President Mary McAleese has said all citizens would benefit greatly from improved communication and education about the European Union.
In a wide-ranging speech in which she emphasised Ireland’s place at the very heart of the European project, Mrs McAleese said the EU will be free to concentrate on the economic situation and other difficulties that come between “citizens and their night’s sleep” once the Lisbon Treaty comes into force.
Mrs McAleese was speaking on the second day of her State visit to Luxembourg at Neumunster Abbey, a place of transit for deportees during the Nazi occupation.
She described the European project as a “collective bulwark” against the triumph of darkness to ensure the triumph of light and said the EU was a centre of principled gravity, guided by fidelity to human rights, egalitarian democracy, the rule of law and active human solidarity.
While EU institutions and national administrations should use every form of media to deliver comprehensible and accessible information, she said crash courses and cramming sessions on particular issues were unlikely to properly address the deficit in trust and communications.
“That is no small demand but it is essential and we pay a price for either doing it badly or not doing it at all,” she said.
“The human right of all European citizens to have a voice in our own affairs was not always respected throughout history. It is important that when we vote that it is our voice and not a borrowed voice or a complacent voice that we are using; that it is a well-informed and educated voice which is capable of distinguishing the wheat from the chaff.”
The President said experience of the second Lisbon referendum shows that “with real effort” there can be a mobilisation of civic society, the political establishment and the media around European issues, adding that no other European treaty received as many Yes votes as did Lisbon in the second poll.
“Those who insisted on see this episode as a disaster for Europe were far from correct, for the democratic and consensus-based credentials of the union and its sensitivity to the customised needs of each of the sovereign members, its assertion of the value of the voice of its citizens, have all proved their worth, their strength, their integrity and ultimately their unity of purpose.”
She said it would be wrong to interpret the No vote in the first Lisbon referendum as a vote against the union. The outcome, she said, was mostly an expression of concern about certain elements in the treaty that were of particular worry to Irish people.
“With its knowledge base and expertise, the European Union has a huge reservoir to draw on as we struggle to cope with our national problems and a huge reach in dealing global issues on our behalf,” she said.
Mrs McAleese was introduced to an invited audience by prime minister Jean Claude Juncker. “Luxembourg is very attached to Ireland. That is why the negative outcome in the first Lisbon referendum came as a particular shock to us,” he said.
Mr Juncker said the result of the second referendum meant the “love story between Ireland the EU” had started again. “We are living now in a totally different universe.”
The President said the EU was central to efforts to tackle the economic downturn, job and money worries, the reducing landscape of opportunity, the runaway giddiness of the bank and building sectors and weaknesses in controls which enabled the “toxin of failure” to contaminate global and national markets.
It was crucial also when confronting global warming, climate change and threat of war and terrorism, she said.
Ireland’s EU membership went hand-in-hand with the metamorphisis of the country, the expansion of the economy and the recasting of relations with Britain.
Answering a question from the floor after her speech, Mrs McAleese said she the argument that the endorsement of the treaty was merely a reaction to the economic situation was a cynical one. “Do I believe that people changed from a No vote to a Yes because GDP went down? No.”
At a subliminal level, however, she said Europe’s response to the economic crisis drew public attention to its institutions and may have led people to take on a sense of “personal civic responsibility” in their vote.