Fate of European Union Lies with Ireland

On Thursday, Irish voters may well reject the Lisbon Treaty, a replacement of an earlier constitutional measure. A "nay" vote would block EU reform

By Hans-Jurgen Schlamp

Fastidious lawns in front of tidy little family houses, Japanese station wagons lining the curb, children playing ball in Nike sneakers: Avondale Lane is a middle-class paradise in the southern Irish town of Waterford.

Fifteen years ago the houses here were smaller, the cars sparser and the children dirtier, remembers city council member David Cullinane, 31. His T-shirt reads “Waterford-Alliance” — a group opposed to the European Union's Lisbon Treaty. Each evening he and others like him go door to door with a few friendly words and stacks of colorful pamphlets. The arguments are varied, but the message is always the same: Say no to the Lisbon Treaty.

“I'm certainly going to vote that way,” promises the stout resident of number 89, a woman in her mid-30s wearing a short tank top and black tattoos on her arm and chest. After all, she says, no one has taken the time to explain to her what the treaty is actually good for.

Cullinane is there to fill the void. It is a bad treaty, he argues, because it diminishes Ireland's influence in Europe, jeopardizes the country's neutrality, promotes nuclear energy and the military, lowers wages and undermines employees' rights. “You can count on me,” the woman calls after Cullinane as he moves on to the next house.

The next neighbor deftly blocks both a child and a dog inside the doorway with her legs, as Cullinane goes through his spiel. She is “still undecided,” she says, but will be glad to take a look at the pamphlets. The next few doors don't open. Then a confused older man wants to know what kind of change a “yes” or “no” vote would bring to the municipal hospital, since he always has to wait so long there.

This Thursday, three million people in Ireland will cast their ballots on whether or not to approve the Lisbon Treaty — a vital decision affecting Europe's immediate future. Irish voters can clear the way for a European agreement that would make EU decisions more democratic and transparent and would allot national parliaments more influence.

But if the Irish vote "no," the EU reform process would be effectively blocked. The Lisbon Treaty — a replacement for the earlier Constitution which was blocked in 2005 by referenda in France and Holland — must be approved by all 27 EU member states. In the other 26, national parliaments have the say with 15 of them, including Germany, already having approved the new document.

Only in Ireland do the citizens get to have their say — and the continent's fate is suddenly in their hands.

In the EU nerve center Brussels, as well as in many other European capitals, uncertainty reigns. What will happen if the Irish refuse the treaty? Throw them out of the EU? Let them vote again and again until they say “yes”? Throw out the new treaty entirely?

There is no plan B for such a contingency, says European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Indeed, an Irish "no," concludes a recent study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, would be “a disaster for Europe.”

Treaty objector David Cullinane refutes this doomsday view. Instead, he says, such an outcome on Thursday would in fact be a blessing, he says. He too wants the best for Europe, he says. But the best, he says, means a Europe without “neo-liberal constitution” and an EU that exists “more for the people and less for big business.”

Gathering Point for Naysayers

Cullinane is an activist with Sinn Fein, the small party seen as the political arm of the Irish Republican Army through the long years of civil war in Northern Ireland. Today Sinn Fein is a gathering point for naysayers.

These nationalists are joined by some ultra-conservative church members, who fear the possibility that abortion, currently forbidden in Ireland, could be legalized. And by cattle-breeders afraid that the EU will allow more meat imports. And even a charismatic multimillionaire is using billboards to campaign for a “no”: The treaty, he says, is “good for those up high, but bad for us.”

Despite the opposition to the treaty, though, the majority of Irish actually see the European Union in a positive light.

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