irish find themselves for the first time ever being showered with compliments from the English. This writer -- a Scot -- does not really approve of Ireland's independence. They are us, bless them, and their independence has been a bore, a little bit like East Timor's. Friends, family, writers -- all belong to an Ireland that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Now that greatness has been manifested. The Irish have done a miracle and wrecked the latest project of the European Union, in a referendum where general cussedness has been expressed. The proposed changes to the way Europe works amount to a constitution, but the powers-that-be tried to smuggle it through as a treaty. The British were supposed to have a referendum as well but since everyone knows that Europe is just not a popular cause, the government weaseled out of one. The French and Dutch did hold referendums three years back and the formal constitution was turned down.

The Europeans -- at any rate the official classes -- would dearly love to project themselves as a Great Power, American-fashion, and in 2004 produced a constitution. It was prepared in an extraordinarily clumsy way, with vast gatherings presided over by the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, in a style that Margaret Thatcher found profoundly irritating ("Olympian without being patrician"). The best constitutions either do not exist, as with England, or they are short, as with 1787 in Philadelphia. The Germans had a shot at a constitution in 1848 and invited all their professor doctor doctors to have a say. There are few occasions to bless the arrival of the Prussian army and that was one: The beards were bayoneted.

You might even make a rule about this: The longer the constitution, the shorter its life. The Weimar Republic is a classic case, and it taught the West Germans in 1949 what not to do in such documents; the German basic law is almost a model. The other rule is of course not to let professors of political science anywhere near such documents.

The European constitution is a lengthy and unreadable one because so many different interests had to be squared. Thus for instance, toward the end of the near-five-hundred page effort, the "Sami" or, as they used to be called, Lapps get a look-in.

Now there was a certain obvious sense in getting the European institutions to work better. They go back 50 years or so, and even the present flag is vaguely copied from the banner of the Coal and Steel Community in 1951; the assembly and the court were thought up then, and maybe someone even conceived of an anthem. The founder, Jean Monnet, found it insufferably boring, and you could even make a case that the creative element in Europe was America. The first suggestion of a common European currency came from the deputy secretary general of the Marshall Plan.

The European institutions worked tolerably for a time with six member states, but even then they were not brilliant. They were secretive and lofty, in that French technocratic style that so irritates others, and the best monument to them is the Common Agricultural Policy, born in 1962 and since then notorious for corruption and unreformability. The institutions were again not very efficient when there were only nine members, in the seventies, and Mr. Giscard d'Estaing made another of his blunders when he tried to make the European cause more popular by arranging for the Community to have a popularly elected parliament. Any journalist with a taste for mockery had a wonderful time in the European Parliament, self-important and powerless.

Now, with 27 member states, there is an obvious need to change the rules, and even for allowing national vetoes to be lifted. One absurd example: Greek Cyprus was let in as a member and now has the power to disrupt Europe's negotiations with Turkey, a country 40 times larger, and in a hugely strategic position. It is also the case, under present rules, that the presidency of the Union shifts every six months round capitals -- Paris one minute, Riga or even Valetta in Malta the next. Those small states do not have the wherewithal for the job, and in some cases have appeared ridiculous. Thus, over the Yugoslav crisis some 16 years back, which was billed to be "the hour of Europe," a Mr. Poos appeared from Luxembourg and lectured the Slovenes as to how they had no right to be nationalistic -- Luxembourg, beside which Slovenia looks positively elephantine. Meanwhile, the Germans have become the most important power in the east and south, and they are also the paymasters.

It is all a strange echo of the world of 1918, after Czarist Russia had collapsed, and various new states emerged -- the Ukraine especially, but also the Baltic republics including Finland. Back then the Germans were intent on setting up a satellite empire. In Hitler's time a quarter-century later this was even more the case, with Slovakia and Croatia (and even, though in a muddled way, Kosovo) emerging as Nazi puppet states. Nowadays, the lines on the map can be strangely similar to those of Hitler's day. But of course we are dealing with an altogether different Germany -- a Germany which, for a long time, simply did not want to have a foreign policy. One foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, once rejected a campaign for Germany to have a seat on the U.N. Security Council with the remark that it would be like giving a liqueur chocolate to an alcoholic.

This new peaceful Germany is one that the Anglo-Saxons always wanted to see -- arguably America's greatest creation, bar Japan -- and she has to deal with big problems -- the Balkans, Russia and the future of Turkey's relationship with Europe. Why make these matters dependent upon the whims of little local politicians in Greek Cyprus or wherever?

Now the Irish, with a referendum, express the general discontent and boredom that the European Union seems to inspire almost everywhere. Some commentators have responded more or less with Bertolt Brecht's line about the East German workers' uprising in 1953: If the people act against the will of the government, then perhaps the government should dissolve the people and elect another in their place. The German foreign minister even said that the Irish could just drop out of the Union for a bit -- an absurd remark.

There have been other lofty tickings-off: How could the Irish be so ungrateful, given what Europe had done for them? But of course the Irish might not see things that way. For instance, free movement of goods and people is not always positive. There has been a crime wave associated with the shift of East European immigrants. Then again, not everyone benefits from the huge rise in property prices which, rightly or wrongly, people associate with the euro; quite the contrary, life becomes very difficult for the young if they do not have parents who can support them. One nasty phenomenon in Spain or Ireland is that the young have to live with their parents and one sign of this is the used contraceptive in the public parks. So it is not altogether surprising that great masses of Irish voters voted against a "Europe" with which they cannot identify.

The sad thing is that Europe deserves better. It is associated with the recovery of a decent Germany, escaping from her awful past and now co-existing on civilized terms with Czechs and Poles and French. Yes, there should have been some briefly worded document to reform the creaking institutions of Europe. But true to form the Europeans mismanaged the entire affair. Having had the original constitution turned down, they should simply have lived with the consequences. Instead, they have behaved in a weaseling and dishonest way that would never have occurred to the great 1950s architects of Europe, men with culture, honesty and a sense of where their extraordinary civilization had gone wrong. Thank God for the Irish.

Mr. Stone is a professor of international relations at Bilking University in Ankara and author of "World War I: A Short History," forthcoming in paperback from Basic Books.