Garret Fitzgerald: Suit EU Sir
On January 1, 1972 Ireland secured membership of the European Economic Community. In a specially commissioned piece Garret FitzGerald examines our role in Europe and sets out his belief that to a greater extent than any other of the nine countries that have joined the community in the past quarter of a century, Ireland has made good use of, and has benefited from, membership. The political strategy we have adopted, the industrial and educational policies pursued with great consistency by successive governments, and the diplomatic skills we have deployed have all paid off handsomely.
The Application for Membership
Forty or so years ago, it was generally assumed that because of the weakness of our economy, which in the earlier European Free Trade Area negotiation had led to the request for a 20-year transition period, we would seek association with rather than membership of the European Economic Community. For, as members, we would be required to free our trade within five, or at most seven, years.
But, by spring 1961, the confidence created by two years of economic growth, together with a growing recognition that the benefits of the Common Agricultural Policy (then in preparation) would be available only to full members, was leading to a re-thinking of this approach.
In April of that year I told Ken Whitaker, secretary of the Department of Finance, that I was about to pay my first visit to the European Commission, on that occasion as an economic journalist on behalf of the Irish Times. He suggested that, in order to supplement the diplomatic contacts under way, I should use this opportunity to sound out commission officials on the idea of an Irish request for membership rather than association – and supplement my published articles by a private report to him on these reactions.
This I did. And it was, therefore, less of a surprise to me than to many others that Lemass's Dáil announcement the following July related to an application for full membership of the community.
The fact that our application was being handled by the Taoiseach and the Department of Finance rather than by the Department of Foreign Affairs reflected Lemass's recognition of the lack of interest in, or enthusiasm for, Europe on the part of his minister for foreign affairs, Frank Aiken. This may account for the contemporary report that our application, which at the end was rushed in order to get it in before that of the United Kingdom, was not delivered through diplomatic channels but by post, in an envelope with a 6d stamp!
This first attempt to secure Irish membership fell through when, in January 1963, Britain's application for membership was vetoed by General de Gaulle. And although an attempt was made to revive the proposal in 1967, it was not until 1972 that a third attempt finally secured British, Irish and Danish accession to the European Economic Community.
The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area
In the early 1960s, two unilateral 10 per cent reductions in Irish tariffs had been effected. A third such cut was abandoned, however, under pressure of events. Recognising the difficulty of proceeding further along this unilateral route, and concerned to get under way the process of pushing Irish industry out into export markets by opening the home market to imports, Lemass negotiated in 1965 an agreement with the United Kingdom that committed us to freeing Irish trade with that country over a ten-year period.
For two reasons this was a bold move. In the first place, owing to the fact that almost all Irish industrial products already had free access to the British market, the benefits accruing to Ireland from the agreement were only one-third of those that Britain received. However, Lemass rightly calculated that despite this inherent imbalance in the agreement, its negotiation was nevertheless a worthwhile move. For, in contrast to his earlier attempt at unilateral tariff cuts, which had had to be aborted, the fact that Ireland would receive some benefits in return made the removal of protection politically feasible. And this, at last, would force firms to re-orient their activities seriously towards export markets.
But this agreement was also a bold step because it involved a gamble. An important part of the rationale for Irish accession to the EEC had in fact been that it would break our debilitating historic dependence upon the slow-growing UK economy. But, if we did not eventually secure EEC membership, this agreement would have had the perverse effect of actually tying us more closely than ever to Britain.
The gamble paid off, however. And although Seán Lemass had withdrawn from the political scene shortly after the signature of this agreement, his foresight and courage had ensured that by the time we joined the EEC we were already over half-way towards freeing our trade with Britain. The re-orientation of our industry away from the home market and towards exports was thus well under way long before we had to start reducing our protection vis-à-vis continental community countries.
The Accession Referendum
Membership required a referendum to amend our Constitution so as to give the provisions of the EEC Treaties precedence over it. The nation-wide debate on the issue was a vigorous one, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael being pitched against Labour and the Democratic Left's predecessor, Sinn Féin the Workers Party, in town and village halls throughout the country. Interest was intense – I recall one meeting in a hamlet in east Galway, attended by 350 men, women and children, all of whom remained until 12.45 a.m. to hear the arguments for and against.
Broadly, the countryside was strongly in favour, anticipating major benefits from the Common Agricultural Policy. The towns were more divided, but in the event they all voted in favour, albeit by small majorities in some cases. They were, I believe, ultimately swayed by the argument that farmers' spending of their much-increased incomes would bring prosperity to urban areas, and that this would more than compensate for increases in food prices. The overall result, in a 70 per cent poll, showed 83 per cent of the electorate in favour of accession.
It is fair to say that the argument in that referendum was narrowly focused on this farm price issue. Not alone was there little discussion of the wider case for a union of European peoples, but even the gains that Ireland was likely to secure through attracting foreign investment (which in the event turned out to be by far the most important single economic benefit from membership), was underplayed by supporters of accession. Opponents, meanwhile, concentrated their fire on the thesis that economic activity would drain away from peripheral countries like Ireland to the “Golden Triangle” at the heart of Western Europe – and on an alleged threat to our identity as a nation, and to our neutrality.
The Neutrality Issue
How was this neutrality issue addressed?
As early as August 1960, a year before our application to join the community, Lemass had already stated bluntly that “there is no neutrality and we are not neutral.” And, in 1962, concerned to reassure our future EEC partners on the neutrality issue, he said that Ireland recognised that “a military commitment will be an inevitable consequence of our joining the Common Market, and we will ultimately be prepared even to yield the technical label of neutrality. We are prepared to go into this integrated Europe without any reservation as to how this will take us in the field of foreign policy and defence.”
When, in 1969, the issue of EEC membership was once again becoming a live issue, the minister for foreign affairs, Paddy Hillery, reiterated these assurances, telling the Dáil that the government had “no reservations whatever about our application…We know there are political and economic implications, and whenever the defence of Europe arises we will play our part.” This view was echoed by the leader of the opposition, Liam Cosgrave, who told the Dáil that “those participating in the new Europe must be prepared to assist, if necessary, in its defence.”
And this government commitment was, of course, formally incorporated in the April 1970 white paper, which provided the basis for our negotiation in the following words:
“It is recognised that, as the communities evolve towards their political objectives, those participating in the new Europe thereby created must be prepared to assist, if necessary, in its defence.”
Two qualifications need to be added, however. While Charles Haughey, as Taoiseach, naturally followed his three immediate predecessors in this matter, reiterating in the Dáil that “political neutrality or non-alignment is incompatible with membership of the European Community and with our interests and ideals,” he also linked actual Irish involvement in European defense to two specific future developments.
The first of these was the achievement of Economic and Monetary Union, which will now be brought into effect in 12 months' time, when the single currency is established. The second was the raising of Irish per-capita income to at least 80 per cent of the community average. This latter condition has, of course, already been met, in 1994.
The second qualification that must be made is that these commitments to our partners, given by successive Irish governments, have of course been accompanied by a recognition that this eventual development will require the sanction of the Irish electorate. This is both because the issue of non-involvement in defensive alliances is one to which Irish public opinion has in the past been sensitive, and also because, like the Treaties of Rome, Maastricht and now Amsterdam, any future EU treaty covering this matter will in any event need to be backed by a constitutional amendment. In the mean time, all Irish governments have been most careful to avoid any interim action that might seem to prejudice the right of the Irish people to take the ultimate decision in this sensitive matter.
Returning, however, from this excursion into the future to the process by which Ireland acceded to the community: ten weeks after Irish accession, a general election was called, and on March 14 I found myself appointed minister for foreign affairs – much to my surprise, as in opposition I had been shadow minister for finance, and if I were to be appointed to any senior ministry I expected that it was there that I would find myself.
This appointment gave me the chance to formulate Irish policy in relation to the future evolution of the community, whose affairs I had been lecturing on at UCD for more than a decade. Towards that end, I immediately called a conference of Irish ambassadors and senior Foreign Affairs staff, at which the whole range of Irish foreign policy was addressed, with particular concentration on our new role as a member of the EEC.
In the memorandum to the government that I drafted following this conference, I stated that our long-term interests would be best served by an evolution of the community towards a more democratic structure, involving a greater supranational element in the form of a strengthened European Parliament and, possibly, a move from unanimity to qualified-majority voting. And, for the benefit of our Labour colleagues in government, I warned against the unwisdom of allowing a fear of getting involved in a defense commitment under any circumstances – even if the community became a full federation – to determine the whole course of our foreign policy for decades ahead, against our vital social and economic interests.
A key element in Irish policy from the outset was support for the existing institutional structure of the community, and above all for the role of the commission. The commission's exclusive power of initiative, which could be overturned only by a unanimous vote of the council, had from the outset afforded a powerful protection against a possible exploitation of smaller states by larger ones. It was in Ireland's interest, as in that of the Benelux countries, to prevent any erosion of this power.
Ireland – A Major Beneficiary
From the outset it was clear that Ireland would be a major potential beneficiary of transfers through the community budget. The Common Agricultural Policy had been largely designed around the needs of northern European agriculture – cereals and livestock farming. And when the common price system had been introduced in 1965, prices had been fixed at the upper end of the scale of national prices amongst the six original members, largely to protect high-cost German farmers.
This offered a very attractive prospect for low-cost Irish agriculture, which had been accustomed to having to dispose of its products in the British market. Prices in that market had been kept artificially low by offering open access for food imports from overseas countries with extensive low-cost agriculture, British (but not Irish) farmers being compensated for these low prices by direct income subsidies.
The benefits of the rise in prices of Irish products sold in the traditional British market would be supplemented by the effects of the opening of continental EEC markets to Irish farm products, while at the same time the CAP would be offering minimum price guarantees in the event of surplus production being evoked by the high level of EEC farm prices, as in fact soon came to pass. Of course, this system was bound eventually to become unsustainable, but the political power of farmers in France and Germany would be sure to postpone reform and cushion the impact of any changes eventually introduced.
But because, uniquely amongst northern European countries, Ireland was relatively poor at the time we joined, with income levels around 55 to 60 per cent of the community average, it was thus bound to be a significant beneficiary of re-distributive policies, the introduction of which the community was already committed to at the moment of Irish accession, primarily with a view to help disadvantaged southern Italy. Ireland was thus unique in having the prospect of benefiting from both sets of EEC policies.
The Need to Avoid a Negative Perception of Ireland
While the economic advantage of Ireland's capacity to benefit from both sets of community redistributive policies was clear, this uniquely favourable situation posed a potential political problem. Was Ireland not in danger of coming to be seen entirely negatively by its EEC partners, as nothing more than a financial burden, and a country unable or unwilling to offer anything in return for the exceptional benefits it was to receive?
There was only one way to stave off this danger. Ireland must be, and be seen to be, an effective performer on the European stage.
First, it must be positive and forward-looking in relation to the future evolution of the community. Even countries that were dragging their feet themselves (such as the French at that time, with respect to the issue of qualified-majority voting in the council), would be favourably impressed by an integrationist Irish stance, especially as this would mark Ireland out as having a quite different position from that of its neighbour, Britain, with whom Ireland at the outset tended to be linked in the minds of some continental community leaders.
Second, in its presidencies – and above all in its first presidency – Ireland must be seen to be effective, at both official and ministerial level, capable of managing the affairs of the community efficiently and of introducing imaginative initiatives.
And, third, as structural funds became available through the establishment of the regional and social policies, Ireland must show its ability to use these efficiently and to good effect, in terms of the rapid development of its economy.
Ireland's Integrationist Policy
It was in any event in Ireland's long-term interest to adopt an integrationist stance. The sharing of sovereignty under the structures established by the Treaty of Rome was particularly beneficial for small countries like Ireland. In practice, there were few ways in which the sovereignty of small countries could be used effectively vis-à-vis their larger neighbours, whereas larger countries could, and did, use their sovereignty, sometimes quite aggressively, to exploit their smaller neighbours.
Larger countries, for example, which because of their size tended to be more self-sufficient, could afford to use their sovereignty to protect their industries and their farmers by tariffs, quotas and levies, whereas smaller countries, which by virtue of their size had to import more of their requirements, needed to see these barriers to their exports lowered, so that they could secure the resources needed to pay for their greater import needs.
Thus it was in Ireland's longer-term interest to maximise the sharing of sovereignty through greater use of qualified-majority voting, especially as a net contributor to the community budget could be tempted to use its veto to inhibit the implementation of re-distributive policies. And it was most particularly in the interest of Ireland to protect and maximise the role of the commission within the institutional structure, for that body's exclusive right of legislative initiative offers the strongest and best guarantee against attempts by larger countries to impose policies designed to further their interests.
So it was that, despite domestic pressures to hang on as much as possible to recently acquired sovereignty, Ireland from the outset pursued an integrationist approach, in which our natural allies were the Benelux countries.
It soon emerged from bilateral contacts with these countries that there was substantial agreement between the four of us on the desirable evolution of the community towards a more democratic structure, involving a stronger role for the European Parliament. On my proposal, agreement was reached on a quadrilateral co-ordination of our approaches to these issues, through informal ministerial lunches in advance of council meetings.
After several of these lunches had taken place, however, they had to be abandoned because of Benelux fears of an adverse reaction amongst larger countries to this “caucusing.” Thereafter, a looser form of policy co-ordination on community institutional issues between our four states and, later, Denmark was substituted, based on bilateral contacts between the Dutch and ourselves.
These contacts made it possible to resist effectively attempts in the mid-1970s to establish some kind of Directoire of the larger states, and to ensure that the European Council of Heads of Government, established by the Paris Summit in December 1974, did not displace the commission as the originator of community legislation.
The Role of the Irish Presidencies
As to the second point, it was clear from the outset that a crucial factor in the eyes of our new partners would be the success or failure of our first presidency, due to start 18 months after accession. We had reason to believe that their expectations were low: it was our job to surprise them.
Denmark had the even more difficult task of facing its first presidency within six months of accession, and we took steps to learn from its experience, sending officials to Denmark to see how it was approaching this challenge. Our own preparations included seminars on chairmanship for the 100 Irish public servants who would have to preside over community committees during the six months of our presidency.
Next, we sought new initiatives that could improve the working of the community and also redound to Ireland's credit. In August 1974, Mary Robinson, Denis Corboy (then the EEC representative in Ireland), Minister for Industry & Commerce Justin Keating and I – sharing with others a holiday house in France – developed some ideas that were successfully implemented when our initial presidency began, four months later.
These included much more frequent and visible attendance at the European Parliament by Irish ministers presiding over council meetings; a more free-for-all question time procedure there; direct contact between the president and the Economic and Social Committee; presidency emphasis at council meetings on parliamentary recommendations, which had previously been largely ignored; and a more open and relaxed relationship with the press, a proposal to which I gave effect by briefing the press before as well as after council meetings. (This latter procedure, which did not survive the Irish presidency, was designed to make it more difficult for ministers to mislead their national media as to their success or failure at council meetings.)
Other steps subsequently developed included a meeting between the incoming presidency and the entire commission, and the initiation of informal meetings of foreign ministers, a procedure that later spread to the other councils.
The implementation of these changes created a favourable reaction to the Irish presidency. But we were also helped by the fact that the first half of 1975 proved to be a heavily charged period in the life of the community, during which we had a very good chance to show our paces.
The preceding French presidency had failed to initiate foreign-policy consultation with the United States, a procedure that had been agreed in April 1974. Nor had it succeeded in concluding the negotiation of the first Lome Convention with 46 former colonies of member states, leaving no less than 50 issues outstanding for settlement. The first of these tasks was carried out on January 8, and the second was successfully concluded by February 1.
A new procedure for international negotiations, involving joint spokesmanship of the community by the presidency and the commission in international negotiations on matters not strictly within the treaties, was also instituted during the Irish presidency, and since then has been accepted as the standard model for such events.
In the Foreign Affairs Council itself, we initiated a procedure designed to limit the use of the veto on matters that, under the treaties, should be decided by qualified-majority vote, and succeeded before the end of our presidency in having two matters decided in this way. Unhappily, the procedure we had devised was dropped by subsequent presidencies, and it was not until 1987, following the Single Market Treaty, that qualified-majority voting became the norm for a wide range of items.
We also resolved two crises in the Euro-Arab dialogue, a process seen as important in the aftermath of the first oil crisis, and secured a “soft landing” for the deadlocked Producer-Consumer Conference in Paris. And, on a visit to Lisbon as president of the council, I initiated contacts with the Portuguese Revolutionary Government, which were designed to encourage an evolution towards democracy and a rapprochement between Portugal and the community that could – and in the event did – lead eventually to membership.
Finally, the first European Council, which it fell to our lot to organise in Dublin, was seen as a success, providing the occasion for the settlement of the “re-negotiation” of British accession, which had been sought by that country in order to get the new Labour government off the hook of their anti-Europe stand in opposition.
A combination of good planning and good luck thus enabled us to emerge from our first presidency with credit and credibility. Thenceforth we were taken seriously as a constructive member of the club. Moreover, although our subsequent presidencies were less charged with a multiplicity of issues, in each case at least one major problem was successfully resolved. Thus, in 1979, Margaret Thatcher's initial effort to reduce Britain's contribution to the community budget was settled successfully. In 1984, the wine row between France and Italy, which had been holding up Spanish and Portuguese accession, was settled, thus opening the way for the entry of these two countries to the community. In 1990, two Irish European Councils cleared the way for German re-unification. And, most recently, the way was prepared for the final stages of the negotiation of the Amsterdam Treaty.
The Structural Funds
– Negotiation and Use
The third way in which Ireland could minimise possible negative reactions has been in the way that it has made use of the structural-fund transfers. Were these to have been abused or wasted, much damage would have been done to our standing within the European Union. In fact, our record in this respect has been excellent. Whatever disagreement there may have been about a few individual projects, both the programmes we have submitted for assistance and the manner in which they have been generally implemented have been favourably viewed in Europe.
Moreover, to a greater extent than in the case of any other net beneficiary of structural funds, this injection of external resources is seen as having been effective in promoting economic growth here. Indeed, the perception of the funds' impact upon our economy has been exaggerated to a degree that is now potentially counter-productive. The Germans in particular, but also the Dutch and the French, are inclined to believe that our economic success has been due almost exclusively to these transfers, whereas in fact the great bulk of our economic growth has derived from other factors.
There is now a danger, indeed, that the coincidence of our recent success with the struggle of the Germans and French to get their economies in shape for EMU could prejudice these countries against the gradual reduction in our structural-fund receipts, to which the commission, recognising our continuing infrastructural deficiencies, is favourably disposed.
A Tougher Future?
However that may be, it is clear that, to a greater extent than any other of the nine countries that have joined the community in the past quarter of a century, Ireland has made good use of, and has benefited from, membership. The political strategy we have adopted, the industrial and educational policies pursued with great consistency by successive governments, and the diplomatic skills we have deployed have all paid off handsomely.
But the going is likely to get much tougher. Now that our living standards are approaching those of our partners, we can no longer expect such favourable treatment as we have enjoyed in the past, and we must expect to be asked to pull our new-found weight.
Within a decade or so we will probably be net contributors to the European Union's budget. And while the form and extent of our commitment to European defence will be open to debate, we can hardly expect indefinitely to get away unscathed with the kind of aberrant eccentricity that we have recently demonstrated by lining up with Tajikistan and Malta in disdaining involvement in that most positive international confidence-building initiative, the East-West Partnership for Peace.