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21 June 2001 Edition

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EU dogmatists must be challenged

In the aftermath of the Nice Referendum, few in the Leinster House establishment seem to be learning. Bertie Ahern, Michael Noonan and Ruairi Quinn were out mending fences internationally, as they saw it. In the case of Noonan and Quinn, they were also criticising Ahern and the coalition cabinet for daring to admit that they, like the population in general, were now finally debating the issue of what sort of Europe the 26 Counties wants to be in.

It was, it seems, blasphemous and heresy on the part of Finance minister Charlie McCreevy and Attorney General Michael McDowell to admit that they had doubts about the EU political and economic project as currently being implemented.

Bertie Ahern worked the EU's Gothenburg summit, apologising to all and sundry. He did this without stopping to actually ask himself why was he so embarrassed that he felt he had to apologise to not only other EU heads of states but also the leaders of supposedly newly democratised states for the outcome of the exercise of democracy in his own.

This is where the twisted logic of the Pro Nice Treaty campaign has left them. Surely the EU's bureaucrats and leaders of fellow member states should welcome the exercise of democracy in one small EU state. It shows that the EU can accommodate different points of view in its church and it may signal a concern held by EU citizens throughout the other 14 member states about the process and pace of integration.

The fact that the EU has not recognised these two important outcomes of the Nice Treaty referendum fuels the belief the EU is really a political and economic vehicle supported by the business community and establishment politicians of Europe but not its people.

McCreevy, speaking to journalists at the Gothenburg summit said, ``the plain people of Ireland in their wisdom have decided to vote No, I think that's a very healthy sign''. Michael McDowell, speaking to the Institute of European Affairs, highlighted the absence of ``real democratic input'' in the EU's legsislative processes. More interestingly, McDowell said those who are pro the Nice Treaty ``do themselves little justice and no favours by portraying those who are not in agreement with them as moral and intellectual untermenschen''.

There is a need to recognise that those who have opposed Nice have a right to make their argument without the scoffing of journalists, broadcasters and politicians.

McDowell is the first in the pro-EU camp to recognise that the No campaign was not anti-enlargement. Maybe if those in favour of Nice listened to what McDowell actually said rather than displaying the usual knee jerk reaction, the real debate could begin.

The peddlers of EU dogma better make sure they are up to the challenge.


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