The Minister asserted that we are good Europeans. I should like to think that we would respect one of the great European traditions, the intellectual debate by Diaz, and the exploration through dialogue and discussion as to where those ideas might lead so that the future of all humanity can be better served.
What has been most unEuropean about the Maastricht debate, so far, has been the lack of such an exploration of ideas. The House should be reminded, for those who, in the course of history, will look at it in their deliberations, that this is only the third time in the course of the Maastricht process that this House has, so to speak, debated Maastricht and the two intergovernmental conferences which preceded it. We have been starved of one of the great European traditions, that of open and proper debate with a view to exploring ideas.
The Labour Party decided that that deficiency in the national debate should be addressed and we requested the international affairs committee of our party to prepare a White Paper, an analysis and a set of conclusions on the Maastricht process. The documents, which went through the administrative council of the Labour Party on 29 May, have now been published and I will be putting a copy in the Library of the House for the benefit of all Members. Within the limitations of the time available to me, I propose to read extracts from that document because it succinctly points out some of our views regarding the process of this debate and our current conclusions on Europe. The conclusions state:
Certain principles have remained at the core of the Labour Party's policy towards the integration of Europe. In particular these include the necessity of balanced and harmonious economic growth with full employment, regional development based on a real sense of solidarity, social equality and respect for civil rights, maximum democracy in decision making, the strengthening of common institutions in such a way that cultural diversity is respected, and the emergence of a shared commitment to peace, disarmament and the security of all the peoples of Europe.
The Maastricht Treaty is, in his own words, a new phase in the process of integration within Europe and is intended to create a European Union with common citizenship. Its provisions must be judged from a Labour standpoint against those principles which the party had advocated now for over two decades in respect of Ireland's membership of the European Community.
The conclusions are themselves the result of discussions which were conducted against a background of continuous monitoring of international events, particularly those relating to the European Community and its relations with other European states and international organisations.
The conclusions are necessarily a series of judgements on the further evolution of the European Community in which various arguments for and against Maastricht had to be balanced, before arriving at a recommendation as to the position the Party should adopt in the forthcoming referendum.
It has to be stressed that there are cogent arguments both ways. But in the end a judgement has to be made on where this country's best interests lie and also how the Labour Party's aspirations can be best advanced. The conclusion is that the Labour Party should support the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.
It will be seen that these are not recommendations without any reservations. On the contrary, there are serious defects in the Treaty which need to be rectified in the medium term.
This document puts forward a number of proposals on which the Labour Party should campaign within Ireland, the EC itself and in the broader context of the wider Europe. This policy would be similar to the position of many other socialist and social democratic parties in the EC, for example that of the SPD in Germany, whose bureau decided on a similar approach last month.
The accompanying explanatory memorandum outlines the main provisions of the Treaty. It is a complex document because it deals with a wide number of policy areas, creates three parallel systems of integration, proposes various means as to how decisions are to be reached and impacts on sovereignty to a varying extent in the different policy areas covered by its provisions.
The key point to be emphasised from the explanatory memorandum is that the European Community is to be expanded into a larger entity called the European Union and that this is to be the first real attempt since the Coal and Steel Community was founded in 1954 to create a political union. The Maastricht Treaty does not of itself construct a federal Europe but rather provides the framework in which some form of federation could be built over the coming decades on the basis of further Intergovernmental Conferences.
The exact nature of that federation remains to be determined. It will require the unanimous assent of all the member states involved but the significance of Maastricht is that it shifts the focus of integration onto the political as well as the economic level. It is this development which makes it different in character from the SEA which was primarily concerned with the creation of a Single Market by 1992.
The document continues:
The Maastricht Treaty has been analysed with the following points in mind:
—European integration is a process which goes forward in stages
—the process has now reached the point where political union is to begin
—the Maastricht Treaty provides a framework for moving to further stages should the member states so wish
—the next stage may take place in 1996
—the goal of political union should be widely understood as the eventual objective of Maastricht
—the party's position in the referendum should be based on its attitude towards that goal
—the new European Union will be enlarged to include Austria, Sweden and Finland in 1995/96 and possibly also Norway and Switzerland
—a further enlargement is anticipated in 2000 with the inclusion of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary
—the party should furthermore base its decision on the future role of Ireland within Europe in the light of this enlargement by the end of the decade.
Under the heading, Closed Negotiations the document states:
It is necessary, however, to perface these conclusions by commenting on the manner in which the negotiations were conducted in the two Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) leading to the Maastricht Treaty.
Initially there was to be only one such conference dealing with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) since this was regarded as a natural corollary to the Single European Act (SEA) of 1987. The second conference arose out of the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe which led to the unexpected unification of Germany at a pace few could have forecasted.
In effect, German unification meant that the GDR was absorbed into the European Community without any changes in the existing Treaties. That development led to Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterand requesting the then Irish Presidency in April 1990 to put European Political Union on the agenda via a parallel Intergovernmental Conference. This was speedily agreed with the objective of containing a united Germany within a strengthened Community.
As a result, political union appeared on the EC agenda much earlier than anticipated and with little prior preparation on the part of any member state, even though the goal of a political union had been accepted from the outset of the intergration process in the early fifties.
The two Intergovernmental Conferences were conducted in the traditional manner of international diplomacy, notwithstanding the fact that they were devising a constitutional framework for a European Union. This meant that the negotiations were largely carried out in secret mainly by officials and periodically involving the key Ministers.
The final shape of the Treaty was determined by the Heads of State and Government at the European Council meeting in Maastricht last December. Many fundamental issues were only resolved at that point, such as the irreversible commitment to European Monetary Union, the wording of an ambition to create a federal Europe and the place of the Social Charter within the new union.
Some member states had published White Papers outlining their strategy towards the two Intergovernmental Conferences in the months leading up to Maastricht, in most cases with proper parliamentary debates and often with detailed examination in their respective parliamentary committees.
To some extent these activities offset the secrecy of the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations but it cannot be claimed that there was widespread democratic consultation on the aims of political union or the implications of European Monetary Union.
This criticism is particularly relevant in Ireland where there was no White Paper published in advance, no real debate in the Oireachtas and little if any examination in Committee. As a result the electorate was left singularly uninformed of the issues as they unfolded within the Intergovernmental Conferences and have now been presented within a complex package which must be accepted or rejected in total.
The nature of the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations means that there is no scope whatever for amending the articles of the Treaty after it had been voluntarily signed by the various Governments, despite some claims to the contrary. Any particular concerns of a Government are presumed by their partners to have been raised and satisfactorily dealt with during the Conferences. That is the way the Intergovernmental Conferences are intended to work and is normal practice in the negotiation of any international Treaty.
That being the case, democratic consultation prior to the opening of the Intergovernmental Conferences should have taken place and should have been maintained for their duration. This would have given the electorate an insight into what was being attempted, the strategy objectives of the Irish Government and the reasons why compromises were necessary at various stages.
A broad consensus could thus have been constructed or at least the electorate would have been better informed when called on to vote in a referendum.
Labour therefore makes its opening recommendation to the effect that, should there be any future Intergovernmental Conferences, the process should be carried out in an open fashion with the full involvement of the Oireachtas, preferably through a properly serviced European Affairs Committee.
The failure to establish such a committee twenty years after our entry into the EEC is lamentable and a serious indictment of our democratic process. Likewise the failure to spell out even broad national policy objectives relating to the EC, other than generating the maximum amount of Euromoney, is equally unacceptable. All parties must accept some element of blame.
Furthermore, Labour believes that Ireland should actively campaign for a procedure whereby any future treaties on integration should be democratically endorsed by way of referendum in each member state. In this way, Europe would be constructed by its citizens and not just by officials and those politicians who happen to be in office.
It should be remembered that we involve the people because we are forced to do so by our Constitution and not out of commitment to an open democracy. Denmark is the only member State to do so voluntarily. All member states should adopt this same democratic mechanism in ratifying any future Treaty on European integration.
There are eight conclusions in relation to eight key elements of the Treaty. The first relates to subsidiarity and our conclusion is as follows:
The very first article of the Treaty states that it marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizens. Subsidiarity, as expressed in the Treaty, should be supported as a guiding principle for creating the new Union.
Our call for a referendum falls into that category.
The second element of the Treaty refers to citizens' rights and our conclusion is that the Treaty is certainly worthy of support in terms of the rights of European citizens.
The third component refers to democracy and our conclusion is as follows:
As the SPD has noted, this question was left as unfinished business at Maastricht and could arise again in the context of the Delors II package, future enlargement or the next Intergovernmental Conference in 1996. In that regard, the Labour Party must devote considerable time and resources to developing its own views on these questions in preparation for any further stage in the integration process, preferably in common with its sister parties.
On the question of Economic and Monetary Union, which is complex and detailed, we have a short conclusion which is as follows
The movement towards a common currency and a European Central Bank is probably irreversible, barring events which cannot be forecast at this time. Ireland should benefit more from being a participant in European Monetary Union than from remaining outside. However, the conditions of entry to the final stage will have to be framed so that they do not add to our unemployment problem. The committee recommends that the party should actively campaign for the inclusion of full employment as an explicit Community objective and for the adoption of policies based on State and Community involvement.
The Government have not at any stage recognised that an unemployment problem might be caused by adherence to the five requirements of EMU membership. A major deficiency in the Treaty is the failure to include full employment as a Community objective.
On the question of cohesion our conclusion is as follows:
Two judgements are called for here in arriving at a conclusion. The first is political. The question is whether the European Council will agree to the Commission proposal. Despite current difficulties, especially in Germany, the answer would be yes on the basis of past experience and the existence of a Protocol on cohesion. There are those who will disagree and argue it will be much reduced.
The jury is still out on that question. Forced to give a personal view, I would have to say that Delors would be very lucky to get the full amount.
The second question on the conclusions in relation to cohesion is as follows:
The second question is whether the amounts are sufficient, if they are agreed. The answer is likely to be that they would never be enough given the scale of our combined unemployment and debt problems but undoubtedly would be a valuable contribution to our national investment programme. For that pragmatic reason, the Commission proposals for the Cohesion Fund, but nothing less, should be accepted.
In that regard, the Commission proposals for the total budget are 1.37 per cent of GNP.
Social policy is the sixth element on which the document reaches a conclusion. The document reads:
The Social Charter agreement may give rise to complexity and confusion in legal terms and it is essential that it is reflected in early and determined initiatives on the part of the Council. However, the Social Action Programme, implementing the Social Charter, can now be adopted and applied in full since the delays and obstructions occasioned by the UK attitudes can be ignored by other Member States. In the optimistic belief that this will now happen — and bearing in mind the statement of the Executive Committee of ETUC that the trade union movement should support the ratification of the Treaty — the Social Agreement should be supported.
Unfortunately for the present Minister for Labour and previous Ministers for Labour, they will now have nobody — meaning the British delegation — to hide behind in respect of this matter and Ireland's conservative opposition not to the rhetoric of the Social Chater but to the provisions of the social action programme, ably articulated across the street in Kildare House, will now be flushed out into the open.
There are two other conclusions that I do not have time to read into the record. One concerns the question of development co-operation and the other concerns the issue of common foreign and security policy.
On balance, we in this House have to learn from this process. We have not learnt well enough. The Government of which I was a member badly handled the process of negotiation for the Single European Act. I am on record as having said that before, and in July 1991 and November 1991 I urged that today's Government learn from the mistakes that we made, unwittingly or perhaps somewhat arrogantly, at that time. It is tragic to relate that neither the permanent establishment of the Civil Service nor the change of Government since then have adequately learnt the lessons. We are now in a democratic republic in which the Government and the major Opposition parties are calling on the people to vote "yes" to a referendum because of its historic and momentous changes, the biggest changes to the constitutional status of this State since 1972, or perhaps since 1922. We, as a body politic, have probably taught the people more about abortion and gynaecological practice in every other state in the world than we have taught them about the intricacies, the question marks and the doubts that the Maastricht Treaty presents to the Irish people at this time. I say that more in sadness than in anger because the total absence of journalists from the Press Gallery and the lack of political concern in the House seem to reflect that despite the fact that the House is having a substantial debate on the matter — and I do accept that this is a substantial debate — the kind of political attention that we would like it to have is being denied us.
I urge that the Government look for, if they want it, the kind of constructive consensus that is on offer from the Labour Party and is, I believe, on offer from the other two Opposition parties in relation to clarifying the legitimate doubts of women and men in all sectors of our society on the question of the Protocol and its implications. It is unacceptable that on 18 June the people should vote on the ratification of the Treaty without knowing the precise implications of what the Protocol may mean for the right to information and to travel, or what the Government's intentions are.
I can only say — and I invite the Tánaiste to refute this, as he has the opportunity — that the reason the Fianna Fáil Party are refusing to publish their commitment to the right to information and the right to travel is that that party cannot find unanimous substantial agreement on that question. That is the only explanation for the silence in this issue. On that point, I conclude by inviting the Tánaiste to refute that political charge before he reads out his departmental speech so as to eliminate what seems to me to be a reasonable political explanation for an indefensible position.