BRITAIN'S European policy has to be a major Irish concern: despite the diversification of our trade during the past 25 years the United Kingdom is still our largest single market, especially for the products of our indigenous firms.
Any weakening of Britain's European involvement, or failure to join with its EU partners in further moves towards European integration, could face our policy-makers with invidious choices.
The issue of Britain's European policy is one of particular concern to us at this moment because our fifth presidency of the European Union starts in less than four months, carrying with it responsibility for steering the Union successfully through the formative stages of the impending Inter-Governmental Conference.
The British stance on the issues to be discussed at the Conference has been set out this week in a White Paper which will be studied with great interest by our Department of Foreign Affairs.
Of course, our interests on many European policy matters diverge notably from the British. And where we have a different interest, the Irish representatives at the IGC will naturally seek to advance it.
But in the presidency we must be concerned not only with protecting our interests but also with finding ways of bridging differences between states. This will involve taking account of British positions and seeking to, conciliate differences between the British and the rest. It would not be helpful to ourselves or to the Community as a whole to seek to isolate Britain.
The British White Paper is largely expressed in conciliatory language. clearly seeking to damp down controversy both at home and, in the European forum. What denunciations it contains are carefully restricted to forms of European federalism that are not in fact advocated by any memher government; e.g., a federalism that interferes where it is not needed, or that wants "harmonisation for its own sake
In this document the British government also denounces an inexorable drift of power towards supra-national institutions, the erosion of national parliaments, and the gradual development of a United States of Europe which, equally, are on nobody's agenda.
SIMILARLY on the positive side, there is insistence only on matters which are not in contention, but
Europhobes have convinced themselves are at risk, e.g., respect for cultural and political diversity, single-minded concentration on what needs to be done at a European level and on what is "outward-looking, free-trading, democratic and flexible". There is also insistence that "revisions to the Treaty must be agreed by all", as if there were any other way the treaties could be revised.
But where real issues are at stake, the language is more conciliatory for the sake of the peace of mind of Britain's European partners.
Thus on the question of the relative voting strengths of large and small states the White Paper merely notes that "there is a strong case on grounds of democratic legitimacy for increasing the relative influence of the more populous".
Britain also sees some attractions in so-called `team presidencies' of three or four member-states presiding for a year or even longer". And on Commission membership the White Paper is content to suggest that "large member-states might always appoint one Commissioner while smaller states did not always enjoy this privilege", Alternatively there "might be a two-tier Commission with voting and non-voting members".
Moreover, the British government, which despite this weeks sound and fury about the European Court's decision on the 48-hour week is committed to a strong, independent Court", mildly suggests that the Court's "functioning...
could be further improved". Finally, on the Parliament the British government does not feel that [it] needs more powers".
Firm but courteous language is used, however, about the maintenance of unanimity in the parts of the Treaty where this practice survives. And, negatively, there is an unambiguous rejection of an exclusive European foreign policy which would replace national foreign policy; of incorporation of the WEU within the Community structure; of any kind of extension of the role of the Community to justice and home affairs (currently handled inter-governmentally); and of any challenge to the British opt-out from the Social Chapter.
WHAT the White Paper fails to do is address many of the cogent arguments put forward by the European Commission, for example, in favour of certain reforms against which the British government seems to have set its face.
Thus the Commission in its report for the Conference identifies 22 different decision-making systems that have come into existence within the Community system and, not unreasonably, suggests that this absurdly complicated legislative system needs to be radically simplified.
But the British White Paper simply refuses to address this issue. Its section on the European Parliament is lamentably weak.
It is confined to three propositions: the European Parliament should confine itself to monitoring, spending and fraud; that Parliament has been slow in making use of the powers given to it by the Maastricht Treaty to appoint an Ombudsman and to set up temporary committees of inquiry; it has abused its powers by trying to force the Council to accept institutional changes not directly related to the legislation under discuss ion. And so, it does not need new powers.
This is an absurd trivialisation of a body which already has the power to block much Community legislation unless its amendments are accepted, as well as the power to refuse ratification of Community treaties; and the power, which the British parliament lacks, to vote certain spending additional to that proposed by the executive, i.e. the Commission and Council.
Nor does the White Paper improve its credibility by "refusing to accept" what no one has ever proposed, viz that the European Parliament displace the primary role of national parliaments.
On the proposal that some or all of the justice and home affairs area, currently handled inter-governmentally, be moved into the Community system, the White Paper justifies British opposition by claiming that the present system has, "achieved a good deal".
This reads oddly in the face of the fact that, as the Commission has reported, under the present inter-governmental arrangement not a single common position has been adopted, and in only two cases has joint action been agreed - one of them on travel facilities for school pupils from non-member countries.
Since the Maastricht Treaty set up this inter-governmental procedure, 50 out of 54 of the matters dealt with in this area have in fact been handled under the pre-Maastricht procedures. In these circumstances to describe the present arrangement as a success is to invite ridicule.
Finally, it is not credible to suggest that in an enlarged Community with a whole lot more national vetoes the limitations that now exist on qualified majority decision-making do not need to be re-examined.
Even within a Community of six to 12 members the completion of the Single Market was put back by more than 20 years - from 1970 to 1992 - by the failure to implement the Treaty provision for majority voting.
Objections from Britain to an extension of this majority decision-making mechanism in a Community of 20 or more states read oddly in the light of the pride this White Paper, takes in the success of the 1987-1992 Single Market; a success that was, of course, solely due, to the belated application of majority voting to this area.
It will he the task of the Government from July 1st onwards to tease out these problems and to do it in such a way as to facilitate an eventual British re-think of some, of the more negative Stances set out in this document.
That is a process which, however, we should not expect to see completed during Ireland's term of office. For it will be a new British, government, that will have to make later in 1997, the final decision on the future organisation of the Community.