EUROPEAN DIARY:Politicians and citizens struggle to keep tabs on decisions taken by ministers and MEPs at EU institutions, writes JAMIE SMYTH
THE EU will be uppermost in everyone’s mind in Ireland this week as the public gets its second chance to cast a verdict on the Lisbon Treaty.
After experiencing two referendum campaigns in 16 months Irish people probably know more about the Lisbon Treaty than any other Europeans. Even internal markets’ commissioner Charlie McCreevy, who last year claimed you’d be “insane” to attempt to read the treaty, has admitted to browsing through the several hundred pages of text at bedtime.
But before we all start patting ourselves on the back about our new-found understanding of qualified majority voting and protocols, perhaps we should consider how to close the information gap between Dublin and Brussels? Every week Government Ministers travel to Brussels to agree new laws and make decisions that affect how we all live our lives. But the public and even politicians struggle to keep tabs on the hundreds of decisions taken every year by ministers and MEPs at the EU institutions.
A prime example of this EU information gap occurred last week when EU justice ministers met in Brussels to discuss a range of issues, including the controversial Metock immigration case. The plaintiffs were four couples living in Ireland, who successfully challenged deportation orders issued by the Government at the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Each couple included an EU national, who was not Irish, and a non-EU national, who had claimed asylum in Ireland. In a landmark judgment in 2006 the ECJ ruled that the Government had broken EU law by introducing restrictions on the rights of non-EU spouses to reside in the Republic.
The ECJ ruling was hugely controversial as the Government claimed it undermined a central plank of its immigration policy – tackling “sham marriages”. It forced the Department of Justice to halt 1,500 deportations and change the way it treats non-EU spouses. The ruling alarmed other EU states, notably Denmark, which teamed up with Ireland to urge its European partners to redraft a core EU law on the freedom of movement of citizens.
Last Monday at the Council of Ministers in Brussels, Ireland and Denmark failed to persuade other EU states to work towards amending the freedom of movement directive. After months of lobbying both countries admitted defeat, at least in the medium term. In other words, Europe’s highest court has forced the Government to change a key element of its immigration policy. Despite the importance of the case, not a paragraph was written in the Irish newspapers about the outcome. No television or radio station mentioned the climbdown by Ireland and Denmark. The Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern did not issue a press release on the decision and no opposition politician, to my knowledge, has even commented on it.
When contacted by The Irish Timesa Government spokeswoman said Ireland continued to have real concerns about the "potential for exploitation" of the directive on freedom of movement following the Metock ruling. She said the Government would be monitoring the situation closely and would continue to report abuse and fraud to the European Commission and other EU states.
Clearly, the public cannot rely on Ministers to bring to their attention decisions in Brussels that have not met Irish concerns. The media should be playing its part as a watchdog and highlighting these types of debates at EU level. But with just a handful of Irish reporters based in Brussels inevitably stories slip through the net.
Irish MEPs keep a close eye on legislation passing through the European Parliament but debates and decisions at the Council of Ministers are a different matter entirely. Most of the sensitive discussions at the council, including the debate on Metock, are held in private session, making it very difficult for the public or even journalists to find out what has happened.
The Lisbon Treaty will help by forcing the council to televise all debates when new legislation is being decided, although sensitive discussions such as Metock would still be held behind closed doors. It would also give MEPs a say over new legislation in the justice area for the first time, which should improve the level of scrutiny over such EU decisions.
The Lisbon Treaty also forces the European Commission to send all new legislative proposals to national parliaments for consideration in an attempt to bridge the gulf between domestic politics and EU politics. Parliaments can attempt to delay or block a proposal if they feel it infringes on an area that would best be handled through domestic rather than European legislation. This would address concerns raised by no campaigners about a “democratic deficit” at the heart of the EU project.
Whether our political system is capable of releasing TDs from their constituency duties to properly debate EU laws in the Dáil is another matter entirely. Perhaps our experience of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty should inspire us to reform domestic politics as well.