Henry writes:
In particular, German parliamentarian Axel Schäfer’s comment that “With
all respect for the Irish vote, we cannot allow the huge majority of
Europe to be duped by a minority of a minority of a minority,” would
have a bit more credibility if, you know, the majority of the majority
of the majority had been given a chance to vote on the Treaty
themselves.
I can imagine a few other lessons:
1. Give people a referendum on a big question and they will use it as a chance to voice their general displeasure with many other matters. New Zealand made that mistake on electoral reform. The Irish vote was strongly divided among rich-poor lines.
2. According to polls, the Irish are not especially Euroskeptical. I guess that is "Eurosceptical". In any case multilateralism has limits.
3. The option under consideration *was* Plan B. There is no obvious Plan C.
4. It worked last time (2002) to ask them to vote again. Few people think that gambit can be played a second time.
5. One Irishman opined: ""We’re told we can vote no, that the system requires unanimity. But
when (a `no’ vote) actually happens, every time, the EU tells us: You
really only have a right to vote yes," said Dublin travel agent Paul
Brady, who voted against the treaty.
6. Some deluded soul in the EU read a copy of John Calhoun instead of Buchanan and Tullock’s Calculus of Consent. Hadn’t they remembered the history of 17th and 18th century Poland and decided that a unanimity rule is a bad idea?
7. If European nations demand a unanimity rule (which I can well imagine), is that not a sign that they have a free trade area but nothing close to a real political union?
The unanimity rule goes back to the Treaty of Rome (of which this is an amendment to an amendment . . .), which was between only six states: France, (West) Germany, Italy and Benelux; three big and three little. In the circumstances, unanimity was the only workable rule.
II don’t get comment no. 6. I imagine you might think that the world revolves around the US, but I can assure that very, very few souls in Europe have ever heard about John Calhoun.
The unanimity rule is simply the effect of the political form of the UE – that of an international organization of integration where the voice of every government (and in case of essential reforms the voice of the people, either through parliaments or referendum) must be taken into account.
The EU is not a federation, not even a confederation – so Buchanan doesn’t really apply.
There was nothing wrong about the Polish liberum votum (the King already had enough power before the unanimity legislature was established, where not all the aristocrats – circa 1/4 of country’s population – came anyway; – and there is nothing catastrophic about the Irish vote..
The Irish did a great thing by rejecting the treaty (which, as pointed above, is a masterpiece of pompous incomprehensible wording); this will help keep in check for now the calls for more centralization, bureaucracy, regulation, tax harmonization, corporatism, maybe even a Commission with fiscal powers and so on.
My bet is that quite a number of the Irish read all or some of the Treaty of Lisbon. The Irish value style in the use of language, as listening to any Irish pub conversation will tell you. Nobody who appreciates style could possibly bring themselves to vote for the wording of that Treaty.
(As for the substance, what there was of it in the Lisbon Treaty was no more than a very marginal improvement on the mess left by the preceding Treaties).
Quite frankly I don’t understand the hysteria of those who are lambasting the irish “No” vote. Why is Lisbon supposedly so much better than the status quo?
It is worthnoting that the No vote isn’t a vote against the EU, it is a vote against an incomprehensible treaty that even top politicians admit they haven’t read. How can you ask someone to be so credulous as to vote yes on something so turgid?
Michael Gordon:
The French is not the only European president elected by popular vote. The Finnish, Romanian, and Austrian presidents although the semi-presidential regime in this countries is not as strong as the “French model” and this is why only the heads of governments in these countries normally participate in the European Council’s meetings.
The EU budget amounts on average to 120 billion euros, 40% of the money goes to agricultural subsidies (most of them in the richer Western part of the EU, and especially France, which has the biggest farm sector), some 30% goes to so-called structural cohesion funds designed to provide financial aid for infrastructure in the less developed parts of the EU (again, 60% of the money goes to the richer Western Europe), the rest goes to “internal policies”, “foreign policies” and maintaining the Brussels bureaucracy. Thus, it’s hardly the case that the East-European countries line up for financial aid. There isn’t as much as it was when the EU had only 15 or less members and Spain, Greece, Portugal or Ireland received substantial development funds. By the way, this year a reform of the EU budget will be discussed.
The European Central Bank (ECB) doesn’t cover the whole EU, but only the European Monetary Union which consists of only 15 of the 27 EU member states. The European Systems of Central Banks consists of the ECB and the central banks in member countries that have adopted the euro (the non-euro countries are just observers in the ECB General Council.
The European Defense Foreign Policy is also not unitary and in its infancy. Among the EU members there are neutral states such as Sweden and Austria who don’t want to be part of Eurocorp, the nucleus of the future European Army.
The European Parliament, on the other hand, is not really a parliament science it doesn’t have the initiative to legislate. That belongs to the European Commission, which is made up of a weighted number representatives of each member state, selected by the nominated Commission president and validated by the EU parliament. The bills proposed by the European Co mission, however, normally have to get a green light from the European Council of Ministers which is formed by the ministers of each Government of the member states depending on the domain of deliberation (agriculture, finance, defense etc).
The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg acts as an arbiter between the EU institutions and the member states, while the European Court of Human Rights in Strassbourg upholds the European Charta of Human Rights for all citizens across the EU and can invalidate member country’s legislation, including constitutional provision.
Then there are several dozen eurobureaucratic agencies in charged of consumer protection, food protection, anti-trust, financial regulation, a small European police (Europa, more recently a EU border defense force is being discussed and the list can go on.
The treatise of the three European Community(which became the European Union after the Maastrich Treaty in 1992) build on top of each other, starting with the Treaty of Rome which gave birth to the European Economic Community (the other two that exist or exists are the European Nuclear Energy Community or Euroatom and the European Steal and Coal Community, both essentially created with the goal of supervising German industrial development so as to preclude the possibility of becoming again a world power that might start another world war). And so, the Lisbon Treaty is but a face lift of the now defunct European Constitutional Treaty. The main novelties of this treaties is that it would extend majority vote within the European institutions, reinforce the role of the European Parliament, establish the germs of a common EU defense and foreign policy, create a EU foreign minister, a EU rotating, and a system of EU embassies overseas. All these will be done (and have started to be implemented) even if the Irish voted no (as the French and the Dutch before with the Constitutional Treaty).
My first reaction was that the Irish were just doing their bit for global warming
. The Treaty of Lisbon is 155 typeset pages of impenetrable prose. (For a contrast, the US Constitution started as four large handwritten pages. The bill of rights added two more.) Think of all the trees that were saved.
More seriously, the European ruling aristocracy still has difficulty coming to grips with their conflicts with the lower classes, and the conflicts between the different countries general expectations. The feeling that the EU decision makers are out of touch is much stronger in the working class of Europe than the similar distaste for the beltway that you find in the US. Unlike the US, this kind of vote is one of the few ways that this opinion can be expressed.
Cyrus: amend that to Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian (in alphabetical order), because that’s what it was in practice.
Michael Gordon,
it would be refreshing to read a comment from you that does not mention Muslims in Europe when that’s not really the topic at hand. Also, reading your comments one gets the impression that (Western) European societies are falling apart rapidly. They’re not.
Michael Gordon AKA BuggyProfessor, the ignorance and stupidity of your comment is just astonishing. I think the educational system of your country must have endured a huge blow the day you were made a professor. Do something good for humanity and resign.
Like I said, so “breathtaking” I don’t even know where to start. Also most of the time ignorance of that kind is unlikely to be open to constructive criticism. And, yes, I do realize that this may be an ignorant statement too to some degree.
The Irish got to vote on the EU only because an economist and farmer named Raymond Crotty went to court as a private citizen in 1986 and insisted that the Republic of Ireland couldn’t give up sovereignty to the EU just on a majority vote of the legislature. The High Court of Ireland agreed, and required a referendum on each treaty.
So, raise a pint to the memory of Ray Crotty, who died in 1994.
I’m normally somewhat ashamed of my Irish ancestry, but for now I’m proud. Hurrah for Calhoun, hurrah for unanimity! The only acceptable rule to me is unanimity of INDIVIDUALS (nations is only a short way there), which is just what we have in a free-market with free-association. I regret that we chucked our own Articles of Confedederation with its unanimity rule for a Constitution. All the promises made by the so-called “federalists” were disproven while the anti-federalists turned out to be unfortunately correct in their predictions.
The EU budget is actually quite small if you consider it in relation to GDP ($13 trillion). The lack of significant central fiscal power is one of the key arguements against the Eurozone being an Optimum Currency Area, isn’t it?
@Austrian:
It’s an easy mistake to make to look at the large U.S. trade deficit and conclude that it doesn’t export much. But in fact, the U.S. is one of the three countries with more than $1 trillion in annual exports (Germany and China being the other two.) The U.S. is a major exporter, and an even bigger importer.
@Gordon – My impression, gathered from talking to a large number of Brits that have fled Britain to go live in France is that they very much deplore the transformation of Britain over the last 20-30 years which has led to an abrupt decline in traditional British values and heralds the end of Britishness as a distinct culture and society. They tell me that the French on the other hand still know who they are and show spirit in trying to preserve their way of life against difficult odds. It also seems to me that the current vibrancy of Britain is mostly a side-effect of its being a wholly owned subsidiary of America Corp.
Exports per capita according to Wiki: Austria : 15000$, USA: 3110$, Germany 12300$
These are figures from 2005, so the differencial must have gone up, since exports have continued to rise in Austria and so did the Euro.
Not that is by for not an exact measurement, which is why I restricted my statement to sectors where enterpreneurship matters. The United Arab Emirates exports 22900$ for example, which is oil, I presume. How much of US exports are agricultural? (I don’t know)
Exports due to cheap labour shouldn’t count either.
Also, small countries may have higher export per capita figures by nature, though I am not sure. Germany is huge in terms of GDP, so that would be a counter-example.
Most innovative companies are small to mid sized companies that operate in small market niches and design and manufacture products that most people wouldn’t even know exist.
Low US exports may be a result due to a systemic overvaluation of the dollar. Whatever the case might be, it shows that alledged superior enterpreneurship or the US is not as important for the big picture as michael gordon aka the buggy professor claims here and on his website.
Ethnic Austrian said:
small countries may have higher export per capita figures by nature, though I am not sure
I am sure. They do. Imagine that the 50 US states were all different countries. There is no doubt that the collective exports of those 50 countries would be comparable to an EU that broke up some of its nations and also had 50 countries in it.
Whatever the case might be, it shows that alledged superior enterpreneurship or the US is not as important for the big picture as michael gordon aka the buggy professor claims
Actually as I just outlined exports are a pretty silly measure of economic well being, and in fact a belief that exports are a sign of health is a potentially dangerous precursor to destructive mercantilism.
Non-export trade is just as healthy as trade that is for export. That said, specialization is a core ingredient to economic growth, so having both increasing exports and increasing imports is usually a good sign.
This is how my post ought to have read.
Ethnic Austrian said:
small countries may have higher export per capita figures by nature, though I am not sure
I am sure. They do. Imagine that the 50 US states were all different countries. There is no doubt that the collective exports of those 50 countries would be comparable to an EU that broke up some of its nations and also had 50 countries in it.
Whatever the case might be, it shows that alledged superior enterpreneurship or the US is not as important for the big picture as michael gordon aka the buggy professor claims
Actually as I just outlined exports are a pretty silly measure of economic well being, and in fact a belief that exports are a sign of health is a potentially dangerous precursor to destructive mercantilism.
Non-export trade is just as healthy as trade that is for export. That said, specialization is a core ingredient to economic growth, so having both increasing exports and increasing imports is usually a good sign.
I wasn’t saying that it does. As long as the economy is strong, who cares how that is achieved. But certain exports are an indication of quality of products and thus of ingeniutiy, whether from enterpreneurs or employees within existing companies. Notice for example that the Sony Playstation was created by a rogue team within Sony who chose not to start their company, but convinced corporate bureaucracy within Sony instead. This collectivist south east asian approach may well be more effective from a macroeconomic viewpoint, since a company like Sony can easily add another product to its lineup. Starting an entire company around a product is difficult.
I was actually alluding to the size of the domestic market in relation to the world market, which is what you seem to point out as well. The world is obviously not exporting anything. I am however not sure whether that makes a difference once you reach a certain level of GDP where most trade is on average domestic for that level of GDP. I believe that exports are at that level increasingly more like the icing of the cake.
And no, trade within the EU is really not the same as trade between US states. Language barriers, cultural barriers, the not invented here syndrom, patriotism, distrust of foreign companies are difficult to overcome. Free trade and a common currency are a minor issue. You still need to make a sale and handle customer relations and service. A lot of car companies would go bankrupt immediatly if customers wouldn’t buy for patriotic reasons. The success of Toyota in the entire world is surely an indication that their cars are extremely competitive.
Also, if California can export, say 1000$ per capita to the other 49 states, shouldn’t it be also successful in with exports to the EU and South East Asia? If trade between US states are like exports elsewhere, why isn’t the US able to trade with “elsewhere”?
I am not btw. taking the contrarian view that the US is inherently uncompetitive. Manufacturing und exports will probably come back with the falling dollar or for other reasons.
That is why I discounted the UAE. Such exports are surely not an indication of ingenuity or enterpreneurship. And the technology is frequently provided by international companies. The austrian oil company OMV actually got a contract for kurdish oil development, much to the aggravation of the US and the central Iraqi governement. (Can’t help pimping my country over here LOL)
I agree that free trade is good in the long run, but may hurt low wage workers in the short run. That is even moreso the case with immigration of cheap labor, since that drives wages down for work that can’t be exported, like plumbing or retail. Since “the short run” can last for many decades it can hurt low wage workers for their entire lives, which is something that libertarians seem to overlook or don’t care about. So a balanced policy needs to be in place for certain workers, which cannot be retrained to be architects and would end up on welfare anyway.
You went of on an entirely different tangent here. I wasn’t thinking about exports in relation to imports, but instead about domestic trade in relation to exports.
Let’s assume that the US has 50% of world gdp and let’s further assume a perfect world market. Shouldn’t a company that sells 1000$ worth of goods domestically also be able to sell the same amount to the world? Exports and domestic trade should be in lockstep in this scenario. Low (absolute) exports would than indicate low domestic sales.
This of course can only apply to some sectors in real life. Take consumer electronics for example. The US doesn’t export TV sets, but it doesn’t produce and sell them domestically either. Lack of exports in this sector are actually an indication that there is not much going on domestically as well. (assuming there are no tariffs or other reasons that protect domestic manufacturers)
“The only reason more states weren’t given referendums is that Brussels was afraid it would get voted down. This has been tried before, and it was voted down. The Eurozone works fine. Does Europe really need another government?”
a) Brussels doesn’t decide which nation states have referendums or not, the nation states themselves do.
b) What’s been tried before? Referendums? This was a treaty that amended the nation states relationship with the EU. We’ve had lots of them and most have been passed – some have failed.
c) The Eurozone does work fine but that’s a monetary union and it’s not covered by the Treaty of Lisbon. The EU, on the other hand, does not work fine. It was not long ago Poland managed to prevent the entire EU making a deal with Russia.
d) Europe already has another government, this just amends the terms on which it is run. Political union is considered useful for a whole host of reasons too numerous to go into here.
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