'Given the serious problem of democratic accountability in Ireland brought about by EU membership, it is not surprising that there was a majority No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum in June 2008, and the result of any second referendum on the subject is likely to deliver a second No vote'. Discuss. Introduction Democratic accountability and the European Union (EU) is still and has been given much consideration for scholars of political science. The assumption is that since much of the work done in the EU is carried out by institutions with limited public space for influencing the policy making, resulting in a democratic deficit. The statement that gives the starting point for this essay assumes that Ireland has experienced increasing problems with democratic accountability since its 1973 enrolment in the EU. Also the statement assumes that the problems of democratic accountability is the main reason for the No vote in June 2008 on the Lisbon Treaty. I will throughout this essay discuss these assumptions. In the first part I will discuss the notion of democratic accountability and the problems the EU membership allegedly has caused Ireland. In the second part I will discuss the No vote on the Lisbon Treaty and discuss the future of Ireland in the EU and a second Lisbon referendum. Democratic accountability To fully discuss the assumption that EU membership has caused problems for the democratic accountability in Ireland, one would have to give detailed accounts for the state of the democracy in Ireland both before and after joining the EU, which would go beyond the scope of this essay. Instead, I will attempt to discuss democratic accountability in relation to the EU. According to Follesdal & Hix (2006) EU is largely consistent of non-accountable rulers where the demos 1 have little influence in selecting and overthrowing the the establishment of the EU, especially within the Commission and the Council. On the other hand, Moravcsik (2002) argues that within the EU there is a to a large extent checks and balances, both due to the policy formation within the Union but also because of the member states constant contestation of the policies. According to Follesdal & Hix (2006) EU is designed in a way that gives non-elected persons more voice in the policy formation process than those that can be held accountable to the population of the EU i.e. the elected 1 It is assumed here that there is a demos in the European Union. A discussion on that is beyond the scope of this essay. 1
politicians. They argue that it is mostly executives i.e. bureaucrats, the ECJ 2 and national ministers that runs the EU i.e. technocracy, and that this serves as threat to the democracy of the EU. This, especially since those groups are isolated from the 'normal' scrutiny of a well-functioning democracy. EU bureaucrats can not be held responsible either by the opposition, population or the national parliaments. This, according to Follesdal & Hix (2006: 534-535) means a 'decrease in the power of national parliaments and an increase in the power of executives'. On the other hand, Moravcsik argues that most of the member states democracies are also de facto technocracies, at least to some extent, in the sense that the power of bureaucrats are increasing along with the courts, and that there is a decline of the role of the parliaments (Moravcsik 2002: 613). Also, the increasing role of interest groups are increasingly important in policy making processes in both the EU and its member states. Irelands membership of the European Union In this part of the essay, I will first shortly examine Irelands membership of the EU with focus on the arguments presented by Follesdal & Hix (2006) and Moravcsik (2002) and thereafter debate the reasons for the No vote on the Lisbon Treaty in June 2008. Ireland has, compared to most other EU member states, a long history of referendums on EU matters which was broad about during the ratification of the Single European Act (SEA) in 1986 where a political decision to hold a referendum was made due to the complaints of several civil society groups on the unconstitutionality of the SEA. Since then it has become common in Ireland to hold referendums when ratifying new EU treaties (Laffan & O'Mahony 2008). There seems to be a general strong support for Ireland to be a member of the EU where in a survey 73% of the respondents thought that Irelands membership of the EU is 'a good thing' (Laffan & O'Mahony 2008: 126). This indicates a content population but other surveys points to the fact that the Irish population compared to other EU countries have a lower level of knowledge about the EU (Laffan & O'Mahony 2008). This is often given as the reason for why people vote No (Millward 2008). Also, a reason for why the Irish tend to vote No seems to be the fear of further integration of EU policies, especially on areas such as common foreign and security policy, Irish values e.g. the importance of the family values, abortion and the respect to the right of live (Laffan & O'Mahony 2008: 111). The Irish way of implementing EU law into national law can be said to be on an ad hoc basis with little common structure of implementation. The weakness of the committees 3 in the Oireachtas, can be said to be 2 The European Court of Justice 3 Meaning the two committees that are concerned with EU matters, i.e. 'Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign 2
bot that the decision made in the EU are not incorporated in the Irish law in a routinely fashion. Also, the lack of legal and technical knowledge about the EU in the committees (Laffan & Tonra in Coakley & Gallagher 2008) creates a weak foundation in the Oireachtas which not surprisingly leads to a sense of lack of knowledge in the population in general. Further, a commonly made argument is that the TD's 4 are too busy with constituency work which makes it difficult for them to have time for reading the often complicated notes on e.g. EU directives. Also, TD's attendance in the committees is fairly irregular which can be seen as a democratic problem since it is in the committees that the ministers get their mandate to negotiate in the Council of Ministers. This mandate is non binding, but the ministers has to take the views of the committee seriously (Laffan & Tonra in Coakley & Gallagher 2008). An argument against the EU as a democratic institution is that the population has only a limited say in the policies made since they can only vote for the European Parliament (EP) and not other organs of the EU. In Ireland the voters have a choice of different political parties with different opinions on how the country is best organised. Ireland has primarily a westminster-system of making politics, i.e. the government has the power and can to a large degree formulate and ratify policies without involving the opposition. In the EP the policies are made via the consensus-model which implies that agreements are sought to be as wide as possible and should represent both the majority seats and as much as possible the minority. It can be argued that this system of policy making in fact is more democratic than the westminster-model since it represents a larger percentage of the voters. On the other hand, one could argue that since so few of the demos actually vote for the EP, and even does it on a somewhat un-informed level, it may be undemocratic. Lisbon Treaty In June 2008 the Irish people voted No to the Lisbon Treaty. It created a lot of disturbance throughout Europe and caused great defeat to the EU. One of the main reasons for this was that the population felt that they had to little knowledge of the EU and the Lisbon Treaty. Also, the fear of losing the Irish commissioner was seen as Ireland loosing its voice in Europe (Millward 2008: 4). It is interesting that the Irish voters see the commissioner, who is to behave country-neutral and who is one of the least democratic aspects of the EU, as the one the Irish voters see as the most important to represent Ireland. The democratic problem of the population feeling un-informed about the EU and the Lisbon Treaty in specific made according to Millward (2008) many voters either abstain from voting or vote No to the Treaty. The lack of Affairs' and 'Joint Committee on European Affairs' 4 Teachta Dála 3
knowledge about the EU is a democratic problem since the voters are then incapable of making informed decisions on the vote and are therefore likely to be subject to catchy campaigns rather than trustworthy information. The Referendum Commission tries to combat the lack of knowledge about the EU but has been criticised for being to academic and out of touch with the public (Laffan & O'Mahony 2008). A second referendum It is immensely difficult to speculate on the results of a future second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if such one should be called. But if Ireland's relation to the EU should be changed it could be interesting to look at what made Ireland join at first. In 1973 the main reason for why there was Yes vote to joining the EU was economic, where especially the CAP funds where perceived to be beneficial for Irish farmers (Laffan & Tonra in Coakley & Gallagher 2008). Since then Ireland has experienced a great economic progress with a great increase in living standards. Now those days seems to be over. It will be interesting to see if that changes the Irish attitudes towards the EU. If one looks at the reasons for why voters either abstain from voting or choose to vote No are reasons quite different from what scholars criticize about the EU. The statement given as the basis for this essay therefore seems to be a bit odd in the sense that it assumes that the voters voted No on the Lisbon Treaty due to the lack of democratic accountability. The surveys quoted in this essay on the other hand point to voters feeling that they know to little about the EU to vote in favour of something that they do not understand. It seems that the blame for the problems of democratic accountability in the EU is mostly given to Brussels and not as much the member states. As Moravcsik (2002) argues the democratically elected governments in each of the member states constitute an important role in legitimising the democracy of the EU. In Ireland there seems to be an ad hoc approach to the EU and fear of committing one selves to fully engage in the EU. If the Oireachtas institutionalised the system of implementing EU law, took the time to read the notes given to the committees and made the effort to inform the public about the EU more and not only when there is a referendum on its way then maybe also the population would be able to make informed choices on the EU. It is only when you know what you vote on that referendum becomes democratic. 4
Literature Follesdal, xxx and Hix, Simon 2006 'xxx' Brigid Laffan and Jane O'Mahony, Ireland and the EU (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) 5