You know how it is. The Finns fall silent in two languages usually. We do not speak that much, that is why we are short.
I thank the sub-committee for the invitation. When I left Helsinki at 5.35 a.m. Irish time, I felt I would be ready for this in the afternoon and I am. If I may be allowed, I wish to raise five points I think could be helpful for the debate and the final report. The first is an observation that the European Union is in a constant mode of treaty change. For the past 25 years we have either prepared, negotiated or ratified a new treaty. This can be seen as a continuation of events since 1985 with the Single European Act which was followed by the Maastricht treaty, the Amsterdam treaty, the Nice treaty, the constitutional treaty and then the Lisbon treaty. In this process there have always been problems of one sort or another but at the end of the day those problems have been solved. If I have one key message today it is that this problem needs to be solved together. In a sense, I am a little bit of a sad case. I wrote my PhD on flexible integration, the possibility for different member states to do different things at different times. My final thesis was very simple, that is, the idea of co-Europe can always be used as a threat but at the end of the day one will never end up using it. That does not mean we should steer away from flexible solutions of sorts. For me, there are no flexible solutions to this one. It will be a common European solution.
We are faced with three key challenges. I will not dwell on this because members know the details very well. All challenges are linked to the treaty. The first challenge is enlargement. Will we be able to cope, institutionally, without an increase in qualified majority voting or an increased role for national parliaments or the European Parliament? The second challenge is climate change. Will we be able to implement the decisions taken by the Heads of State in the so-called 20/20 decision without the Lisbon treaty?
The third challenge is our role in the world and Common Foreign and Security Policy and our way of promoting what I call soft power. Will we be able to be a bigger player on the world stage, as we are on trade and aid, in traditional foreign policy without the treaty?
Why do I think the Lisbon treaty is good? Members have probably seen 120 arguments on this but I will give three more. It increases democracy within the EU by giving a stronger role to national parliaments, more power to the European Parliament and strengthening the subsidiarity principle. It clarifies our system. One could argue that the constitutional treaty was clearer but the Lisbon treaty is not bad. It clarifies by giving us a clearer division of competence. We have not been able to say what the EU does and what it does not do. It increases the efficiency of the EU by increasing qualified majority voting, by giving the EU a legal personality, which facilitates the negotiation of international treaties and by establishing a president of the EU and a foreign minister for the EU. I say this as a representative of a small state. When Europe speaks with one voice, it is in our interest. When we are split it is always the big states who run the show. It is as simple as that.
I come from a geographically peripheral state that is similar to Ireland in ways, such as size, experience, having a big neighbour, and being militarily non-alligned or neutral. Our experience has been the same. The EU Presidencies run by Ireland have been very good, not least the latest in 2004. I have worked as a civil servant and as a MEP. Coming from a small state, it is in the interest of small states to have strong institutions. Anything that happens outside the institutions is to our disadvantage. We are not in the game of the big states. If something happens in the G8 or G20 without the EU, our voice is not heard. The WTO is an excellent example of an institution where, if Europe speaks with one voice, small states' voices can be heard as well.
Our philosophy has been simple. We must find common solutions to common problems and the best way to do it for small states is to sit around the table where decisions are made. The best argument I heard came a few years ago from a Belgian ambassador who explained how small states should act in the EU. The Belgians have been there from the beginning. He said that a small state usually comes up with a good idea, then goes to a bigger state and asks what it thinks about the idea. The big state responds that it is not so good. Three months later, the small state goes back and says that it has adjusted the proposal since it was last discussed. The big state then says that it is quite interested. The small state waits another three months and offers the original idea and the big states will grab it. One must be around the table where decisions are made. One must be flexible, must work and must be at the heart of Europe, not trying to work the so-called rejection game. Ireland has been one of the central players inside the EU. Ireland has punched above its weight many times while in the EU.
My final and fifth point is about communication, because the Chairman asked me for my comments on how to narrow the gap between the citizen and the European Union. The first thing is to avoid the blame game. The European Union is a very easy spitting cup — everything that is bad happens in Brussels and everything that is good is thanks to the member states or the capital cities or, as I told the Minister for Foreign Affairs, everything that happens in Dublin is bad and everything that is good happens in Cork. That link is always there and it is so easy to demonise the European Union.
I was following the Irish debate on the Lisbon treaty and also the debate in the committee yesterday and there was a certain process of demonisation and this happens all over Europe. We have to be really careful because if the European Union is put down on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and then we go to church on Sunday and say that the EU is really good, then the response will not be positive. I am not saying we should start doing EU propaganda but I think we can and should give the European Union a little bit of credit where credit is due.
I will give two recent examples, one is Georgia and the Georgian crisis, where European soft power and foreign policy worked. We brokered the ceasefire, we brokered peace. The second example is the financial crisis. I would hate to see where we would have been without the European Union and certainly without the euro. We have to try to find common solutions but we also must be able to communicate the European Union a little better.
This is what I wanted to say by way of a short introduction, first, that we are in a constant process of treaty change; second, that we face a certain set of current challenges such as enlargement, climate change, CFSP; third, the reasons the Lisbon treaty is good; fourth, why small states benefit from the system and why our experience in Finland is similar to the Irish one; finally, to stop the blame game and see the positive developments of the European Union.