- FT.com / Columnists / Samuel Brittan - Why the Irish were right to say No
"If some European countries such as Germany and France and a few others want to develop the centralist and corporatist model further, I do not see the objection. Indeed we are likely to see not a two-speed but a multi-speed Europe, even though the British Foreign Office will worry that the UK might not be absolutely sure of a seat at an imaginary top table. Too bad."
Esta nota poderá ser a "mãe de todas as notas" - mas arruma, em princípio, o acervo (restante) de artigos sobre o referendo irlandês. São artigos de fontes, perspectivas e posições políticas diferentes, mas todos careiam ou tópicos de reflexão ou informações interessantes. Ficam aqui também como referência para notas futuras.
- Europe’s Unhappy Union by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal 18 June 2008
"Is the European Union heading for a Yugoslavian-style denouement? It sometimes looks as if its political class, oblivious to the wishes or concerns of the EU’s various populations, is determined to bring one about. The French and the Dutch voted against the proposed European Constitution, but that did not deter the intrepid political class from pressing ahead with its plans for a superstate that no one else wants. ...
... What could explain the Irish obduracy? Several explanations came forth, among them Irish xenophobia and intellectual backwardness and the malign influence of the Murdoch-owned press. The narrowest economic self-interest was also said to have played a part. Having been huge beneficiaries of European largesse over the last 30 years, the Irish—who have the second-highest per capita GDP in Europe after Luxembourg—are now being asked to pay some of it back in the form of subsidies to the new union members from Eastern Europe. Ingrates that they are, they don’t want to pay up, especially now that their own economic growth rate has slowed dramatically in the wake of the financial crisis and the economic future looks uncertain. Another explanation for the Irish “no” vote was that Irish citizens had been frightened by the proposal of the French finance minister to equalize tax rates throughout Europe, thus destroying unfair competition (all competition is unfair, unless the French win).
... What the people of Europe want is completely irrelevant. For the moment, all is peaceful and quiet. The political class, which loves the unitary European state precisely because it so completely escapes democratic or any other oversight (let alone control), and for whom it acts as a giant pension fund, holds the upper hand for now. But tensions and frustrations in Europe have a history of expressing themselves in nasty ways."
- The Irish “no” and the rich-poor/urban-rural divide vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
"At first sight the French no vote has little in common with the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty. In France the scaremongers said that further integration would lead to a fiscal race to the bottom, and place France's liberal abortion laws in jeopardy. In Ireland the scaremongers said that further integration would lead to a fiscal race to the top, and the imposition of liberal abortion laws on what remains a largely Catholic country.
And yet there are striking socio-economic similarities between the two votes that Europe's politicians will disregard at their peril. A glance at the electoral map suffices to confirm what earlier opinion polls had indicated: the Irish vote divided along class lines in a stark and disturbing fashion. In the most affluent constituencies of Dublin, such as Dun Laoghaire, where even a modest home can cost upwards of €1 million (although that is changing), 60% or more voted for the treaty. In working class areas of the city, it was the no vote which scored in excess of 60%. Brouard and Tiberj (2006) show that precisely the same division between rich and poor, or the skilled and unskilled, can be discerned in the French 2005 vote.There are at least two ways of interpreting such patterns. The first would hold that well educated voters are more politically sophisticated and better able to understand the issues involved in a complex amendment to the institutional underpinnings of the European Union. The second interpretation is that, on the contrary, both rich and poor are capable of correctly discerning where their economic interests lie, and vote accordingly.The argument would be that globalisation generally, and European integration more narrowly, has overwhelmingly favoured skilled workers, at least in affluent countries such as France, Ireland and the Netherlands. Unskilled workers, by contrast, feel under threat from Romanian (or Asian) competition, or immigration from Eastern Europe and further afield. And while those of us who are more fortunate might regret it, it is hardly surprising that -- in accordance with Heckscher-Ohlin logic -- they vote accordingly.... . But I have to say that my bet is that the gap between middle-class and working-class voting patterns has a lot more to do with different interests, real or perceived, than with supposed differences in political sophistication. To a large extent this prior is based on the work of Anna Maria Mayda and Dani Rodrik, and Richard Sinnott and myself, on the determinants of attitudes towards globalisation across countries.That work has shown that while the unskilled are more hostile than the skilled to trade and immigration in rich countries, in poor countries it is the unskilled who are the most pro-globalisation -- which seems difficult to reconcile with the argument that the less well educated simply cannot be expected to understand the benefits of international economic integration.If this interpretation is correct, then the Irish referendum result, in one of the most pro-European members of the Union, should serve as a wake-up call to politicians that if they want to maintain the benefits of open international markets, as I do, they will simply have to take more notice of the concerns of those who are being left behind. Of course, I wouldn't want to claim that this referendum result was simply about the economic interests of different groups of voters.The greatest difficulty facing the pro-treaty side was in articulating a compelling reason to vote yes, when the European Union has clearly not collapsed in the wake of the 2005 and 2007 enlargements. Public mistrust of politicians, in Ireland as in France, meant that assurances that the treaty really was necessary, all appearances to the contrary, were always going to fall on a great many deaf ears. As in the Netherlands, there was surely a fear that as a small country Ireland stood to lose by more than France or Germany in giving up its veto -- and this impression is bound to grow in the weeks ahead, if as seems likely Europe's leaders attempt to ignore this Irish roadblock to their institutional ambitions on the grounds that Ireland is…small.Some voters dislike the way that the French and Dutch referendum results were essentially ignored by Europe’s leadership. And so on. My claim is simply that economic interests were one factor among many, and should not be ignored. If working-class and rural voters are systematically voting against further European integration, that is something which Europe's political leadership will need to listen to. ...
- "In the wake of Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon treaty, observers around the world are attempting to understand what, exactly, the "no" vote means (see Tyler Cowen for his, characteristically interesting, conclusions). Some European leaders have all but settled on the idea that a two-track European Union is unavoidable, whereby serious intergrationists press on with their project while sceptics sit on the edges of what would be a glorified free trade area.Writing at VoxEU, Daniel Gros argues that this possibility should have been made explicit in referenda on the reform package. In other words, the question put to Ireland shouldn't have been, "What do you think," but rather, "Will you join us or shall we kick you right out?" Incentives are extremely misaligned when a small-nation electorate can punish ‘Brussels’ and its own political class at little or no cost. Ireland represents 1% of the EU, so 99% of the cost of the ‘no’ falls on other members.
This column proposes a radical solution – the other EU members should propose to leave the old EU and create a new one with the Lisbon Treaty as its founding document. The Irish would then have to decide whether they’re in or out. Ireland clearly felt that the treaty would involve costs for the nation, with which voters were uncomfortable. But Ireland inarguably enjoys huge benefits from EU membership, as well. By allowing Ireland the opportunity to veto the costs without risking the benefits, the EU essentially decided the outcome of the approval process before eurosceptical activists ever lifted a finger"
- Marginal Revolution: Irish thoughts
"Henry writes: In particular, German parliamentarian Axel Schäfer’s comment that “With all respect for the Irish vote, we cannot allow the huge majority of Europe to be duped by a minority of a minority of a minority,” would have a bit more credibility if, you know, the majority of the majority of the majority had been given a chance to vote on the Treaty themselves.
I can imagine a few other lessons:
1. Give people a referendum on a big question and they will use it as a chance to voice their general displeasure with many other matters. New Zealand made that mistake on electoral reform. The Irish vote was strongly divided among rich-poor lines.
2. According to polls, the Irish are not especially Euroskeptical. I guess that is "Eurosceptical". In any case multilateralism has limits.
3. The option under consideration *was* Plan B. There is no obvious Plan C.
4. It worked last time (2002) to ask them to vote again. Few people think that gambit can be played a second time.
5. One Irishman opined: ""We're told we can vote no, that the system requires unanimity. But when (a `no' vote) actually happens, every time, the EU tells us: You really only have a right to vote yes," said Dublin travel agent Paul Brady, who voted against the treaty.
6. Some deluded soul in the EU read a copy of John Calhoun instead of Buchanan and Tullock's Calculus of Consent. Hadn't they remembered the history of 17th and 18th century Poland and decided that a unanimity rule is a bad idea?
7. If European nations demand a unanimity rule (which I can well imagine), is that not a sign that they have a free trade area but nothing close to a real political union?"
- Ilana Bet-El: John Bolton's Irish adventure Comment is free guardian.co.uk
"Some time ago I asked who needs Fox News when you have John Bolton? Well, the Irish referendum slightly reformulated the question around the man: who needs sovereign democracy when you have John Bolton? There he was on June 8, declaring the Lisbon Treaty posed a threat to Nato and undermined democracy by handing more power to Brussels bureaucrats. It is worth noting that Ireland is not even a member of Nato – but only before asking what on earth he was doing, interfering in a process not relevant to him or his country? A large part of the answer must be that the Bolton opinion apparently knows no bounds. The world was his stage as US ambassador to the UN, then it was taken away from him by his own people in the US Congress, since he only got the job in a recess appointment, snuck in by his mate the president. So he is now reduced to hawking his mindless opinions around any stage available.
But another part of the answer may be related to a slightly more problematic question: was there a US interest in the outcome of the Irish referendum? Again, a large part of the answer must be a resounding "no". The US is absorbed in itself even more than usual, since this is an election year. However, and notwithstanding, there are some persistent murmurs of a rightwing desire in the US to undermine the Lisbon Treaty, in an attempt to weaken the EU as a strong economic partner and a potential rival for world power.
Such murmurs would be worthy of a giggle, were it not for some questions that now emerge, related to Declan Ganley, head of Libertas, whicht fronted the "no" campaign in Ireland. He was apparently shopping around for a PR company in Brussels to help him with his task. This was a year ago, and it should show his abysmal ignorance of the EU in that all PR shops in Brussels make their living out of helping companies and clients interface with the union, not close it down, so he found little joy. But here is the crucial fact: he was directed to Brussels by the Washington offices of various PR consultancies. In other words, he had gone to Washington first.
And that begs the question: why is an Irish entrepreneur seeking a lobbying company on an EU referendum in Washington? For someone who claims to have made his fortune by his own wits – and someone who also claims to have decided to fight the Lisbon Treaty after reading through it to seek business opportunities – it is implausible to assume he did not know his own way to Brussels, or found out lobbying possibilities through his own Irish connections. One can only assume therefore that he started his quest in Washington because that was where his connections lay.
Ganley remains an enigma in Ireland – though much has been made of his company's contracts with US defence forces in Iraq. (That in itself is ironic, since one of his central claims was that Ireland would be forced into a – non-existent – EU army and become militarised if the Lisbon Treaty was passed.) But then again, many international companies supply the US military. Indeed, one of them is owned by Ulick McEvaddy, another Irish entrepreneur who heads Omega Air, a Texas-based company that offers commercial airborne refuelling of military aircraft. He is one of the very few known contributors to Ganley's organisation, for on the whole it remains totally unclear how Libertas was funded or by whom.
It also remains unclear why John Bolton felt the need, or authority, to comment upon a purely Irish – and possibly European – affair. Even with his vast ego, he cannot be accused of being stupid. These are uncomfortable questions, which are in some ways on the sidelines of the Irish referendum – and in others right at its heart. For it was and remains about democracy and its workings.
And to may observers, the referendum seems anything but democratic. Much has been made about this being the third referendum to reject the treaty that was once the constitution – but it must also be said that it stands out as different, and not because of Ireland's size. For at base, in the previous two referenda, in France and the Netherlands, some of the major political parties expressed doubts and openly joined the "no" campaign. In Ireland this was adamantly not the case. All the elected political parties bar one – Sinn Fein – were in favour of the treaty.
Sinn Fein is also a legal and duly elected political party, but while Jonathan Powell has done a masterful job of portraying the positive traits of Gerry Adams, it has to be said that one definition of a nightmare was watching him last Friday preach to Europe about the merits of respecting legalities and democracy – closely followed by pictures of anti-abortionists spitting at the Irish Finance Minister when he was trying to speak on the Treaty.
... therefore, there is a big question to ask: why is it more democratic to have the result of a referendum run by a bizarre alliance of Libertas, anti-abortionists and Gerry Adams decide the fate of the EU than ratification of the treaty by duly-elected governments? To single-mindedly say: "Yes, it is so because the people have spoken," is to ignore that the people also spoke at the elections, in all EU member states. And those people empowered their governments to make decisions, including the ratification of treaties.
Why is their will, and their system of government, less democratic? To argue now that the people in other member states are being denied a right given to the Irish people is also daft: if one thing is clear, it is that no one voted on the substance of the treaty since no-one – from the prime minister of Ireland down to the youngest of voters – appeared to have read it.
Indeed, its very complexity was one of the reasons given for the "no" vote. One of the most basic issues behind discontent with the EU is the democratic deficit. Unfortunately the Irish referendum only increased concerns on this matter rather than clearly showing how EU decision making could be more democratic. For at the end of the day, respecting the will of the people must be an act encompassing the whole and not the part, and the part must show that they have voted for a clear issue rather than a mixed bag of single issue concerns melded into an unholy alliance ..."
- Timothy Garton Ash: Instead of bullying the Irish, Europe should be working on plan D - and E Comment is free The Guardian
"...I write as someone who thinks the EU needs the institutional reforms in the Lisbon treaty and regrets that a majority of Irish voters rejected it - from a gallimaufry of motives, it seems, some having little to do with the real content of the treaty. But I was shocked by initial reactions from the German foreign and interior ministers, the tone and implication of which was: silly little Irish voters, go away and come back with the right answer, otherwise we'll have to kick you out into the cold.
... That would be right if the EU were a direct democracy; but it isn't a direct democracy, or only in that lesser part of its legitimation that flows through direct elections to the European parliament. The EU - this EU, the only real, existing EU, the best EU we've got - is still mainly an indirect democracy: meaning that each democratic member-state has to reach its own decision in its own way.
That's time-consuming. As in a convoy, or an extended family, everything takes longer. Slower ships and curmudgeonly cousins must be attended to. But that's exactly what it means to be a European Union, not a hegemon-dominated alliance or a United States of Europe. It's true that, even under the existing treaties, smaller groups of states who want to work more closely together in particular policy areas can do so.
... But on the EU's central institutional arrangements and its external relations - the two big things the Lisbon treaty tries to address - this is, as soon as you stop to examine it, a complete non-starter. Worried about the EU being weak and divided, you would end up making it weaker and more divided. Tactically, in any case, this was the worst possible way to respond. Nothing could be better calculated to ensure that the Irish say "no" a second time - assuming their government dares to ask them again, which it's far from certain it will. The contrast with German reactions to the French "no" in 2005 is striking. When the French say "no", Europe has a problem. When Ireland says "no", Ireland has a problem.
... and then for the Irish government to come to the European Council in October with suggestions for a package they might take back to change their voters' minds. For example, there might be "explanatory protocols" giving assurances on abortion, Irish neutrality, corporation tax and anything else held to have fed Irish fears.
... So we should be thinking of plan E as well. Plan E has three parts. The first is to continue working under the existing treaties. The plain fact is that the enlarged EU of 27 is still functioning "under Nice". It has not ground to a halt, as some predicted. The second part is to see how many of the institutional changes that we really do need - to make an enlarged EU work better, and be more effective in the world - could be implemented without a new grand treaty. I've been asking this question of experts on the legal-institutional workings of the EU over the past few days, and the answer is: a surprisingly large number. I won't bore you with the details, which would make a Jesuit blush, but it turns out that, given ingenuity and political will, things like a more consolidated foreign policy apparatus with a single head could probably be made to happen anyway. Where there's a will there's a way. So this would be what the Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has called "Nice plus". The third part of plan E is the most important of all. While resolving this decade-long institutional tangle as best we can, we would go on actually doing things that matter to Europeans and to the world. When the new US president is elected this autumn, he should find in his in-tray a memo from Europe spelling out what we see as the biggest challenges in the world and what we propose to do about them.
- FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - What dream will Europe dream now?
"... Some readily conclude that it is far too easy to confuse citizens about complicated issues. To them, this is a proof that referendums are intrinsically bad and that treaty approval by stealth is justified. This is a deep misunderstanding of democracy. Our citizens are not confused; they are cynical, and this is a rational response to our leaders’ cynicism.
They vote No to Europe because they do not have any other means to express their displeasure with the way the EU is being run. The only votes that they can cast are for the European parliament, but these elections are really national affairs. We vote for national parties and the campaigns are almost everywhere dominated by domestic issues.
Citizens do not know much about Europe, simply because there is no public debate about European affairs. They do not care about a treaty that will keep them on the sidelines. The treaty matters greatly for the elites, because it sets the rules by which they play. It is not just complicated; it is not understandable because it does not address the everyday concerns of ordinary citizens. The EU is unique in the world in that some significant chunks of sovereignty have been abandoned by member states for the common good. But this authority has been transferred to unelected officials, notwithstanding the required nod of approval of the European parliament.
What kind of a democracy is this, when citizens have no say in the choice of their leaders? Neither the Commission nor its president, who is treated in terms of protocol like a head of state, is chosen as a result of elections in which they ran. The new president of the European Council (the body on which government leaders sit) envisaged in the Lisbon treaty would not be directly elected, either. These figures are selected by heads of governments who were themselves elected for other reasons. No one knows whether the Commission is a legislative or an executive body; strangely, it is both.
European citizens would not be so cynical if they were regularly invited to choose the people who run European affairs. We need real campaigns, dealing with European issues, just as in national elections. We ought to decide whether we want a presidential regime, in which case citizens should elect the president directly, or whether we prefer a parliamentary regime, in which case we would have an election where pan-European parties competed in order to put forward their designated leaders to run the Commission.
This would be a normal executive body with whatever powers the member states chose to give it. This is what the European Convention, which produced the infamous constitutional treaty, should have debated. It did not venture in this direction because it well knew that it would have been vetoed by heads of government fearful that a democratically elected European leadership would eat into their powers.
The convention’s progeny was doomed from the start. Of course, real European elections would take us uncomfortably close to a federal arrangement. The founding fathers sought to avoid this debate, which they knew would divide nations and people within each nation. This “great ambiguity” has worked wonderfully well for half a century, almost like a free lunch. Its costs are now becoming all too visible.
It may still be too early to resolve this ambiguity. In the meantime, whether the Lisbon treaty is ratified or not, Europe is likely to gravitate toward the mostly economic and monetary arrangement that the anti-federalists always wanted. This may turn out to be the only realistic solution. My generation shared a European dream. It has become a reality, beyond what we had dreamt. The next generations, who take the EU as a fact of life, will have to decide whether they want to dream up something else. One thing is sure: as far as integration is concerned, we are now entering a long period of freeze."
- Fintan O'Toole: The fear factory devastated Ireland's flaccid political class Comment is free The Guardian
"... What can be said with some confidence is that the Irish vote was shaped by the confluence of two factors. One was the miserable nature of the yes campaign. Every major political party except Sinn Féin (which has just 7% of the vote in the Republic) urged a yes vote, as did the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation and, in effect, the Catholic church.
The assumption seems to have been that Irish voters would simply follow their leaders. The main party campaigns consisted largely of putting up posters with the earnest faces of local or national politicians and bland slogans like "Good for Ireland, Good for Europe". The implicit message was: "This document is complicated and virtually unreadable but, trust us, there's nothing bad in it."
This strategy betrayed an astonishing ignorance of the way the Irish, in common with most Europeans, currently regard their political class. Trust isn't the most obvious feature of the relationship between governments and the governed.
... the sense of disillusionment and betrayal grew. In those circumstances, appealing to trust was a misjudgment that bordered on self-delusion. The benefit of the doubt no longer goes to the establishment. The other decisive factor was, paradoxically, the very incoherence of the no side. It was made up of people who actually can't stand each other.
There were rightwing Catholics who warned (against the judgment of the Catholic bishops) ... and leftwing liberals who have fought bitterly against those same people ... There were leftwing anti-militarists who warned that the treaty compromised Irish neutrality... And, in the form of Libertas - a mysterious group that emerged from nowhere with a great deal of money to spend - there were people with strong ties to US military contractors. There were campaigners who warned that the European Union would take away the Republic's low corporate tax rates, and activists who portrayed the union as a giant corporate conspiracy. Imported British Euroscepticism from the Irish editions of the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail sat alongside resentment of "foreign" influence from the EU. Logic would seem to suggest that a campaign so riddled with self-contradiction, and so lacking in an agreed alternative vision, ought to be highly ineffective against the big machines of the main political parties.
In fact the no campaign turned, more by accident than design, into a very efficient factory of fears. It was able to present voters with an extensive menu of anxieties. ...
... The turnout for Lisbon was much higher, so repeating the exercise would simply feed the perception that voters are being bullied. In any event, a second vote would have to be on an altered proposition. But to remove most of the things people objected to in the treaty, they would have to have been there in the first place. The treaty's doom, in other words, is probably sealed by the fact that it's not actually as bad as many Irish voters think it is."
- Jackie Ashley: Now that Ireland has rejected the treaty, what will Gordon Brown do? Comment is free guardian.co.uk:
"But one thing is certain: if he does to decide to push ahead with our European partners, he and they will have to make a much better case for Europe than has been done so far. A complacent campaign by the 'yes' supporters in Ireland lost the vote: it is time for those who want Britain to stay at the heart of Europe to stand up and make their voices heard."
- Richard Delevan: Why Ireland said no Comment is free guardian.co.uk
"...Campaigners for a yes vote jostled to assign blame. ... Martin said the no vote trend demonstrated a "disconnect between Europe and its people", and that many voters felt "a lack of information". ..."We up here in the elites have the idea that everyone is listening. But it didn't register." The head of Ireland's largest business organisation, Ibec, blamed a no campaign which he said lacked "integrity". Rural areas and working class urban areas turned in strong no votes.
...The campaign for a yes vote was up against a tough public mood, but the campaign itself was always on the defensive. ..."
- Editorial: The Irish vote must not thwart a better Europe Comment is free The Observer
"It is catch-22. Without reforming the way it makes decisions, freeing itself to act on global issues that really matter, the European Union will continue to look like a self-serving, arcane bureaucracy. But the EU can't negotiate the devilishly detailed process of reforming itself without resembling the conspiratorial caricature portrayed by its detractors.
... But the overarching theme - suspicion of a process that appears to serve elites more than ordinary people - resonates across the Continent. ... European leaders will be desperate to salvage the structural reforms common to both documents aimed at streamlining decision-making and giving the EU a more coherent voice in foreign affairs. Something of that nature, they argue quite rightly, is essential if the Union is to defend its member states' interests in the face of global challenges: climate change, energy dependency on Russia, economic competition from East Asia and international terrorism.
... As with any form of public administration, it is probably expecting too much that people will learn to love the EU. But what is extraordinary is how bad national governments have been at explaining why it is necessary - how it has been an overwhelmingly positive force on a continent that spent the centuries before its inception engaged in near-constant, bloody, religious, imperial and ethnic war.
The peace dividend still pays out. The prospect of EU membership has entrenched and advanced democracy in the strife-strewn Balkans. Croatia, for example, is set to join in 2010. British governments in particular have fostered scepticism by presenting their negotiations in Brussels as heroic defence of the national interest against the forces of pan-Europeanism. British Prime Ministers, including Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, have colluded in the fiction that EU power is something exercised over Britain by Brussels, to be constrained with 'red lines'.
In fact, EU power is wielded by Britain through Brussels. Decisions made there may adversely affect some sectional interest in British society or help another, farmers, for example, or bankers. But that is what government does.
If there is a compromise on 'sovereignty' when elected Prime Ministers agree a common position, it is minor compared with the limits on national power imposed by forces of globalisation, as is clear from the current surge in oil prices and the credit crunch. The EU can carry on for a while using existing practice for making decisions. The urgency felt in Brussels to get some version of the Lisbon reforms ratified is understandable - national governments are as fed up as voters with endless technocratic tinkering - but that urgency all too often comes across as arrogance and disrespect for public opinion.
The reality is that the pro-Europeans have to build their arguments, and possibly their treaty, from scratch. They must point out the ways in which the sceptics have already been proved wrong: on the mighty single currency that doomsayers said would collapse; on enlargement which has brought prosperity to millions of people despite gloomy predictions of nationalist backlash and institutional meltdown; on sovereignty which still resides in national parliaments; and on identity which is undiluted. Ireland is no less Irish for being in the EU, nor Germany less German, nor Britain less British. In Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22, the hero solves his predicament by going Awol. EU leaders do not have that option. They must fight for the project they believe in. They must win the argument for Europe. "
- Will Hutton: Europe must not be derailed by lies and disinformation Comment is free The Observer:
"Battle is going to be joined in earnest because it must. Pro-Europeans everywhere must engage. We need this Europe - to fight climate change, to ensure security of energy and food, to underwrite our prosperity and to fight for our common interests. The world needs it too. The EU is the citizens' friend. If it did not exist, Europe would have to invent something similar. Over the next few months, Europe's leaders are going to have to develop concrete initiatives to support these points and to present what they are doing as European and only possible because of the EU."
- Peter Preston: We forget at our peril Comment is free The Guardian:
"The people who want to rescue Serbia from its past know the perils of narrow nationalism. They - and many like them - need our help because they are striving for something better, sometimes at huge risk. But do we even pause to perceive it? No: European union has become a gravy train of Fleet Street imagining and distant manipulation by men who don't start from where we start or remember what we ought to remember. Don't make them more than a bit of the problem. But don't brush aside how serious their deep unseriousness has become; or underestimate how direly we'll all suffer as this project unravels. Choppy waters on Wall Street? Mountainous seas in the Channel? Let's hope so. Because those who would sink this Europe would have to learn to swim."
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