Ireland

Big Yes expected in Ireland – but what will Klaus do?

October 3, 2009 12:33 pm by Tony Barber

The early results look pretty conclusive: Irish voters have approved the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, possibly by a very large margin.  A poll by the opposition Fine Gael party suggests the pro-Lisbon forces may have taken between 60 and 65 per cent of the vote.

That would be a comprehensive turnaround from the 53.4 to 46.6 per cent victory for the No camp in the June 2008 referendum in Ireland.  Voters in Dublin seem to have given overwhelming backing to the treaty, according to RTE, the Irish state broadcaster. Read more

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Posted in EU |

From No to Yes: Switch Voters Hold Key to Ireland’s EU Poll

October 2, 2009 10:34 am by Tony Barber

Voting in Ireland’s referendum on the Lisbon treaty got off to a pretty slow start at one polling station I went to in central Dublin this morning.  By 8am, an hour after the polls opened, fewer than a dozen people had arrived to cast ballots.  Nevertheless, it struck me as significant that two voters told me that they had switched to voting Yes from No in Ireland’s June 2008 referendum on the treaty.  By contrast, no one said they had switched to No from Yes.

In the 2008 referendum, the Lisbon treaty was defeated by a margin of 53.4 to 46.6 per cent on a turn-out of 53.1 per cent.  That was a decisive result.  But because Ireland is a small place, with an electorate of just over 3m, the absolute difference between the Yes and No votes was not that great.  Some 862,415 people voted against Lisbon and 752,451 in favour. Read more

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Posted in EU |

Two-speed Europe is the dog that doesn’t bark

October 1, 2009 11:25 am by Tony Barber

According to Brian Cowen, Ireland’s premier, a No result in Friday’s referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon treaty would raise the prospect of a “two-speed Europe”, with some countries forging ahead with closer political and economic integration and others staying outside.  But isn’t a two-speed Europe the dog that is hauled out of its kennel every time there’s a EU institutional crisis but which, in the end, never barks?

After Irish voters rejected the Lisbon treaty in June 2008, a number of politicians were quick to assert that a two-speed Europe was the only way to keep the European “project” on the road.  Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, who has lived through more EU crises than most of us have had quetsch plum tarts, mused in public that perhaps it was time for a “Club of the Few” to go ahead on their own. Read more

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Posted in Enlargement, EU |

Ireland vs Iceland: Which will emerge from economic crisis first?

September 30, 2009 12:11 pm by Tony Barber

Ireland’s referendum on the Lisbon treaty on Friday should in principle be about the treaty’s contents, not the state of the Irish economy.  But the economy’s collapse over the past 12 months compels both pro-Lisbon and anti-Lisbon forces to confront the question of whether membership of the European Union – and, specifically, of the eurozone – has helped (even saved) Ireland, made things worse, or not made much difference one way or the other.

An interesting angle from which to approach this question is to ask whether Ireland has fared better than another island off the north-west coast of Europe that was thrown into turmoil at almost exactly the same moment last year – namely, Iceland.  Iceland isn’t a EU member and doesn’t use the euro.  Has this accelerated Iceland’s recovery or held it back? Read more

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Posted in Euro |

Economic whirlwind makes fear a potent factor in Irish EU vote

September 29, 2009 2:45 pm by Tony Barber

One day I’ll break the habit of only visiting Ireland when there’s a referendum on a European Union treaty.  It can easily mislead you into thinking that the Irish people like nothing better than a passionate ”national conversation” (as the latest faddish expression puts it) about Europe.  In fact, it is closer to the mark to say, as Eamon Delaney does in an article for the Irish magazine Business & Finance, that “Ireland is an island with a self-absorbed political culture which is not all that interested in overseas affairs”.

Be that as it may, I’m back in Dublin and the contrast with the political atmosphere of June 2008, when Irish voters rejected the EU’s Lisbon treaty on institutional reform, is pretty startling.  Fifteen months ago, businessmen and economists I talked with were in no doubt that Ireland was heading into a recession, but none predicted the whirlwind that has wrought unmatched havoc on the economy and come close to destroying the national banking system. Read more

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Posted in Euro |

Dark clouds gather for EU on Lisbon treaty

September 17, 2009 9:53 am by Tony Barber

Now that José Manuel Barroso is safely re-installed as European Commission president for the next five years, it would be tempting to think that – from an institutional point of view, at least – all is well in Brussels.  Tempting, but wrong.

Once again, it is our old friend the Lisbon treaty that is the problem.  On October 2 Irish voters, who rejected the treaty in a referendum in June 2008, will have the chance to reverse their verdict.  Opinion polls indicate that the Yes camp will win this time.  But there is an unmistakeable air of nervousness at the European Union’s headquarters that the polls may not be a reliable guide to the eventual outcome. Read more

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Posted in EU Commission |

Former ECB chief economist slams common eurozone bonds

July 8, 2009 12:58 pm by Tony Barber

From a European Union perspective, it’s somewhat surprising that the extraordinary financial crisis we’ve been living through has not generated more pressure for another big push at EU integration – if not in the political sphere, then at least in the economic one.  According to conventional EU wisdom, it usually takes a crisis to make Europeans understand why closer integration is a good thing.  But on this occasion, it’s not happening – or at least, not yet.

For the perfect explanation as to why this should be so, I recommend an article by Otmar Issing, the European Central Bank’s former chief economist, in the latest issue of the journal Europe’s World.  Issing’s article discusses the merits of issuing common bonds for the 16-nation eurozone – an initiative that would, in theory, mark a major step forward in European integration – and comes down firmly against the proposal. Read more

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Posted in Euro |

McCreevy feeds a junkie’s Lisbon treaty habit

June 30, 2009 1:39 pm by Tony Barber

I was in Stockholm this morning when the happy news arrived that Germany’s constitutional court had given the green light in principle to the European Union’s Lisbon treaty.  I call the news “happy” not because I am biased in favour of Lisbon, but because it meant that for once the task of writing about the treaty fell to someone else at the Financial Times (on this occasion, my Berlin-based colleague Bertrand Benoit).

The EU’s masochistic efforts at institutional reform, encapsulated in the Lisbon treaty, were one of the first things I wrote about when I arrived in Brussels in 2007.  Two years later, I find that the subject refuses to go away, seeping into my daily work like a sewage leak in a cellar (a domestic problem familiar to house-dwellers in low-lying Brussels).  All the more maddening is the knowledge that almost no one in the outside world cares one stale fig about the treaty. Read more

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Posted in EU Commission |

Too much Europe?

June 27, 2008 12:45 pm by Sarah Laitner

An EU survey sheds more light on the decisive “no” vote in Ireland’s referendum on the union’s Lisbon reform treaty.

The study shows that those who voted against did so because of; a lack of knowledge of the treaty; a desire to protect Irish identity and safeguard neutrality; a lack of trust in politicians; the potential loss of a permanent commissioner in Brussels and to protect the tax system. Read more

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Posted in EU |
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