Irish voters face an important choice when they come to decide on their attitude to the Treaty of Nice in a referendum due to be held next month. The treaty prepares the European Union for enlargement to perhaps double its present number of member-states, changes its decision-making and sets the scene for a political debate on how best it should be organised as a continental entity relating national and European interests in the longer term.
These momentous developments urgently need to be debated at the political level in such a way that they can engage the attention and participation of the citizens whose lives they will affect. The German foreign minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, is one of the few European politicians to have demonstrated an ability to communicate their urgency and relevance. His address in Dublin yesterday to the Institute of European Affairs amply confirmed that talent, as did his good-humoured engagement with his audience. It included Irish representatives from the same Green movement as himself who take a different view of the treaty and the optimal shape of the emerging enlarged Europe to which it gives rise.
He insisted that the kernel of the political problem facing Europeans is how to find the right balance between the national and European interests. How much diversity is required and how much unity? Europe's historically ingrained national diversities make a federal model along the lines of the United States impossible to achieve, he argues. No one wants to abolish the nation-state or create a super-state. But Europe has to be able to act on issues that can only be handled at that level in core fields of common interest, including external and internal security, the common currency and the common legal area.
International pressures will force that pace of integration. If co-operation is not to develop outside the EU framework, it will be necessary to create appropriate structures within it to accommodate such pressures. So far as the German government position is concerned, this requires a federal "sharing of sovereignty and full parliamentarisation".
Such are the German proposals, which are attracting cross-party support there, bringing them much more into the foreground of European politics. It very much remains to be seen whether they can command support from larger states such as France and the UK, as well as from smaller ones like Ireland. Mr Fischer paid generous tribute to Ireland's contribution. And at yesterday's discussions in Dublin, he heard s good cross-section of Irish opinion, including a spirited defence of Ireland's record in the EU and its relevance for the candidate states, from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen.
Such an exposure to what Mr Fischer described as the "self-confident voices of Ireland and of Irish-Europeans" is a useful reminder that discussions on the future of Europe and its constituent nation-states must be a two-way process if it is to address these questions effectively and carry conviction with citizens. Above all there is the need for informed debate. Mr Fischer's presence in Dublin provided an opportunity to hear his arguments at first hand. It is to be hoped the forthcoming referendum campaign can rise to the same level of discussion he stimulated yesterday.