Getting just what we deserve in Europe

The two most annoying words one can utter at the moment must be "Nice Treaty". Nonetheless I'm going to join all the other media blatherers and utter those words because, at the moment, I see the Republic and the European Union on an alarming collision course in terms of technology issues and policy.

Given the direction in which the EU is going, and the almost total lack of hands-on interest by Irish people in the way Europe is run, the survivor is not likely to be Irish technology-related values and laws.

The EU seems intent on overriding key elements of Irish e-commerce and technology policy that the Government here has worked hard to construct.

This raises the side issue of why people here and, it must be said, across Europe, feel so strangely detached from the body that increasingly makes the decisions about their day-to-day lives - trading partners, access to foreign markets, food laws, privacy protections, infrastructure programmes, environmental protection, and even weights and measures.

As an American, I have long been baffled by this indifference. In more than a decade here, the only time I have seen Irish people become at all interested in their own MEP elections is if some whiff of impropriety or novelty surrounds a particular candidate. Indeed, European "issues" for the Irish electorate inevitably wither into two monotonous subjects - abortion and military neutrality.

Setting aside the fact that such a tiny proportion of people even bothered to vote on the Nice Treaty and that the Republic rivals the US for electoral indifference, the no vote seemed to have far more to do with people registering unease at a European process that doesn't engage or involve them, and is not transparent to them. But whose fault is that?

The no voters I spoke to in advance of the election intended their vote to be a protest in a vote they assumed would be firmly a national yes. Again, it is odd that few seem to have raised any of the Nice Treaty issues with their MEPs or the Government in advance of the election.

Obviously, some responsibility lies with the MEPs and Government for not clearly informing the Irish people of what is happening on the European level. But equally, or perhaps more so, responsibility lies with the electorate to be informed and to voice its interests and concerns. I rarely see that happening here on a European level.

To an American, this is a curious situation. It is the same as if we only spoke to our state legislatures and never to our congressional representatives or our senators. Americans may not vote in large numbers these days but we certainly know that serious decisions are made on both state and federal level, and vocally argue and lobby at both.

However, one could say that the US federal government has a political role that the EU does not quite have - yet.

And that's exactly where I want to pick up the issue of technology policy, the EU and the State. Many would say that that EU and the European Commission are already delegating to themselves political rather than purely economic roles. But this is a rather blinkered notion - economics has always been inextricably rolled up in political decision-making and perhaps never more so than now, in a digitally-defined economic world.

The State has shown that it understands this linkage and, to its great credit, has hammered together enlightened policy to govern several areas of this overlap. In particular, last year's e-commerce legislation stands out, with its privacy and encryption protections, and open guidelines for the use of electronic signatures.

But the EU has been considering policies that could completely wipe out the advantages the State's internationally-recognised good policy confers. Recently leaked European Commission documents suggest the Commission is considering allowing a level of surveillance that would throw the entire EU into the same ridiculous boat as the British, with their ill-advised and widely belittled RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers) Act.

The shift would erode the existing strong protections on the privacy of your personal details.

The EU is also considering changing Internet taxation laws to require the merchant to gather taxes according to its resident state, rather than the purchaser according to the purchaser's state - a requirement that could effectively shut down the entire EU as an international ecommerce force.

Then there are punishing copyright and patent laws in the pipeline that could damage software developers. And more. Decisions taken at EU level on telecommunications, infrastructure development, taxation and the liability of online companies could crush the nascent e-commerce environment across Europe and in this State.

The tendency here would be to accuse the EU of secretive manoeuvring and decision-making by stealth - the reasons why people here say they voted no to Nice. But the fact that such decisions are in the offing - many of them potentially disastrous to the digital economy - has to be also placed directly on every single doorstep, home and corporate, in the country.

Who is lobbying against such decisions? Who is fighting for broader discussions, more open law-making procedures in Europe? Who bothers to consider themselves citizens of Europe - with the level of participant responsibility that entails - as opposed to "what's in it for me" occasional enthusiasts?

Very few of the no or yes voters, I would guess. And even fewer of those who never even bothered to go to the polls. We're getting the European government we deserve - one marked by mass national apathy. That, more than any other element, economic or political, may be what most threatens the State's technology environment and e-commerce policy.

klillington@irish-times.ie