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Q&A: The Irish vote on EU
DUBLIN, Republic of Ireland (CNN) -- Irish voters have gone to the polls for a second time to decide whether to approve the Nice Treaty, which paves the way for European Union expansion. After the 'yes' camp clinched for victory, CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley explains what the vote means. Q: What does the result mean? A: It's been a very, very big turnout and it will mean a huge sigh of relief for the 10 applicant countries, for European Union leaders across the continent and, above all, for Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, who was blamed for not running an effective campaign to get a 'yes' vote 15 months ago. He might have been under pressure to resign if there had been another 'no' vote. Q: Considering the turnaround from 'no' to 'yes,' what made voters change their minds? A: This time the government has poured money into publicising the vote, and the other 'yes' campaigners -- who include the main opposition parties Fine Gael and Labour, business associations, trade unions and farming organisations -- have made much more effort to explain what the Nice Treaty is about. The poll was held, for the first time in Ireland, on a Saturday so that more young people returned home from their colleges and voted and that saw a larger turnout. There has also been a huge moral pressure on the people of Ireland. They have been told by campaigners that it is up to them to get the 10 applicant countries into the European Union. They and Ireland have done very well out of the European Union and they didn't want to be seen as bad Europeans or as mean people looking after their own interests only. I think they have been swayed by that moral pressure, but also the fears that some Irish people had that the Nice Treaty might mean their traditional military neutrality was compromised have been specifically addressed by the EU which issued a special declaration....and I think that took away the fears of some people who voted 'no' last time. Q: Why did the 'no' campaigners win so much support last time? A: Nobody is quite certain what the determining issues were. Certainly there was general ignorance about what the Nice Treaty was, and the Irish government was sharply criticised for doing little to explain it. There were worries over increased immigration and suspicions in the agricultural community that the arrival in the EU of poorer countries from Eastern Europe would mean a smaller slice of the subsidy cake for Ireland. Q: What exactly is the Nice Treaty? What does it do? A: Essentially it makes the constitutional changes required in the EU to enable it to expand from 15 nations to 25 without creating total gridlock on all key decisions. That involves changes to the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament. The national allocations of MEPs in the European Parliament are being changed, and so are the numbers of European Commissioners. Larger nations which currently have more than one commissioner will have to be content with only one in future. In the council, the main decision-making body of the EU, there is to be a change in the voting weights of member nations. Also, about 30 percent more subjects than before are to be decided by "qualified majority voting." That means fewer subjects on which individual nations can exercise their national veto. The Nice Treaty also agrees the principle of "enhanced co-operation," allowing groups of nations to fast track projects without waiting for the agreement of the slowest ship in the EU convoy. Q: Why is Ireland the only EU country putting the Nice Treaty to the vote? A: All other EU countries leave the ratification of treaties to their national parliaments. The Irish constitution provides that treaties have to be subjected to a direct vote by the people in a referendum. In this case it has meant that a development crucial to some 500 million people can be determined by around 500,000. Ireland has less than 1 percent of the EU population, and the 2001 referendum in Ireland saw the treaty rejected by 529,578 votes to 453,461. Q: Has holding a second referendum affected the standing of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern? A: Yes, but not as much as Ahern's standing might affect the referendum. There has been some voter resistance to a government which is repeating a question to the electors because it did not like the first answer it was given. But there is acknowledgment too that few people knew what the issues were last time around. The real problem for Ahern and his government is that people don't always answer the question in a referendum but treat it as a vote on the popularity of the person asking the question. Q: What are the lessons for the EU in all of this?
A: To make things less complicated. The Nice Treaty, hammered out behind closed doors in the French resort over four days and nights, is a dog's breakfast of trade-offs which is virtually unintelligible to all but the most avid of EU watchers. If the voters in many other countries had been given the same opportunity as Irish electors, they too might well have rejected it.
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