Continentally challenged - Ulster Universitycain.ulst.ac.uk/dd/report5/ddreport5.pdfbeen a product...

Continentallychallenged

Securing Northern Ireland’s placewithin the European Union

Robin Wilson

dialoguedemocratic

2 DEMOCRATIC DIALOGUE NO 5

Democratic DialogueReport No 5February 1997

Democratic Dialogue5 University StreetBelfast BT7 1FYTel: 01232-232230/232228Fax: 01232-232228/233334E-mail: [email protected] site: http://www.dem-dial.demon.co.uk

c Democratic Dialogue 1997ISBN 1 900281 04 X

Cover design by Dunbar DesignCartoons by Ian FraserPrinted by Regency Press

3DEMOCRATIC DIALOGUE NO 5

Contents

Preface 2

Introduction 4

Wrestling with porridge 10

Acting regionally 19

Truthful with the economy 27

A smoother road to Dublin 32

Social modelling 39

Cash questions 46

Uptight citizens 53

Future imperfect 58

Conclusion 68

Recommendations 76


debate, but it also draws on an earlierround-table on Britain, Ireland and Eu-rope, held at Wilton Park in Sussex lastFebruary, and a workshop in Dublin inMay, on the theme of Negotiated Eco-nomic and Social Governance and Euro-pean Integration, organised by theNational Economic and Social Council.

Though this report has a single au-thor (the director of Democratic Dia-logue), it should thus be stressed that thisis in fact because it represents a distilla-tion of views—the sources of which, sincethe DD/IES and Wilton Park round tableswere under Chatham House rules tomaximise free expression, are often onlyobliquely indicated. Ultimately, of course,I bear responsibility for the contents.

It seeks to interweave a set of themes,set out in successive chapters, into a tap-estry from which one can stand back andsurvey, from the perspective of NorthernIreland, the vast and complex scenethat is the European Union of the 90s.

Preface

This, the fifth report from DemocraticDialogue, has its immediate originsin a partnership project run in con-

junction with the Institute of EuropeanStudies at Queen’s University.

This was a residential round-table,with some 50 participants from these is-lands and the institutions of the Euro-pean Union, and it took place over twodays in Co Antrim in June 1996. DD

greatly appreciates the co-operative ap-proach of the institute and in particularthe contribution made to the success ofthis project by its resource centre man-ager, Catherine Madden.

The breadth of involvement and thesophistication of the speakers generateda discussion of arguably unprecedentedquality about Northern Ireland’s rela-tionship with the EU, enhanced by a dis-cussion document, Northern Ireland andthe European Union, then just publishedby the institute.

This report is, in part, a sequel to that


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Because all these themes are indeeddeeply entangled, there is an unavoidabledegree of overlap between the chaptersthat follow, but it is to be hoped that acoherent picture thereby emerges ofwhere the region stands in a Europeancontext and where it might go. A numberof concluding practical recommendationssuggest ways in which a range of actors—not just government—can play an activepart in this journey.

DD gratefully acknowledges the gen-erous support of its funders, including theJoseph Rowntree Charitable Trust andthe Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

Further copies are available from theaddress on the inside front cover, price£7.50 (£10 institutions, £4.50 unwaged)plus 10 per cent postage and packing.

DD publishes a number of reports peryear, as well as organising a rolling pro-gramme of seminars, round-tables, lec-tures and debates. Readers may wish toreturn the enclosed subscription slip, toavail of reduced-rate payment for reports,free copies of DD’s newsletter and notifi-cation of all DD events. You may also visitour web site, as detailed on the insidecover.

We are open to requests to organisediscussions around any of the themes orideas raised in this, or indeed other, re-ports. Again, the contact number is onthe inside cover.

Our next report will explore anotheremergent theme in Northern Ireland—young people and their politicalagendas.


Introduction

During this year, probably at the Am-sterdam summit in June, the pa-rameters of the European Union as

it faces into the new millennium will beclearly delineated. The republic’s presi-dency in the second half of 1996 high-lighted the significant input whichDublin enjoys, along with its Europeanpartners, into the deliberations of theIntergovernmental Conference (IGC)charting this course. Indeed, a developeddraft treaty was presented by Irish offi-cials to the Dublin summit in December,and the presidency was generally seenas an extremely well-managed affair.

As a region of a member state whosepolitical culture has assumed an increas-ingly ‘Euro-sceptic’ air, Northern Irelandhas no such influence. True, the Euro-pean Union is a union of states, not re-gions. Yet, at minimum, it cannot beassumed that a UK government of such asceptic hue—and a Labour administra-tion would be by no means Europhile—

best articulates the specific interests ofNorthern Ireland.

The latter’s ill-defined status as a dis-tinct UK region creates a serious disar-ticulation between the policy communityand the political world when it comes toEuropean matters (though not only inthese, of course). Thus, the Institute ofEuropean Affairs in Dublin produced amighty policy tome1 on how the republicshould approach the IGC, in expectationof a diligent response within government.Yet the Institute of European Studies atQueen’s University could anticipate nosuch reaction from the UK government toits analogous publication2—regardless ofits high quality.

A few years ago, this might have beenthought, albeit short-sightedly, a matterof little consequence. ‘Europe’ was seenas external to Northern Ireland life, re-mote from daily concerns.3 A cynical, in-strumentalist view prevailed: whatmoney is available, and how can we get


it? And it remains strikingly the case thatthere is neither a direct air link fromBelfast to Brussels nor any permanentNorthern Ireland media presence in thecity.

But such a disengaged stance is in-creasingly unreal, for several reasons.First of all, the acceleration of Europeanintegration in the past decade has itselfbeen a product of dramatic globalchanges which Northern Ireland ignoresat its peril. The establishment of a sin-gle market, the succeeding pressures foreconomic and monetary union, and thelooming prospect of enlargement to thepost-Communist east all raise massivequestions for the region.

Can it stand the heat of this harshlycompetitive economic climate, or will itbe left behind (as its southern neighboursurges)? Will Northern Ireland continueto enjoy the current flow of support fromthe EU structural funds, and will the Com-mon Agricultural Policy be sustained asis, in the face of the huge demands en-largement will throw up?

Secondly, the ‘internationalisation’ ofthe Northern Ireland conflict, as evi-denced by the 300 million ECU (£240 mil-lion) EU Special Support Package agreedin the aftermath of the paramilitaryceasefires, has changed the context of thedebate about the political future of theregion. Will such international goodwill

endure the recrudescence of violence in1996, and the apparent inability of thedomestic political class to play its part inestablishing peace and reconciliation?

Thirdly, the question of the govern-ance of Northern Ireland itself appearsto be heading towards an endgame,which could take three forms. It could becheckmate, in which unionism or (moreplausibly) nationalism, by some granddémarche, definitively outmanoeuvres itsopponent.

More likely, however, is a stalemate,in which each side repeats its moves adnauseum. Or could they yet agree an hon-ourable draw, which would allow us tostart a new game with new players?

Put together, these three questionsboil down to one big one. Is the future ofNorthern Ireland in Europe to be an in-troverted, self-obsessed backwater, wal-lowing in its own ideological swamp—aplace where able people want to leaverather than live, unable to survive eco-nomically except on a massive drip-feedof external funding? Or is it to be a dy-namic, outward-looking, modernisingregion, marked by collaboration and co-hesion, at ease with its external relation-ships—a symbol of Europe’s valuesrather than a blot on its surface?

The EU offers no panacea for the fu-ture of Northern Ireland. This writer hasbeen guilty in the past of an overblown


view of the potential of Europe to act asa solvent, rather than a salve, for North-ern Ireland’s ‘troubles’.4 But the serious-ness, and outcome, of debate in the regionabout its relationship to the EU is not onlyof intrinsic significance but will alsoprove a telling indicator of the ability, orotherwise, of Northern Ireland to mas-ter its congeries of problems in the yearsahead.

I f none of the above convinces as to theimportance of Northern Ireland’s po-sitioning in Europe, including vis-à-

vis the member state and the island ofwhich it is respectively a part, a three-letter word should suffice: BSE. As union-ists in the region came to insist its beefwas ‘Northern Irish’, not ‘British’; as therepublic put up border-security barriersunprecedented in recent times, againstan invasion, not of loyalist terrorists, butof beef from another part of the ‘nationalterritory’; as Scotland insisted NorthernIreland could not be treated differentlyfrom the rest of the UK; and as NorthernIreland politicians who can not agree onhow to secure political autonomy for theregion all fruitlessly agreed that it shouldbe freed from the ban on UK beef—some-thing was dawning. That something wasthat if Europe had not been seen as a‘bread and butter’ issue in Northern Ire-land, it had certainly become a ‘beef and

bone-meal’ one.This report advances no easy resolu-

tions to Northern Ireland’s Europeanchallenge—simply because there aren’tany. ‘Europe’ is neither a crock of gold forthe region, nor a hand-me-down politi-cal model; it does not owe Northern Ire-land, and still less can provide it with,an economic or political living. The realquestion is one only the people of North-ern Ireland, and their various repre-sentatives, can answer.

Can the region grasp the opportuni-ties the evolving Europe offers? Can itfind, and articulate, a common autono-mous voice? If it can, there are big prizesto be won. None, however, will fall intoits lap.

But first, it must understand the ‘Eu-rope’ with which it must grapple.

Footnotes1 Institute of European Affairs, 1996 Intergov-ernmental Conference: Issues, Options, Implica-tions, Dublin 19952 Institute of European Studies, Queen’s Uni-versity, Northern Ireland and the EuropeanUnion, Belfast, 19963 Before the IES publication, the only substantialreport on Northern Ireland and the EC/EU wasArthur Aughey, Paul Hainsworth and MartinTrimble, Northern Ireland in the European Com-munity: An Economic and Political Analysis,Policy Research Institute, Queen’s UniversityBelfast/University of Ulster, 1989.4 Richard Kearney and Robin Wilson, ‘NorthernIreland’s future as a European region’, submis-

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sion to the Opsahl Commission on ways forwardfor Northern Ireland, published in Irish Review15, spring 1994; see the critique by Paul Teague,‘The European Union and the Irish peace proc-ess’, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol 34,no 4, December 1996, pp 549-70, which also ap-plies to Gerard Delanty’s well-intentioned‘Northern Ireland in a Europe of regions’, Po-

litical Quarterly, vol 67, no 2, April-June 1996.


There is no doubting the difficulty ingetting to grips with the Europeandebate. Its language is frequently ab-

struse, often soporific. The 1991 Treatyon European Union,1 agreed at Maas-tricht, has been described as “written inan incredibly turgid Euro-speak that de-fies interpretation”.2 Much of the creditimmediately accruing to the republic’s

draft of a successor was that it was rela-tively comprehensible.

This is not simply a matter of a Euro-pean community of many different lan-guages. In reality, it reflects anunderlying assumption which enduredduring the period between the foundingTreaty of Rome of 1957 and Maastricht.That assumption was that European in-tegration required only a ‘permissive con-sensus’ on the part of Europe’s citizens:as long as the technocrats and the politi-cal class knew what they were doing, thatwas good enough.

This led to an incredibly complex ar-chitecture, built layer upon layer. By onecount, decisions are made in 18 differentways: 11 legislative procedures, twobudgetary procedures, three proceduresfor international agreements and two forappointments of members of EU institu-tions.3 The Treaty on European Unionwas the last straw, with its three-‘pillar’structure and its presentation as a

Wrestling with porridge


series of amendments to the precedingtreaties—it was thus literally unintelli-gible to anyone not familiar with thelatter.4

But none of this is any excuse for thewilful, ostrich-like stance of John Major’sConservative administration in Britain,with a rampantly Eurosceptic mood onthe back benches and virulent propa-ganda in the tabloid press. Indeed, thewar-comic style of the Mirror’s cover be-fore the England-Germany soccer matchin Euro ’96 betrayed in one go the infan-tilism, the imperial nostalgia and theanti-Germanism which has bedevilledthe European debate in Britain.

Yet this also told another story. Ger-many may have defeated England, onpenalties, in a game which England mar-ginally deserved to win. But the funda-mental Eurosceptic error is to placeBritain, rather than Germany, at the cen-tre of the European universe, and to as-sume Britain can, once again, stand alonebut eventually prevail in the intergovern-mental conference which began in March1996.

As Paul Gillespie argues, “the mostimportant polarisation in the IGC nego-tiations is between the German aspira-tion for a more tightly integrated Unionand the British model of a looser, widerone. Germany is becoming Europe’s lead-ing power and the agenda-setting role

characteristic of such hegemony may beseen in the flow of ideas for a Europeanintegration project that will match itsown interests ... That the polarisationshould be between a reluctant Britainand an emergent Germany is pregnantwith historical meaning for a Britain thatis still coming to terms with its own lossof imperial hegemony and going througha crisis of political identity which makesmany of its leaders suspicious of Germanmotives.”5

Early last summer, before the Euro-football started and only the political ver-sion was being played, a senior EuropeanCommission official was already bemoan-ing the “enormous strain” the UK positionhad placed on negotiations in the IGC onthe future of the union. Indeed, it had atthat stage prevented serious negotiationsgetting under way. Yet the stalling tac-tics could not durably succeed.

The issue is not whether the UK (andso Northern Ireland) should continue toresist integrationist measures in the IGC,or whether it should endorse membershipof economic and monetary union (EMU).In reality, the other member states at theIGC will support what Brigid Laffan hasdescribed as “partial deepening” of theunion.6 In reality, EMU will begin on timewith a sufficient core of participants; asthe chief economist with one of Britain’sbiggest manufacturers put it, “We really


should assume, in government and inbusiness, that EMU will go ahead.” Andso, in reality, the issue is: will the UK at-tempt, yet again, to stop, Canute-like,European developments which it cannotprevent, only to seek to catch the tidelater?

In Missed Chances, a remarkablyacerbic analysis of 50 years of Britishfailure effectively to engage with theprocess of European integration, a verysenior former UK civil servant and EC am-bassador to Washington, Sir RoyDenman, blames this sorry state of af-fairs in part on the emphasis on the ‘spe-cial relationship’ with the us and Britishignorance of foreign languages. But hepoints the finger at the UK’s class system:“Britain never had a serious, house-clear-ing revolution ... The result has been thatBritain has largely become a cosy back-water, a backslapping, 18th-century typeoligarchy, its boardrooms stuffed withclapped-out politicians, Foreign Officeretreads, and sundry cronies of the Es-tablishment.” He describes the primeminister, John Major, as “a well-mean-ing nonentity” and says a change of gov-ernment is an “indispensable minimum”if this dismal record is to be changed.7

That view is reciprocated in Bonn.Accusing Britain of “flag-waving”, a sen-ior German official said last October: “Wehave given up all hope of the UK in the

immediate future.”8 Yet a change of Brit-ish government may well not be enough.As Ian Davidson writes of the BritishLabour leader, “Mr Blair has not learnedto speak ‘good European’. His rhetoric isthe old language of defending the na-tional interest, national sovereignty andthe balance of power. It simply won’t playin Paris or Bonn.”9

From a Northern Ireland point ofview, this is not just an issue of politicalrealism. For, within the UK, Northern Ire-land has a unique relationship with theEU—it is wholly granted ‘objective-one’status as a poorish EU region with recog-nised ‘special’ political circumstances,and shares a landmass with another (in-creasingly not-so-poor, in aggregate) ob-jective-one region, the republic. Inparticular, it is a matter of obvious con-cern to Northern Ireland, again from apurely pragmatic perspective, that north-south disjunctions in relation to theevolving Europe should be minimised.

One could go further. Northern viewsof southern attitudes to the EU can oftenbe outdatedly cynical. While it is truethat the republic has been a substantialnet beneficiary of European funds sinceit joined along with the UK in 1973, it isquite wrong to reduce its Europhilia to a‘begging-bowl’ mentality. Its experienceas a state of a sustained engagement withthe EU, the associated debate in national


press and broadcasting, as well as thesophisticated contribution by a numberof key intellectuals, have all led to a muchmore profound discourse in the republicabout matters European, from which thenorth has much to learn.

For all these reasons, the startingpoint for understanding how NorthernIreland can best exploit developmentswithin the EU is to understand them intheir own terms, and then to place North-ern Ireland’s specific interests in thatcontext—not the other way around.Northern Ireland may not, pragmaticallyyet again, want to leave the union withBritain—which, after all, delivers avastly greater redistribution to its poor-est region than the EU can ever do. But itdoes need to get out of the shadow of thenarrow British debate on Europe, to takeon board a broader European perspective,and to engage in the process with the vi-brant discussion south of the border.

S o where is the European Union go-ing? What is the context in whichNorthern Ireland must situate itself

in the 21st century? The bad news isthere isn’t a simple answer. The goodnews is that this means that much is upfor grabs, if Northern Ireland can articu-late sufficiently shrewd and sophisticatedresponses.

Since the establishment of the EEC,

two views about the future of Europehave stood in contestation. On one sidehave been the ‘supranationalists’, thosewho believe that the EU is inexorablyheading in a federal or quasi-federal di-rection. This view is often misunderstoodin Britain, as implying a ‘centralised su-per-state’, whereas in fact the model isfederal Germany, with its powerful re-gional Länder, writ large. Ironically, anofficial from the Land of North-RhineWestphalia has observed that “Britain isreally one of the last old-fashioned su-per-centralised states in the EuropeanUnion”.10

The supranationalist view has never-theless seen power gradually leachingfrom the member states to the Europeaninstitutions, a process for which so-called‘neo-functionalists’ have provided theaccompanying theory. The latter haveargued that co-operation in any particu-lar area tends to lead to further initia-tives, or ‘spillovers’—for example, theway establishment of the single Euro-pean market was seen to require the fur-ther step of economic and monetary unionfor the market to operate fully. Thesupranationalist perspective says thatthe future will be quite unlike the past—that at some point the EU’s ‘federal voca-tion’ will have been essentially realised.

The opposing, ‘intergovernmentalist’,view regards all this as political toffee—


indeed it places much weight on its so-called ‘realism’. In reality, its advocateshave claimed, the ‘F-word’ was removedfrom the Maastricht treaty, the people ofEurope are becoming increasingly restiveabout the baroque constructions of Brus-sels technocrats, and national identitycannot be so easily wished away. The EU

will remain fundamentally a consortiumof nation states, or it will be nothing. Thefuture, in other words, will be a reassur-ing continuation of the present.

These two perspectives have more incommon than their proponents would liketo admit. For a start, both make philo-sophically illegitimate, teleological,claims that existing trends—howeveranalysed—can be projected into the fu-ture. Post-1989, enlightenment-basedcertitudes about the ‘march of progress’(wherever that is deemed to lead) lookincreasingly shaky.

Moreover, whether they assume therewill be a new country called ‘Europe’ orthat existing nation-states will prevail,both approaches think only in terms ofthe system of modern sovereign states asinaugurated by the 17th-century Treatyof Westphalia. Yet the EU, in as far as itrepresents a ‘state’ at all, lacks the es-sential tax-and-spend character ofWestphalian states—it spends only 1.3per cent of European gross domestic prod-uct. It is a ‘regulatory’, rather than a

sovereign structure.11

James Anderson argues that the tran-sition to modernity involved the ‘bun-dling’ of power—dispersed in medievaltimes among overlapping sovereigntiesand exercised at different levels—into thesovereign ‘nation state’, underpinned bythe modern ideology of nationalism anddefined by ‘hard’ borders. Conversely, Eu-ropean integration today is ‘unbundling’that sovereign power once again.12 Thisis bringing a ‘post-modern’ fragmentationof power, decentring of authority and lackof coherence.13

This is indeed why the EU is so infuri-atingly difficult for European citizens toget a handle on. It is a world, as Marksand McAdams describe it, of “diversepolicy networks made up of member stateexecutives, their civil services, nationalcourts and other state agencies, includ-ing subnational governments at variouslevels, interacting with diverse privateor semi-public groups and EuropeanUnion institutions”.14

In Northern Ireland, however, politicalperspectives on Europe—again as onso much else—have very little to do

with such complex realities and every-thing to do with how the issue is ‘read’internally. Thus, nationalists (thoughnot, initially, republicans) have tended toassume Europe is indeed set on a


supranational trajectory, spiriting awaythe border (true) and detaching North-ern Ireland from the rest of its memberstate (untrue) in the process.15 Unionists,by contrast, have lined up with theintergovernmentalists—indeed the Ul-ster Unionists have elected to join SirJames Goldsmith’s faction in the Euro-pean Parliament16—in the (illusory) hopethat what might be called a ‘Fortress UK’model will prevail for Northern Ireland.17

The reality is likely to be more pro-saic than either these grandiose hopes orparanoid fears. For what has been char-acteristic of recent debate on the futureof the EU is that a third position hasemerged. On the one hand, as MichaelO’Neill argues, the supranationalistparadigm, with its “faith in narrow tech-nocratic solutions to what are clearlycomplicated political problems” missed“the abiding sense of cultural and politi-cal differences, and the enduring impactof particularistic historical identities”.18

On the other, the intergovernmentalistperspective could not come to terms withchange: “The notion of a ‘picket fence’raised around the legitimate prerogativesof statehood against all comers” is in-creasingly meaningless in an interde-pendent world.19 The resonances of thesecriticisms for unionist and nationalistperspectives in Ireland should need nospelling out.

Rather than anticipating a one-di-mensional scenario, whether based onfederal institutions or the existing mem-ber states, in this view what is emergingis a more complex structure of relation-ships between regional administrations,‘nation’ states20 and EU institutions—inEuro-speak it is called ‘multi-level gov-ernance’. As Charlie Jeffery explains,

Multi-Level Governance has been pre-sented as an alternative conceptualisationof decision-making in the EU. It is seen asan attempt to drag the preoccupations ofEuropean integration away from the long-running, and perhaps somewhat steriledebate between the different variants ofthe functionalist/supranational and real-ist/intergovernmental ‘schools’. Despiteobvious divergences in assumptions andanalysis, these two time-honoured ‘schools’share an image of the European decision-making process as a political arena whosefeatures are defined by the relative, anduncontested, roles of national vs.

supranational institutions.21

Supranationalists don’t like multi-levelgovernance: it’s too untidy, compared totheir rationalist dreams. Intergov-ernmentalists don’t like it either: it’s toouncertain—who knows where it mightlead? But they both look set to be dis-comfited—just like advocates of a unitedIreland or untrammelled British sover-eignty in Northern Ireland. In that sense,


the EU is “well on the way to becomingsomething new—and that will have ma-jor implications for the actors, the proc-esses and the outcomes of policy-makingat all levels in Europe: supranational,national and subnational”.22

Indeed, there is yet another level—thetransnational—of networking across theunion by a range of social actors: “Envi-ronmental groups, women’s groups andnetworks of ‘carers’ and anti-povertygroups serve to reduce the gatekeeperrole of national governments and to cre-ate horizontal linkages among West Eu-ropean polities. The EU arena of politicscan be a source of additional influencefor these groups and may aid them intheir domestic environments by enhanc-ing their information and giving themaccess to the strategies of their counter-parts in other countries.”23

Indeed, matters are more complicatedstill. The supranationalist and inter-governmentalist models of European in-tegration both started from theassumption, whether in terms of the un-ion as a whole or its member states, thatthe apparatus moved forward together.But it became gradually apparent that a‘multi-speed’ Europe was emerging, withdifferent member states proceeding atdifferent rates down the integrationistpath—for example as to when they joinedthe ‘Schengen’ group on security matters.

Yet even this does not now grasp thecomplexity of the matter. For the pros-pect of enlargement to the east, incorpo-rating highly dissimilar states from theformer Communist bloc, and the tensionsaroused by the EMU debate imply a unionwhere there is not even agreement as towhere, never mind at what speed, eachstate is going in the European project.Hence the recent talk of ‘different-iated integration’—happily translated as‘flexibility’.

As Michael Keating sums it all up,

the prospects for the future are for a highlydifferentiated state order in which the tra-ditional categories, unitary state, federa-tion, confederation, sovereignty,separatism, are transcended. There willnot be a tidy hierarchical order of conti-nental, national, regional and local au-thorities. Instead there will be in Europe

... a variable geometry state order.24

This may all be read—like so much elseabout politics in the 1990s—as veryunsettling. Nothing is stable, noth-

ing sure. But it can also be read as op-portunity rather than threat. If thefuture of the EU, and so of Northern Ire-land within it, is “neither teleologicallyinduced or fixed”,25 then there is muchpolitically to play for, whether from thestandpoint of regions, citizens or socialgroups. In this much more fluid and


contingent context, new possibilitiesemerge. As Udo Bullman puts it,

The European Union after Maastrichtthus provides the framework for a new anddifferent political order in which author-ity is scattered and sovereignty shared. Inconsequence a new type of politics hasarisen in which institutions and compe-tencies overlap. New modes of exchangeand representation have come into exist-ence which emphasise the role of sub-na-tional political arenas as spheres for action

and dialogue.26

In particular, as Marks et al argue, multi-level governance implies that ‘subna-tional actors’—whether interest groupsor administrations—can deal directlywith their supranational counterparts inBrussels, a scenario the former may findparticularly attractive “in response todifferences in interest or identity thatmay exist between the regions they rep-resent and the states of which they are apart”.27

Sounds familiar?

Footnotes1 Treaty on European Union, Office for OfficialPublications of the European Communities,Luxembourg, 19922 P C Schmitter, ‘Imagining the future of theEuropean polity with the help of new concepts’,in G Marks, F W Scharpf, Schmitter and WStreeck, Governance in the European Union,Sage, London, 1996, p122

3 Brigid Laffan, introduction to Laffan ed, Con-stitution-building in the European Union, Insti-tute of European Affairs, Dublin, 1996, pp 10-114 A useful layperson’s guide to the institutionsof the European Union, what they do and therelationships between them, is provided byKieran Bradley, ‘The union and its institutions’,in Laffan ed, op cit, pp 93-1235 Paul Gillespie, ‘Models of integration’, in Laffaned, op cit, p1616 Laffan, conclusion to Laffan ed, op cit, p2157 See Ian Davidson’s review of Denman, ‘A longtale of woe’, Financial Times, April 17th 19968 Sarah Helm, ‘German warning over EU expan-sion’, Independent, October 23rd 19969 Davidson, ‘Showdown time’, Financial Times,September 18th 199610 ‘A share of autonomous power for the unitedpeoples’, Guardian, January 21st 199511 James Caporaso, ‘The European Union andforms of state: Westphalian, regulatory or post-modern?’, Journal of Common Market Studies,vol 34, no 1, March 199612 James Anderson, ‘Territorial sovereignty andpolitical identity: national problems,transnational solutions?’, in Brian Graham ed,In Search of Ireland, Routledge, forthcoming13 Caporaso, op cit, p4914 Gary Marks and Doug McAdam, ‘Social move-ments and the changing structure of politicalopportunity in the European Union’, West Euro-pean Politics, vol 19, no 2, April 199615 “A divided Ireland makes no sense in a unitedEurope,” the then taoiseach, Charles Haughey,told a Friends of Fianna Fáil dinner in New Yorkin 1990—‘Haughey in plea for Irish unity in EC’,Irish Press, September 29th 1990.16 Rachel Donnelly, ‘Ulster Unionists to announcealliance with Goldsmith party’, Irish Times,December 23rd 199617 “A curious body calling itself the EuropeanCommunity—no longer the Common Market northe EEC—is taking onto itself powers which

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properly belong to the queen,” the then UlsterUnionist leader, James Molyneaux, told a RoyalBlack Preceptory demonstration in 1992—‘Molyneaux criticises EC on North’, Irish Times,July 15th 1992.18 Michael O’Neill, The Politics of European In-tegration: A Reader, Routledge, London, 1996,pp 33, 6219 ibid, p6920 The inverted commas are inserted to remindthat the UK, Spain and Belgium are effectivelymulti-national states.21 Charlie Jeffery, ‘Regional information officesin Brussels and multi-level governance in theEU’, Regional and Federal Studies, vol 6, no 2,summer 1996, p18422 Schmitter, ‘Examining the present Europeanpolity with the help of past theories’, in Markset al, op cit, p1423 Laffan, op cit, p1924 Michael Keating, Regional autonomy in thechanging state order: a framework of analysis’,Regional Politics and Policy, vol 2, no 2, 1992,p6025 O’Neill, op cit, p526 Udo Bullman, ‘The politics of the third level’,Regional and Federal Studies, vol 6, no 2, sum-mer 1996, p1127 Marks et al, ‘Competencies, cracks and con-flicts, regional mobilisation in the EuropeanUnion’, in Marks et al, op cit, p42

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O ne hope of supranationalists hasbeen that the widely-acknowledged‘democratic deficit’ in the EU could

be filled by enhancing the powers of theEuropean Parliament. And certainly it isdesirable that the parliament shouldhave more powers—that the EuropeanCommission and the Council of Ministersshould be more accountable to directlyelected representatives. The ‘co-decision’procedure in the Maastricht treaty wasa step forward in this regard which therepublic’s draft treaty would extend.

Yet the reality is that Europe’s elec-tors are even less enamoured of their MEPsthan their ‘national’ politicians (which isnot saying much about the latter). Turn-out in elections to the EP has been stead-ily declining since direct elections wereinitiated in 1979, despite the par-liament’s growing profile. As Scharpfexplains,

As of now ... the politico-cultural identityof the European Union is still very weak;

the lack of a common identity is a majorobstacle to the emergence of a European-wide public discourse; and, as a conse-quence, we have no Europe-wide media,no Europe-wide political parties and nopolitical leaders with Europe-wide visibil-ity and accountability. These conditionsare not easily changed by constitutional

reforms ...1

The notion of ‘European identity’ can onlybear so much weight. It will not tran-scend existing national or other concep-tions of the self, though there is spacefor it in a more nuanced sense of themultiple identities individuals can enjoy.2

So the democratic deficit will have to beaddressed, in addition, at other levels,particularly the ‘sub-national’.

Here, however, significant progresshas been made. As Gary Marks et al putit, “The 1990s have seen the growth of anew and unheralded form of regionalmobilisation in the European Union.”3

Mazey and Richardson have spoken of an

Acting regionally


“explosion of lobbying”.4 Jones andKeating detect “a common dynamic to-wards increasing regional self-assertionand a challenging of the decisional mo-nopoly of the nation-state”.5

According to Lisbet Hooghe’s figures,in 1985 there were just two offices repre-senting European regions in Brussels; in1988 there were still only 15, but by 1994there were around 70, their role “some-where between an informal ‘embassy’ fortheir particular region and a lobbyingagency”.6

The largest offices combine fourfunctions:• providing the European Commissionand Parliament with regional viewpoints,• surveying the European scene for is-sues of domestic concern,• participating in networks with otherregions and EU institutions, and• lobbying for an increased voice in Eu-ropean decision-making.7

The Northern Ireland Centre in Eu-rope, established in 1991, attempts toprovide such a two-way link between theregion and the European institutions. Itsmission statement defines its role as “Tomaximise the benefits for Northern Ire-land as a region of the European Unionand to promote Northern Ireland’s dis-tinctive contribution.”8 Yet clearly muchmore could be done were it, like the otheroffices in Brussels, to be representing a

regional administration in Europe,rather than being an admirable private/local-government effort.

But first let’s answer an apparentparadox: when all the talk has been of‘globalisation’,9 how could so much atten-tion have come to be invested in regionsas units of political economy? MichaelKeating:

The impact of global change varies acrossterritories. The fact is that it is at the re-gional and local levels that the impact ofchange is felt has helped create new coa-litions of territorial defence and increasedthe political salience of regions. At thesame time, it is increasingly recognisedthat combinations of factors of productionin specific places are a vital element ineconomic growth and change, even withina globalised market. The region has thusbecome a key level of political dialogue andaction, where national, continental andglobal forces meet local demands and so-cial systems, forcing mutual adaptations

and concessions.10

But such an engagement at regional leveldepends heavily on political leadership,on what Leonardi and Nanetti call “re-gional protagonism”—an activist, devel-opmental drive.11 By this, they mean notjust an “administrative-managerial”stance but “a creative and pro-activepolicy approach”.12 By definition, how-ever, a direct-rule administration in


Belfast can only respond to policy ap-proaches set in London; officials cannever themselves go beyond the admin-istrative-managerial role.

Birmingham, with a population a lit-tle less than that of Northern Ireland,offers something of a counter-example.The centre of the formerly dour west mid-lands city has been transformed beyondrecognition in recent years by a dynamic,Europe-oriented municipal leadership.One of five founding members of ‘Euro-city’, an urban pressure group whichmore than 60 EU cities have now joined,Birmingham was also one of the firstBritish cities to open a Brussels office.

Its ‘director of European and interna-tional affairs’, Gareth Williams, saidBrussels was prepared to support regen-eration projects not favoured in White-hall: “Within Britain, Birmingham willalways be Birmingham, the second city.In Europe, we take our place quite natu-rally in the first tier of big, provincial cit-ies. There is a lot we can learn; there is alot we can teach. It gives us ... a network,and a network which doesn’t go throughLondon.”13

Yet here the UK is falling further andfurther behind the European post-wartrend, away from centralised member-states obsessive about sovereignty. Thusregional government was stipulated inthe Italian constitution of 1948, though

it was not implemented for ‘ordinary’ re-gions till the 70s. France started region-alising in 1972, though it didn’t finish till1986. The German federal system derivesfrom the 1949 Basic Law. Spain and Bel-gium have regionalised more recently, inresponse to growing communal demands.But the UK in the Conservative years hasmeanwhile gone into centralist retreat.14

Eight of the 15 EU member states, andmost of the big political hitters, now fallinto Udo Bullman’s categories of ‘federal’,‘regionalised’ or ‘devolving unitary’—seven remain as ‘classic unitary’.15 It isthus that it has become commonplace toborrow the phrase ‘democratic deficit’from the European context, to describeNorthern Ireland under direct rule.

A key objective, as an Irish academicput it, is to pursue an avenue “which less-ens the straitjacket of the national”.Though communal division makes thisfar more problematic for Northern Ire-land than the example she quoted, Cata-lonia, she was nevertheless right to pointup how the UK represented an “awkwardpartner” in this regard.

An intriguing point is made in thiscontext by a European Commission offi-cial, noting that while the frameworkdocument agreed between the Londonand Dublin governments in February1995 envisaged a European engagementby the north-south body it proposed,


there was no reference to any such en-gagement by the recommended northerninstitution.16 By contrast, the GermanLänder not only have European policysections in most of their ministries butalso place overall responsibility with aLand minister for European affairs.17

T he BSE crisis mercilessly exposedNorthern Ireland’s limitations in thisregard. Agriculture would of course

be transferred to any new administrationin the region, and it was clear during thetellingly named British ‘beef war’ that thevast majority of EU governments—nota-bly including the republic—favoured eas-ing the ban on exports from NorthernIreland.

The Independent reported in Novem-ber 1996, however, that government di-visions on the issue had held upnegotiations with Brussels. An unprec-edented five British ministers had endedup attending an EU agriculture ministersmeeting in Luxembourg: two of them,Britain’s minister of agriculture, Doug-las Hogg, and the Scottish secretary,Michael Forsyth, were there to lobby fora UK-wide relaxation of the ban, whileNorthern Ireland’s agriculture minister,Jean Denton, favoured a Northern-Ire-land-first approach. Baroness Dentonwas actually excluded from a bilateralmeeting between the UK delegation and

the agriculture commissioner, FranzFischler.18

Interestingly, given Northern Ire-land’s legacy of division, Bullman pointsout: “The a priori existence of regionalidentity seems in this respect to be over-estimated as a precondition for regionalsuccess.” ‘Artificial’ Rhône-Alpes hasworked; ‘traditional’ southern Italian re-gions haven’t. Rather, “a modernised po-litical culture is the key”. In that context,“Political institutions at the regional levelare thus able to mould identity by intro-ducing dialogue and collaboration be-tween social actors and defining commonregional interests.”

The choice for Northern Ireland is in-deed a stark one, well articulated in adiscussion of Scotland in Europe byMazey and Mitchell:

Without some elected body formally ar-ticulating the interests and views of a re-gion, the government of the state as awhole will be in a strong position to en-sure that its view is taken as that of anyregion. This, of course, entirely contradictsthe notion of regional interests which canbe expected to differ on some issues atleast with the government at the centre.In the absence of directly elected regionalgovernment, an intense debate as to whohas the right to speak for the area—whether institutions of central govern-ment, the collective voice of localgovernment, or functional interests such


as business and trades unions—is boundto ensue and perhaps dissipate the effort

made in lobbying externally.19

This is not, it should be stressed, to as-sume a regionalist nirvana for Europe,the flip side of the supranationalist uto-pia. In the ‘multi-level governance’Hooghe and others have identified, weare talking not of ‘a Europe of regions’but of ‘Europe with the regions’.20

Thus, following German Länder pres-sure (and despite Spanish resistance),article 146 of Maastricht allows a mem-ber state to be represented by a regionalrepresentative at the Council of Minis-ters.21 But only the highly decentralisedBelgium, Germany and Austria have ex-ercised this right so far—and their rep-resentatives are there to represent themember state, not Flanders or Walloniaor the Länder. As Morass stresses, “thisdoes not imply direct subnational repre-sentation ... but only creates an opportu-nity to delegate national government’srights, while remaining within the logicof member states.”22 The Belgian regionsand the Länder are similarly entitled torepresentation on committees of the Eu-ropean Commission in areas where they,rather than their member state, have ex-clusive responsibility domestically.23

But didn’t the much-trumpeted prin-ciple of ‘subsidiarity’, established in theMaastricht treaty, imply a shift towards

regional empowerment—a way of re-engaging remote Eurocrats with real peo-ple on the ground? It is true that articleA of the TEU speaks of “an ever closer un-ion among the peoples of Europe, inwhich decisions are taken as closely aspossible to the citizen in accordance withthe principle of subsidiarity”. But article3B makes clear this stops at the nationstate: “... In areas which do not fall withinits exclusive competence, the Communityshall take action, in accordance with theprinciple of subsidiarity, only if and in sofar as the objectives of the proposed ac-tion cannot be sufficiently achieved bythe Member States ...” In Catholic socialteaching subsidiarity means taking de-cisions at the lowest possible level, andit has indeed been influential in region-alist movements in Europe, but it is


Protestant Britain and Denmark whichhave given the term its stamp in the con-temporary EU debate.24

Nor has the Committee of the Regions,established by the treaty, borne out thehopes of regionalist supporters—partlybecause of internal tensions between lo-cal authority and regional members. Its222 representatives are appointed bymember states, rather than directlyelected; its powers are purely advisory,not of co-decision with other EU institu-tions; and its financial allocation is lessthan half of 1 per cent of the EU adminis-tration budget.25 Those who wished for aEuro-wide equivalent of the GermanBundesrat (the upper house comprisingrepresentatives of the Länder) were se-verely disappointed—“completely unre-alistic” was the dismissive comment fromthe otherwise supportive former commis-sioner for regional affairs, Bruce Millan.26

The role of the committee is not goingto rise above the consultative, where itsperformance to date has been marked bya lack of focus.27 As William Nicoll putsit starkly, “in the Community of todayand tomorrow, the big legislative playersare the Council and the Parliament andthere is a limit to the inputs that can beexpected from elsewhere”.28

One Irish academic bluntly arguedthat the parliament would see to it—whether formally or via its input to the

budget allocations—that the committeewould not be strengthened by the IGC (ad-ministrative autonomy from the rathermoribund Economic and Social Commit-tee is signalled in the republic’s drafttreaty). A Northern Irish official of theparliament concurred. The union wasbased on “very strict legal-conceptual re-lationships”, he said.29

And such disappointment will remain.For a major constraint on Euro-regionalism is the sheer diversity in

economic capacity, institutional struc-tures, and political, economic and socialdemands of the various regions in the dif-ferent member states, leading to a lackof common interest in policy or institu-tional change. Such diversity can only beexacerbated by enlargement to the east.30

Moreover, regionalism in Europewears a “dark side” too, as the Irish aca-demic pointed out. If one pressure forincreased regional autonomy is the rec-ognition of the potential economic advan-tages of power to affect ‘supply-side’interventions, another is the concern ofrich regions to detach themselves fromtheir poorer neighbours—witness theNorthern League in Italy.

Yet Northern Ireland’s concern mustbe in which regional league it resides.Nestling at 140th out of 167 regions inGDP per head in a 1991 ranking (it has


probably crawled up a few places in theintervening years), it has a very long wayto go.31 And there needs to be a profoundrecognition that, just as in sport, the rela-tive performance of regions at the bot-tom will tend to deteriorate, not improve,unless strategic and concerted action istaken. Thus Hooghe and Keating arguethat, while regions have been able tomobilise effectively in recent years,

What is clear, however, is that the politi-cal weight of European regions varies con-siderably according to their economicimportance, their political skills, theiradministrative infrastructure and theirability to mobilise civil society behind theefforts of regional governments. Moreover,the strategies of regional mobilisationseem to be cumulative ... The result is apolarised Europe of the regions, in whichregions in the heartland and, to a lesserextent the more active Spanish regionsand some of the UK regions are involved

more fully than those in the periphery ...32

Standing still, in other words, is not anoption, in confronting the new politicaleconomy of regions.

Footnotes1 F W Scharpf, ‘Negative and positive integra-tion in the political economy of European wel-fare states’, in G Marks, F W Scharpf, P CSchmitter and W Streeck, Governance in theEuropean Union, Sage, London, 1996, pp 26-72 See chapter eight.

3 G Marks et al, ‘Competencies, cracks and con-flicts: regional mobilisation in the EuropeanUnion’, in ibid, p404 Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson, Lobby-ing in the European Community, Oxford Univer-sity Press, Oxford, 1993, p v5 Barry Jones and Michael Keating eds, TheEuropean Union and the Regions, Clarendon,Oxford, 1995, pp v-vi6 Lisbet Hooghe, ‘Subnational mobilisation in theEuropean Union’, in Jack Hayward ed, The Cri-sis of Representation in Europe, Frank Cass,London, 1995, p1867 Marks et al, loc cit8 Northern Ireland Centre in Europe annual re-port 1995-96, Belfast and Brussels, 19969 Anthony Giddens, ‘The new context of politics’,in New Thinking for New Times, DD report 1,1995, pp 8-2310 Michael Keating, ‘Europeanism and regional-ism’, in Jones and Keating, op cit, p311 Roberto Leonardi and Raffaella Nanetti, TheRegions and European Integration: The Case ofEmilia-Romagna, Pinter, London/New York,1990, p512 ibid, p12513 John Lichfield, ‘Brum marches to a happiertune’, Independent, March 23rd 1996; this up-beat piece in a ‘Building Europe’ series in thepaper was borne out by a visit to the city by thiswriter in December 1996, his first for severalyears.14 Keating, op cit, p415 Udo Bullman, ‘The politics of the third level’,Regional and Federal Studies, vol 6, no 2, sum-mer 1996, p516 Northern Ireland Office, Frameworks for theFuture, HMSO, Belfast, 199517 Charlie Jeffery, ‘Farewell the third level?’,Regional and Federal Studies, vol 6, no 2, sum-mer 1996, p6218 Katherine Butler, ‘Ministers crush Ulster’shopes on beef ’, Independent, November 1st 1996

DD


19 Sonia Mazey and James Mitchell, ‘Europe ofthe regions: territorial interests and Europeanintegration: the Scottish experience’, in Mazeyand Richardson eds, op cit, p11820 Hooghe, op cit, p17821 Andrew Duff, ‘Towards a definition ofsubsidiarity’, in Duff ed, Subsidiarity Within theEuropean Community, Federal Trust, London,199322 Michael Morass, ‘Austria: the case of a fed-eral newcomer in European Union politics’, Re-gional and Federal Studies, vol 6, no 2, summer1996, p8423 Mazey and Mitchell, op cit, p10624 The different senses of ‘subsidiarity’ are teasedout in A Scott, J Peterson and D Millar,‘Subsidiarity: a “Europe of the regions” v theBritish constitution?’, Journal of Common Mar-ket Studies, vol 32, no 1, March 1994.25 Peter Schwaiger, chef de cabinet of the secre-tary general of the Committee of the Regions,speaking at a conference on the committee or-ganised by the Institute of European Studies atQueen’s University, Belfast, in November 1995;the proceedings of this conference have now beenpublished in a special issue of the Journal ofRegional and Federal Studies, spring 199726 speaking at the same conference27 Martyn Farrows, speaking at the same con-ference28 William Nicoll, ‘Representing the states’, in ADuff, J Pinder and R Pryce eds, Maastricht andBeyond: Building the European Union,Routledge, London, 1994, p20229 A more optimistic reading of the future of theCommittee of the Regions is offered by JohnLoughlin, ‘Representing regions in Europe’, Re-gional and Federal Studies, vol 6, no 2, summer1996.30 Keating, op cit, pp 20-231 Michael Dunford and Ray Hudson, ‘Decentral-ised models of governance and economic devel-opment: lessons from Europe’, in Northern

Ireland Economic Council, Decentralised Gov-ernment and Economic Performance in North-ern Ireland, occasional paper 7, NIEC, Belfast,1996, p15832 Lisbet Hooghe and Michael Keating, ‘The poli-tics of European Union regional policy’, Jour-nal of European Public Policy, vol 1, no 3, 1994,

p375


Post-Fordism and ‘flexible specialisa-tion’ are not words that trip off eve-ryone’s lips in Northern Ireland.

But, like every other region, NorthernIreland needs to come to terms with thecompetitive challenges recent changes inthe international economic environmentsignal.

If global financial markets now se-verely constrain the autonomy of nation-states in macro-economic policy, at theother end of the economic chain, increas-ingly individuated and demanding con-sumers are no longer satisfied with thestandardised, production-line goods pio-neered with Henry Ford’s (‘any colour solong as it’s black’) Model T. Instead, thetrend is towards batch production of spe-cialised goods, with ‘just-in-time’ stockinventory techniques and rapid innova-tion to meet consumer fads.

As the nation-state has retreatedsomewhat in macro-economic manage-ment, regional economic strategies have

come more to the fore. Changing produc-tion trends have meanwhile placed a highpremium on investment, education andtraining, application of technology, andresearch and development. Yet factorslike investment and training suffer fromwhat economists call ‘co-ordination fail-ure’: it is in everyone’s interest to investand to train, since everyone benefits, butnot for individuals to make that commit-ment in isolation, since they may not ben-efit and/or others might (such as when afirm poaches another firm’s trained la-bour). Combining these two considera-tions suggests that those regions whichhave appropriate institutional struc-tures, pursue co-ordinated economic de-velopment strategies, ensure theworkforce is well trained and educated,secure high levels of investment, andadvance technology transfer and R&D

may win out in the competitive struggle.This was the issue, with Northern Ire-

land in mind, which the Northern Ireland

Truthful with the economy


Economic Council invited MichaelDunford and Ray Hudson to investigate,in a comparative study of EU regions.Contrary to continuing (and utterly base-less) official triumphalism about the re-gion’s workforce, research in the late 80sshowed that, as compared with theformer West Germany, Northern Irelandhad only 45 per cent as many graduatesand 49 per cent as many techniciansworking in manufacturing; the republic,meanwhile had 88 per cent as manygraduates and as many technicians asWest Germany. The same applies to theregion’s much-vaunted education system,seedcorn of the future: whereas 62 percent of German 16-year-olds in 1990-1reached the equivalent of GCSE grades A-C in mathematics, the national language

and one science, only 22 per cent ofNorthern Ireland students achieved thismodest standard that year.1

One index of the quality and market-ability of goods any economy produces isits expenditure on R&D. Research for theIndustrial Research and Technology Unithas shown that in 1993 total civil ex-penditure on R&D by Northern Irelandbusinesses amounted to just 0.4 per centof regional gross domestic product. OnlyGreece and Portugal, among EU members,spend less.2 All in all, as Gerard O’Neillputs it, “Northern Ireland no longer hasa sizeable core of indigenous, world-classmanufacturers who can confront thechallenges of global economic change inthe decades ahead.”3

These are not ethereal issues. For iffirms cannot compete on quality, theymust compete on costs, particularly oflabour. It is thus no surprise that aver-age (male) full-time earnings in manu-facturing in Northern Ireland have beendriven down, relative to Great Britain,from 97 per cent in 1981 to 84 per cent in1995.4

Dunford and Hudson’s research showsthat decentralisation of governance toregions is not in itself enough to guaran-tee economic success. They point toSaarland in this regard—nearer home,one could point to the dismal record (inthis as in all other regards) of the old


Stormont government. In particular, theystress the need to place a premium(clearly not a feature of the latter experi-ence) on “trust, co-operation and socialinclusion”.5

Nevertheless, they conclude that “themost active regional governments are tobe found in the most economically suc-cessful regions, and the fact that they canexercise this degree of pro-activity ispredicated upon their location withinnational states characterised by decen-tralised systems of governance. Theseinvolve dense and overlapping networksof institutions, within both the state andcivil society, and bridging the boundariesbetween these two spheres.”6

The previous EU regional affairs com-missioner, the former Scottish MP BruceMillan, came to the same conclusion frompractical observation. Struck by thegrowth of “regional assertiveness” afterhe took up the portfolio in 1989, he be-lieved it was no accident that the strong-est economies were those with powerfulregional governments—“they provide afocus for initiative and enterprise”.7

While stressing there is no simpletransferable model, Dunford and Hudsonhighlight a number of features of success-ful regions from which Northern Irelandcan learn. Prosperous EU regions, theydiscovered,• exhibit a high degree of social cohesion

and inclusion;• achieve co-operative industrial rela-tions, matching flexibility with security;• enjoy inter-firm co-operation and net-working;• ‘embed’ high-value-added inward in-vestment in the regional economy;• pursue strategies to foster innovationand technology transfer;• have enabling institutions of govern-ance, which have ‘learned to learn’;• maximise the potential of cross-bordersynergies; and• manifest a vibrant civil society, to whichthe state is permeable.8

They conclude with a warning forNorthern Ireland, that a regionalisedEurope could simply become a frameworkfor further divergence between strongand weak regions: “This is especially soin the context of moves towards the sin-gle European market and Economic andMonetary Union, which, ceteris paribus,will lead to strong regional divergence,with the gap in levels of economic com-petitiveness and wellbeing between the‘successful’ and ‘less favoured’ Europeanregions rising sharply.”9

In its significant statement on the re-search it commissioned from Dunfordand Hudson, worth quoting at length, theNorthern Ireland Economic Councilpulled no political punches. Urging a ‘cul-ture of commitment’ throughout the


political, economic and social spectrumin Northern Ireland, it said:

One of the themes to emerge from the casestudies is the importance of developinggovernance and institutional arrange-ments based on co-operation and trust.These make it easier to develop a strate-gic and integrated policy approach andthey facilitate a shared culture of commit-ment involving the public and private sec-tors as well as local authorities and thevoluntary and community sector. While itis undoubtedly the case that all of thesesectors are showing much increased signsof effort and enthusiasm to resolve eco-nomic problems, it is also clear that theseefforts are taking place against a backdropof long-standing and deep division withinsociety. The vital ingredient of local politi-cal leadership has been lacking. In thesecircumstances, it is highly questionablewhether it is realistically possible to gen-erate the degree of co-operation and trustthat are found to be at the core of othermore successful parts of Europe. Thisplaces great emphasis on reaching agree-ment on governance structures for North-ern Ireland that will promote successful

economic development.10

Thus, we are back once more to the de-bilitating effect of the failure of themajor parties in Northern Ireland—

especially the Ulster Unionists and theSocial Democratic and Labour party—to

develop the politics of common under-standing that could alone make such adynamic regional polity possible. As withthe urgent issue of social exclusion,progress is thus subject to generalisedpolitical veto.11

But this is not cost-free. In the newEuropean configuration Keating identi-fies, “Some subnational territories willhave considerable scope for autonomousaction in the interstices of the nationaland international order, blurring the dis-tinction between independence and inter-nal autonomy. Others will be reduced tonew forms of dependence, on the nationalstate or the international market.”12 Or,as Hooghe puts it, “In the European re-ality, regions, in particular those withelected authorities, are the core players.”13

Such an authority would have, ofcourse, to make an early appointmentwith Dublin.

Footnotes1 Paul Gorecki, figures presented to an IrishCongress of Trades Unions seminar, Armagh,October 19962 A Gough, ‘Northern Ireland civil expenditureon research and development’, Economic Out-look and Business Review, vol 11, no 4, Decem-ber 1996, pp 13-143 Gerard O’Neill, ‘The northern dimension’, inPaul Gillespie ed, Britain’s European Question:The Issues for Ireland, Institute for EuropeanAffairs, Dublin, 1996, p136.4 Gorecki, op cit

DD


5 Michael Dunford and Ray Hudson, ‘Decentral-ised models of governance and economic devel-opment: lessons from Europe’, in NorthernIreland Economic Council, Decentralised Gov-ernment and Economic Performance in North-ern Ireland, occasional paper 7, NIEC, Belfast,1996, p1996 ibid, pp 205-67 ‘Regional focus for the future’, Guardian, June25th 19908 Dunford and Hudson, Successful EuropeanRegions: Northern Ireland Learning from Oth-ers, NIEC research monograph 3, Belfast, 1996,pp 186-989 ibid, pp 198-9910 ibid, pp xxviii-ix (my emphasis)11 See Paul Teague and Robin Wilson, ‘Towardsan inclusive society’, in DD report 2, Social Ex-clusion, Social Inclusion, 1995, p96.12 Michael Keating, ‘Regional autonomy in thechanging state order’, Regional Politics andPolicy, vol 2, no 2, 1992, p6013 Lisbet Hooghe, ‘Subnational mobilisation inthe European Union’, in Jack Hayward ed, TheCrisis of Representation in Europe, Frank Cass,London, 1995, p175 (my emphasis)


The future of Northern Ireland as anEU region cannot be discussed without addressing its relationship with

the republic. But the republic has twoother additional considerations: its rela-tionships with Britain and with the widerunion. And it is now frequently assertedthat the republic’s European aspirationsmay antagonise Britain, widen the eco-nomic and/or social gulf on the island ofIreland and so jeopardise its northernpolicy.1

Economic and monetary union offersan obvious instance, yet it demonstratesthat this real concern may be overesti-mated. The argument goes like this. Sup-pose the UK decides not to join theeuro-zone in 1999. The republic thenfaces two challenges. On the one hand,its progressive trade diversion from Brit-ain to the wider Europe in recent decadesand the political gains of coming out ofthe British shadow and joining the Eu-ropean core dictate a judgment to join the

‘ins’ in the first wave—despite the wor-ries about the potential competitivethreats to indigenous industry servicingthe British market.2 Commitment to anew, north-south relationship would, onthe other hand, favour the minimis-ation of disharmonies between the twojurisdictions.

Yet no one doubts which of these con-siderations will prevail. And even thegreatest enthusiast for north-south inte-gration, on either side of the border,would have to accept the logic of a deci-sion by the republic to join EMU promptly.As the director of a leading City firmpointed out, if the UK stays out in 1999, itwill, in practice, have to operate an eco-nomic policy essentially similar to thatit would pursue if it were in—would this,he asked, remain a credible stance? Anda leading British corporate economistsaid that if the UK was outside the euro-zone, then “the markets will test out ster-ling very quickly”. This would lead to

A smoother road to Dublin


exchange rate volatility, an interestrate premium, higher inflation, con-tinuing transaction costs—£30 millionper annum going to “greedy bankers”,rather than investment, from hiscompany alone—and lower foreign directinvestment.

All in all, a highly unappealing pros-pect. The commission president, JacquesSanter, obviously agrees with this logic.He told the Financial Times in Decem-ber 1996 that no British governmentcould resist the pressure from the Cityand big business to join the euro-zone.3

In that sense, the republic’s dilemma is,in the longer run, more apparent thanreal.

It thus has every reason not to followits UK partner if the latter stays out inthe first wave—even if, as the City manpointed out, this would mean the borderfor a time becoming a microcosm of theboundary EU-wide between ‘ins’ and ‘outs’.That indeed looks the likeliest outcome,as an incoming Labour governmentwould have to decide within weeks to re-join the exchange rate mechanism if itwere to meet the requirements of joiningthe euro-zone on January 1st 1999. Askedabout rejoining the ERM, the Labourleader, Tony Blair, told the FinancialTimes in January 1997: “We have noplans to do that.”4

It is also true, of course, that a

sustained drift towards ‘flexibility’ in theunion could have serious dislocating con-sequences, were the Irish border to cometo represent a major gap in social stand-ards. Thus, there have been recent re-ports of French firms moving to Britainto avail of lower wage and social costs anda more deregulatory régime. Yet the re-ality is that Northern Ireland remains afar less attractive investment locationthan the republic for international capi-tal—partly because of the low corpora-tion tax régime in the south (which somein the EU view as a concealed state aid).And the timidity of the large memberstates in advancing the social agenda ofthe EU to date has meant that the impactof the UK’s ‘opt out’ from the Maastrichtsocial chapter has been minimal.

M ore positively, however, the EU context does help us to get our headsaround the theoretical complexi-

ties raised by north-south institutions.James Anderson points to the much lesspropitious circumstances of earlier at-tempts at such institutional construction.In 1920, when a Council of Ireland wasenvisaged as part of the partition scheme,“the wider context was not ‘Europe’ butthe British Empire, and the nationalistideal was enjoying its finest hour asWoodrow Wilson presided over the crea-tion of a battery of new nation states”.


Even at the time of the 1973-4 rerun,membership of the ‘Common Market’was a novelty for both the UK and therepublic.5

Just as supranationalists and inter-governmentalists are finding themselvesfrustrated by the ‘untidy’ evolving EU ar-chitecture, so neither nationalists norunionists in Ireland are finding the evo-lution of the north-south debate quite totheir liking: too pragmatic for the former,who have been very reluctant to flesh outwhat institutions they want; too robustfor the latter, who fear stepping on to a‘slippery slope’ to Dublin Rule.

In fact, as Paul Teague has explained,the EU experience provides no evidencefor a deterministic assumption that eco-nomic co-operation must lead, willy-nilly,to political integration in Ireland. Yet, bythe same token, nor does it validate aunionist political style based on “conflictand confrontation” towards the republic.Indeed, on the contrary, thick north-southinstitutional links could have a symbi-otic relationship with the political stabil-ity of a new Northern Ireland.

Teague thus argues for

a form of north-south co-operation thatstands apart from the main nationalistand unionist views on the matter. On theone hand, it rejects the nationalist prefer-ence for rolling integration as being nei-ther feasible nor desirable. On the other

hand, it sees the unionist position as arather unsophisticated zero-sum approachto matters such as sovereignty, identityand pooled decision-making. Instead, it ar-gues that the EU could help embed a sym-biotic approach to north-south relations.This approach offers a possible compro-mise between the two opposing blocs ... [I]fthe various protagonists commit them-selves to the search for a political settle-ment and forsake deeply held beliefs thenthe EU and European integration can helpsupport the process. But ultimately the EU

is only a concerned by-stander which sug-gests that it is up to those on the ground

to secure the permanent peace.6

Nor should it be assumed that the frame-work document has resolved these mat-ters. A senior Foreign Office officialconfided that he had had no idea at thetime of drafting how the proposed north-south co-ordination with regard to the EU

was to work—the then foreign secretary,Douglas Hurd, had told him that theNorthern Ireland secretary, Sir PatrickMayhew, needed the provision for politi-cal reasons.

What help can we derive, then, fromspecific cross-border initiatives elsewherein Europe? Sabine Weyand points outthat central governments still tend toregard these as part of international re-lations and that regions can only takeresponsibility for external policy fields forwhich they hold internal competence.


This highlights the proportionate rela-tionship between the degree of autonomyof any new Northern Ireland administra-tion and its capacity to pursue north-south co-ordination. A useful target ofinter-regional agreements in Europe inthis context has been to secure, throughco-ordination, an outcome no less favour-able than would have been achieved hadthe regions concerned been part of thesame member state.7

Other, more negative, lessons comesfrom one of the grandest of inter-regionalagreements, the ‘Four Motors of Europe’.Founded in 1988, this brought togetherthe powerhouses of Rhône-Alpes, Baden-Württemberg, Lombardy and Catalonia,yet its high expectations for high-techsynergy have not been borne out. In thislight, neither the north-south politicalbody envisaged in the framework docu-ment, nor unionist resistance to institu-tional links, stands up very well:

The approach they have taken could becharacterised as a ‘top-down’ approach toco-operation. Projects have in general beenconceived at a political level and do notnecessarily address any particular needof the regions involved ... Co-operation isthus in effect limited to the public sector;economic and social actors, not to men-tion the public at large, are not activelyinvolved. Institutions which might helpto structure interaction and ensure

continuity have not been established. Co-operation has therefore very often takenthe form of ad-hoc events such as confer-ences or exhibitions rather than medium

to long-term projects.8

By contrast, the longstanding ‘SaarLor-Lux’ association—embracing Saarland,Lorraine and Luxembourg—has beenmore successful. Integration requires ‘so-cial learning’ on either side of borders,Weyand argues. “Associations such asSarLorLux ... with their extensive in-volvement of a range of governmentaland social actors and their emphasis oncreating contacts between the citizens oftheir regions, thus offer better chancesfor ‘social learning’ than purely or pre-dominantly governmental associations,like, for instance, the ‘Four Motors ofEurope’.”9

The key is to adopt a positive engagement. As Dunford and Hudson put it,urging “development of a Belfast/

Dublin axis” on economic grounds, “Afrontier location can be as much of anadvantage in some circumstances as itcan be a problem in others.”10 One Euro-pean Commission official, while accept-ing the ‘political realities’ associated withthe massive dependence of Northern Ire-land on the Westminster subvention,nevertheless stressed how more could bedone on the north-south agenda. While


there had been a common chapter in theSingle Programming Documents fornorth and south, determining the alloca-tion of the current tranche of structuralfunds, this had not been developed. Andthe north-south socio-economic agendahad largely been left to the private sec-tor, as with the Dublin-Belfast corridorplan.

Perhaps the most profound commenton this whole area came from a senioreconomist in the republic. Partition, hesaid, had led to a loss of economicsynergies, a lack of inter-firm relation-ships and a breakdown of trust. Address-ing these concerns were all tied up withmaking Northern Ireland a successfuleconomic region. South of the bordermeanwhile, political energies in the in-fant Free State had been devoted to in-dependence. Latterly they had focused onreintegration, first into the EU, then theBritish Isles and now in terms of northand south. It was the wrong way around,but “that’s the deal that history cut us”.The key concern on that north-south axiswas to build personal trust—and in thisthe EU provided an honest broker.11

Here, the Institute for European Af-fairs has suggested an imaginative re-sponse to the wider European ‘flexibility’dilemma:

Northern Ireland could be designated asa special region of the Union, entitled as

a right to choose whatever Communitypolicies best suited its regional interestsfrom amongst the policy packages apply-ing separately to the Republic and to theUK. This idea has already been advancedon the grounds that economic growth couldbe enhanced by allowing the Northern Ire-land economy to dine à la carte off the EU

policy menu.12

The head of the Northern Ireland civilservice, David Fell, has similarly sug-gested, with greater reserve:

Some will probably argue that a North-ern Ireland administration would be in thebest position if it could choose, issue byissue in some form of ingenious variablegeometry, whether to align itself with theIrish or the British position—the best of

both worlds.13

As Dennis Kennedy has pointed out,taken strictly the IEA notion would re-quire amendment of the treaties (sincethese recognise member states, not re-gions) and special arrangements for fund-ing within the UK.14 But if there were tobe a relatively autonomous democraticpolity in Northern Ireland, with maxi-mum delegation of social and economicpowers, then certainly there could be apolicy openness, even without a formalEU recognition of special status for North-ern Ireland. More difficult would be se-curing funding for programmes notsupported by the British government—


the scale of the Westminster subventionto Northern Ireland precisely arises fromthe longstanding ‘step by step’ formulaof parity of provision with the rest of theUK—especially with the future of the re-gion’s ‘objective one’ status uncertain.The reality would have to be grasped offinding additional revenue internally.15

An even more difficult issue is how therepublic would react to the sharing ofsovereignty with the north implied byany move towards a joint approach toEuropean matters. It was the formertaoiseach Garret FitzGerald who firstmade this proposal, but FitzGerald et alpercipiently point out that the frame-work document did not imply that theenvisaged north-south body would dealwith industrial promotion—where therecould obviously be competition. “Againstthat somewhat discouraging back-ground,” they go on, “how willing wouldthe Irish state be to share with NorthernIreland its sovereignty over the most cru-cial area of its foreign policy?”16 In hisCharles Carter memorial lecture in Bel-fast in 1994, Will Hutton astutely pointedout—however bitter a pill it was for hisaudience to swallow—that the north hadcome to be seen in the south as “a prob-lem rather than a prize”.17

What can be said with certainty isthat much of this comes down to pop-ular political will. Gerard O’Neill rightly

insists:

It is the vision inside the heads of busi-ness people and citizens on both sides ofthe border that is the most important vari-able shaping the future for this island. Ahuge potential exists for enhanced co-op-eration between companies on both sidesof the border, sharing marketing costs aswell as investment costs. Such networks,successfully employed in Denmark andother European countries, could be putquickly into place, playing a catalytic rolein releasing the potential for trade-ledgrowth. It is people who will build the fu-ture, not economic models or internationalfunds. Hence a key priority for policy-mak-ers and businesses will be to build cross-border linkages: between educationalinstitutions and enterprises; between vol-untary groups and local authorities; and

between suppliers and new customers.18

But what kind of society would underpinthe ‘island economy’? That may prove amodel question.

Footnotes1 Paul Gillespie ed, Britain’s European Question:The Issues for Ireland, Institute for EuropeanAffairs, Dublin 1996, pp 44-52 Richard Curran, ‘Economists warn on singlecurrency’, Sunday Tribune, October 20th 19963 Lionel Barber and Andrew Gowers, ‘“Irresist-ible” pressure on UK over Emu’, Financial Times,December 2nd 19964 Richard Lambert et al, ‘Hopes of winningfriends’, Financial Times, January 16th 1997

DD


5 James Anderson, ‘Territorial sovereignty andpolitical identity: national problems,transnational solutions?’, in Brian Graham ed,In Search of Ireland, Routledge, forthcoming6 Paul Teague, ‘The European Union and theIrish peace process’, Journal of Common Mar-ket Studies, forthcoming7 Sabine Weyand, ‘Inter-regional associationsand the European integration process’, Regionaland Federal Studies, vol 6, no 2, summer 1996,pp 168, 171. The republic is, in EU terms, a re-gion in its own right. Whether this should be, orwill remain, so is another day’s work.8 ibid, p1759 ibid, p18010 Michael Dunford and Ray Hudson, SuccessfulEuropean Regions: Northern Ireland Learningfrom Others, Northern Ireland Economic Coun-cil, Belfast, 1996, p18611 DD is planning a major round-table on north-south relationships later in 1997, in which hope-fully trust will be at a premium.12 Institute of European Affairs, 1996 Intergov-ernmental Conference: Issues, Options, Implica-tions, Dublin, 1995, p22613 David Fell, ‘Northern Ireland in a EuropeanContext’, one of the seminar papers publishedin conjunction with Paul Gillespie ed, Britain’sEuropean Question: The Issues for Ireland, In-stitute for European Affairs, Dublin 199614 Dennis Kennedy, ‘North-south relations in theEuropean context’, in Institute of EuropeanStudies, Northern Ireland and the EuropeanUnion, QUB, 1996, p6215 Mechanisms for doing so are suggested in So-cial Exclusion, Social Inclusion, DD report 2, 199516 Paul Gillespie ed, op cit, p5917 cited by Gerard O’Neill, ‘The Northern dimen-sion’, in ibid, p13918 ibid, p142


T he insistence by the former primeminister, Margaret Thatcher, thatthere is ‘no such thing as society’, but

only ‘individuals and their families’ pro-foundly encapsulated her Anglo-Ameri-can antipathy to the European socialmodel. It was essentially to deny the le-gitimacy of every European social theo-rist since Durkheim. (It was even to denythe fundamental conclusion of deTocqueville that democracy in Americarested on its civic associations).

A senior European Commission offi-cial put it in a nutshell. The period sincethe republic and the UK had joined the EU

in 1973, he said, could be characterisedas ‘invigoration’ for the former as against‘introspection’ within the latter. Nowherehas this been more evident than in rela-tion to the European social agenda. Whilethe republic has become a model of so-cial partnership and rapid consensualgrowth in the past decade, Britain hasbeen marked by a widening gulf of

inequality against a backdrop (despite re-cent improvements) of sluggish growth.Thus, when compared with averagegrowth in gross domestic product perhead across the EU during 1975-92, theUK economy slipped back by 2.6 per cent,whereas the republic stormed ahead by25.8 per cent.1

Meanwhile, the British political classhas become increasingly shrill about re-butting what Mrs Thatcher saw as ‘back-Delors socialism’ and ‘a diet of Brussels’.This though the volume of the denuncia-tions of the social chapter of theMaastricht treaty is utterly dispropor-tionate to the puny measures which havestemmed from it. A multinational econo-mist said his company had had to set upa works council, but no more—it was, hesaid airily, “trouble about nothing orabout very little”.2

From an all-Irish perspective, thereis some irony here. Around the time ofjoining, there was some speculation that

Social modelling


membership would, as a deus exmachina, have a modernising effect onthe politics of Northern Ireland, on theassumption that it represented an ‘out-moded’ quarrel. In the 90s world of pro-liferating ethno-nationalist conflicts,such an assumption now seems quaint.In retrospect inevitably, as Hainsworthwrites of the political impact of member-ship on Northern Ireland, “the EuropeanCommunity has functioned as a newarena to rehearse traditional disputes”.3

Rather, and unanticipatedly, it is thesocial backwardness of the republic of1973 that is unrecognisable today. Andundoubtedly EU membership has been apowerful solvent of traditional attitudes,based as they were on Catholic and na-tionalist particularism. Just to take oneobvious example, the election as presi-dent in 1990 of Mary Robinson—the veryembodiment of social modernisation andEurophilia—would have been otherwiseunthinkable. As Garret FitzGerald et alargue, for the republic membership “hasassisted a society, which in the post-revo-lutionary half-century had become in-ward-looking, to turn outwards and takeits place confidently in the world.”4

So what is the ‘European socialmodel’? According to a senior adviser inDG V (the section of the European Com-mission responsible for social policy), itis characterised by an open economy, a

social floor, educational equality, socialpartnership and a role for non-governmental organisations. In essence,therefore, it does not anticipate thesupercession of the market economybut yokes it to a régime of social regula-tion and thus represents the broad con-temporary agenda of European socialdemocracy.

It is a model now under severe attack,notably in its greatest success story, Ger-many, where the high social costs facedby employers are being resisted in thename of competitiveness.5 Roche andGeary warn that Europe now facesgreater competition between industrialrelations régimes—between strongly in-stitutionalised systems (as in Germany)protecting labour rights and weakly in-stitutionalised versions (as in Britain)stressing managerial prerogatives—withfurther ‘creeping deregulation’ likely.6

Y et this need not be a prescription fordefeatism and passivity. If low socialcosts were the sole measure of com-

petitiveness, Greece would be the strong-est economy in the EU. Roche and Gearyalso point out how the current Europeaneconomic success story, the republic,turned towards greater labour-marketregulation just as the UK was moving—much less successfully—in the other di-rection. The larger argument that the


republic’s boom is in considerable meas-ure due to its adoption of a European-style régime of social partnership—evenif that is not replicated at the level of thefirm—is now well-established.7

What is required is a reformation ofthe European social model, an issue ad-dressed by the Comité des Sages on so-cial policy established by the EuropeanCommission which met between late1995 and early 1996. Among its conclu-sions were: “A renewed, original socialmodel could become the key to Europeaneconomic competitiveness.” It spelt thisout thus:

In the global economy to which we belong,competitiveness is a fixed imperative. Butcompetitiveness cannot be improved bydismantling the welfare state or by reduc-ing minimum social standards. What wehave to do is change and overhaul our so-cial system: reducing non-wage labourcosts; developing social rights, such astraining, to foster high value-added formsof production; rejuvenating European so-cial dialogue and turning it into a sourceof competitiveness; coming up with a co-ordinated response to population ageing,with basic pension schemes and policiesto make it possible for both men andwomen to reconcile family responsibilitiesand occupational obligations; tackling thevarious forms of social exclusion by wayof more individualised innovativepolicies, in close conjunction with the non-

governmental organisations; and by pay-

ing heed to environmental matters.8

The comité recommended that the unionshould formulate a bill of civic and socialrights to translate these principles intothe entitlements of citizens. Unfortu-nately this ambition will not shortly beachieved.

In the here and now, however, pre-cisely because the EU is developing as a‘multi-level polity’, it does offer opportu-nities for intervention by social move-ments. As Marks rightly argues, whilethe success of such interventions dependson access to EU institutions and their re-ceptiveness to the issues raised, it is alsoa function of the ability of the organisa-tion concerned to relate to this Euro-en-vironment.9

The influence of the Northern IrelandCouncil for Voluntary Action over the EU

‘peace package’—both its emphasis on‘social inclusion’ and its ‘partnership’mechanisms—was a classic example ofhow a group with a conceptual grasp ofthe European social model can make abig impact with Brussels. (Unfortunately,as a leading Northern Ireland economistpointed out, this is a debate which ishopelessly undeveloped in the region.)

Paul Bew and Elizabeth Meehanrightly see such political opportunism(in the best sense) as reflecting howvoluntary organisations, and others, in


seeking to generate tangible socio-eco-nomic benefits to address Northern Ire-land’s special needs, have come “face toface with political inadequacies in theBritish constitution”, and thus “increas-ingly see Community regional policiesand networks as a means of circumvent-ing the problems of vertical communica-tion through central governments”.10

“What we have to do is to find the net-works to bypass the British government,”the director of the Belfast Centre for theUnemployed told an Irish Congress ofTrade Unions study on participation ofthe social partners in the structuralfunds.11 There has indeed been a stronginvolvement by the voluntary sector inthe region in wider networks, such as theEuropean Anti-Poverty Network,12 andwith how common concerns (such as thedevelopment of ‘community infrastruc-ture’ in disadvantaged areas) are beingprogressed in other regions. The inter-est of the European Commission, devel-oping its ‘civic dialogue’, in the experienceof Northern Ireland is testament to howthe region’s voluntary sector is seen asalong the European leading edge. As onevoluntary sector leader put it, there aremany “cross-over points” between EU andNorthern Ireland networks, across theseislands and into other regions—a “com-plicated matrix” with which she evidentlyfelt entirely constitutionally comfortable.

Introducing a NICVA document on thedistrict partnerships established underthe Special Support Package, the formerEuropean Commission president,Jacques Delors, described them as “acreative adaptation of the Europeanmodel of Social Partnership, adjusted toNorthern Ireland circumstances.”13

Aideen McGinley, chief executive of Fer-managh District Council, took thisbroader view when she described thepartnerships as “a major social experi-ment”. She told a NICVA-organised confer-ence: “It is about the development ofinclusive and effective local democracy.This has transnational and global signifi-cance for other troubled areas of theworld, illustrating how partnerships canbe used as tools for community reconcili-ation and conflict resolution and the crea-tion of a participative democracy thatredresses the fundamental imbalances inour communities.”14

Thus the ‘peace package’ has hintedat a redefinition of the political in North-ern Ireland, pointing towards a lessmonopolistic style. The monitoring com-mittee for the programme for the firsttime explicitly includes representativesof all the social partners, including thevoluntary sector, as well as governmentand European Commission officials; thewider consultative forum replicates thison a broader basis.


At local level, the district partner-ships, responsible for allocating some £37million of the package, comprise one thirddistrict councillors, one third communityand voluntary sector representatives,and one third private sector and others.The overarching Northern Ireland Part-nership Board has a similar composition.The implication of the partnerships isthat the skill of politics is redefined asnot only having representative or expres-sive functions but also functions of dia-logue and deliberation, in a rapport withsocial interests, driven by a commitmentto securing public goods.

Unfortunately, some political repre-sentatives understood this as a usurpa-tion of their legitimate role by unelectedcommunity activists. On the contrary,this is a much more elevated and chal-lenging conception of the activity of poli-tics, as well as potentially morestimulating and productive. Speaking inDublin in October 1996, the regional af-fairs commissioner, Monika Wulf-Mathies, said the ‘peace package’illustrated how the EU was about “respectfor diversity and different cultures andovercoming divisions by working for acommon interest”. And she added: “Peo-ple are fed up with the politics of thepast.”15

But not only have the district part-nerships been delegated responsibility for

some of the expenditure in their districtcouncil areas; so-called ‘intermediatefunding bodies’ have also been given thatresponsibility where their functional ca-pacities are aligned. Thus, in terms of thesocial inclusion measures, the NorthernIreland Voluntary Trust, a charitablebody wholly independent of government,has been allocated a global grant of £26million to distribute as it determines togroups on the ground. Indeed, less thanhalf of the ‘peace package’ cash is beingallocated directly by government.16

B oth initiatives, in capitalising on local knowledge or practical experience in the field, imply a decisive

shift away from what Paul Hirst per-ceives as the outdated notion of the ‘om-nicompetent’ state,17 towards moredevolved mechanisms. Problems—nota-bly of ultimate financial accountability—remain. But these are important pointerstowards a form of governance more ap-propriate to a diverse society like North-ern Ireland, where all social groups needto feel they enjoy an equal stake. Thesame principles apply to the north-southagenda, where instead of a purely inter-governmental approach Co-operationNorth was given an IFB role.

In an age weary of the bureaucraticfailings of governance via state corpora-tions, and frightened by the destruction


of the social fabric occasioned by reduc-ing governance to the workings of themarket, governance through civil societyoffers an increasingly attractive alterna-tive. At a round-table on the theme ofNegotiated Economic and Social Govern-ance and European Integration, in Dub-lin in May 1996, Hirst argued, however,that such experiences had been limitedto the local and the evanescent.

At the same event, though, Ash Amindrew on Danish experience to elaboratemore broadly what he described as a ‘ne-gotiated model’ of governance, which hesuggested had five aspects:

The first is a high level of interest repre-sentation and organisation of public lifeacross economy, politics and society. Thesecond is the considerable spread ofdecisional authority and autonomy acrossa system of plural interest representation.Third, and as a consequence, the stateplays a distinctive role as arbitrator andfacilitator between autonomous organisa-tions, in addition to that of rule-maker andspecialised provider of collective services.The fourth aspect concerns the evolutionof a dense network of vertical and hori-zontal channels of representation andcommunication as the basis for decision-making and policy co-ordination. The fi-nal aspect is the reliance on iterativedialogue for conflict resolution and policyconsensus, through a variety of routineorganisational devices such as informal

policy networks, arbitration councils,multi-interest special committees and co-

representation.18

This provides a highly suggestive frame-work for how state and civic institutionsshould interrelate in Northern Ireland,particularly in how its diffusion of powerwould block monopolisation and abuse aswell as injecting ideas and momentum.It is striking, by contrast, how silent theframework document, for all its impen-etrable complexity, is on this whole areaof the practice of governance—it is almostas if the two governments never thoughtit would come to that.

This broader perspective is importantto keep in mind—especially when de-bates about Euro-cash threaten to daz-zle us with the glint of the ECUs.

Footnotes1 Michael Dunford and Ray Hudson, ‘Decentral-ised models of governance and economic devel-opment: lessons from Europe’, in NorthernIreland Economic Council, Decentralised Gov-ernment and Economic Performance in North-ern Ireland, NIEC occasional paper 7, Belfast,1996, p1502 The only other directive to date has been inthe arena of parental leave; standards in Ger-many or Denmark were already far higher.3 Paul Hainsworth, ‘Political parties and theEuropean Community’, in A Aughey, PHainsworth and M Trimble, Northern Irelandin the European Community: An Economic andPolitical Analysis, Policy Research Institute,Queen’s University Belfast/University of Ulster,

DD


1989, p514 Paul Gillespie ed, Britain’s European Question:The Issues for Ireland, Institute of EuropeanAffairs, Dublin, 1996, p385 ‘Is the model broken?’, Economist, May 4th19966 W K Roche and J F Geary, ‘Negotiated govern-ance, industrial relations régimes and Europeanintegration’, paper prepared for the COST A7 work-shop on Negotiated Economic and Social Gov-ernance and European Integration, organised bythe National Economic and Social Council, Dub-lin, May 19967 Rory O’Donnell and Colm O’Reardon, ‘Ireland’sexperiment in social partnership, 1987-96’, alsopresented to the COST A7 workshop8 For a Europe of Civic and Social Rights, reportby the Comité des Sages, European Commission,Brussels, 1996, p149 Gary Marks and Doug McAdam, ‘Social move-ments and the changing structure of politicalopportunity in the European Union’, West Euro-pean Politics, vol 19, no 2, April 199610 Elizabeth Meehan and Paul Bew, ‘Regions andborders: controversies in Northern Ireland aboutthe European Union’, European Journal of Pub-lic Policy, vol 1, no 1, 1994, pp 95-611 Irish Congress of Trade Unions, The Partici-pation of Trade Unions and other Social Part-ners in the Community Support Framework forNorthern Ireland, Belfast, 1993, p6212 The director of NICVA, Quintin Oliver, is aformer EAPN president.13 Partners for Progress: The Voluntary and Com-munity Sector’s Contribution to Partnership-building, NICVA, Belfast, 199614 Making Partnerships Work, a report of a con-ference of that name, NICVA, Belfast, 1996, p3315 Brendan Keenan, ‘Row over NI funds giveswrong signal: EU chief ’, Irish Independent, Oc-tober 19th 199616 ‘EU gives go-ahead to £240 million peace pack-age for North’, Irish Times, July 29th 1995

17 Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Formsof Economic and Social Governance, PolityPress, Cambridge, 1994, passim18 Ash Amin, ‘The negotiated economy: state andcivic institutions in Denmark’, paper deliveredat the COST A7 workshop


The Single European Act of 1986, theproject which established the singlemarket, recognised as an offsetting

principle the role of regional policy in“strengthening ... economic and socialcohesion” (article 130A).

This led in 1988 to the reform, anddoubling, of the ‘structural funds’ (the re-gional fund, the social fund and the guid-ance section of the Common AgriculturalPolicy), in which ‘objective one’ was the“development of structurally backwardregions”, like Northern Ireland and therepublic (though Northern Ireland’s in-clusion, despite marginally breaching thethreshold of 75 per cent of EU average GDP

per capita, was on the basis of its ‘spe-cial situation’).

This growing orientation towards dis-advantaged regions was strongly associ-ated with the then president of theEuropean Commission, Jacques Delors.Indeed, a further doubling of the struc-tural funds in 1993, bringing the planned

total for 1999 to more than 27 billion ECU,was widely known as ‘Delors II’. Brus-sels’ growing regional largesse necessar-ily entailed a switch in regional fundingfrom projects (led by member states) tomore substantial and coherent pro-grammes (led by the commission), whichin turn implied a growing partnershipwith the disadvantaged regions.1

But no one should get carried awayby the Brussels sauce train, for three veryimportant reasons. Firstly, crucial thoughit is as a vehicle for policy innovation, itpales beside the Westminster subventionto Northern Ireland. The 1994-9 struc-tural-funds aid, plus specific CommunityInitiatives will deliver some £180 millionannually on average.2 Assistance to theregion under the Common AgriculturalPolicy is running well in excess of £100million per year.3 And expenditure inNorthern Ireland under the ‘peace pack-age’, though back-loaded over the initialperiod, 1995-7, would average at some

Cash questions


£70 million per year. This would implyannual EU assistance to Northern Irelandof some £350 million—about a tenth ofthe £3-4 billion subvention. In the widercontext, structural fund expenditure isinfinitesimal when set against the over-all gross domestic product of the EU—just0.4 per cent.4

Relatedly, as Harvey Armstrongpoints out, the goal of ‘economic and so-cial cohesion’ is “tantalisingly vague”,making evaluation very difficult. Thusthere has been no attempt by the com-mission, for obvious reasons, to identifyjust how large regional expenditurewould have to be to have a significanteffect on inter-regional disparities, butcurrent levels—despite the quadruplingunder Mr Delors—are almost certainlytoo low.5 And they are not likely to in-crease in the context of overall budgetstringency, and particularly the continu-ing fiscal strains arising from unificationin Germany: “The resistance to sizeablebudgetary increases in a number of mem-ber states should not be underestimated.Germany’s politicians have increas-ingly drawn attention to the fact thatGermany’s budgetary contributions aremore than those of the UK and Francecombined.”6

The Budget Council, meeting in No-vember 1996, confirmed its goal of a ‘zerogrowth’ EU budget for 1997. Indeed, it

envisaged a one billion ECU (c£800million)reduction of spending on thestructural funds and the Common Agri-cultural Policy.7

Thirdly, enlargement beckons, raisingnot only the prospect of the beurre beingspread more thinly but also of both partsof Ireland rising well above a loweringthreshold for major support from thestructural funds, as the ex-Communistbloc bangs on the door of the union. The10 central and eastern European aspir-ants have an average GDP only 30 per centof the EU mean.8

True, the enlargement horizon is re-ceding. The change of government inMalta has disturbed its application andthe simmering inter-communal crisis inCyprus has placed a big question markover the latter’s. And as regards the cen-tral and eastern European countries, asDavid Arter succinctly puts it, the cur-rent phase of western European integra-tion is in contrast to the post-Communistdynamic of disintegration—most tragi-cally in ex-Yugoslavia and Chechnya—with which it has coincided in the east.9

The European Commission now admitsthat there will be no additions from theeast before 2002.10

But the problem will remain, albeitpostponed. As Armstrong contends, “Thesize of the EC regional policy budget re-mains inadequate for the tasks which


currently confront it. Further EC integra-tion, notably the admission of new mem-ber states, would require a major newincrease in the regional policy budget ifregional disparities were to be preventedfrom widening.”11 As Hooghe and Keatinggrimly conclude, with richer states in-creasingly reluctant to step up their pay-ments, “It is possible that the limits ofpolicy have been reached.”12

Hence the almost panicky debate inthe republic as to whether it could defyits own centralist political organisationand have Dublin treated separately as aregion, so the rest of the country couldstill be a significant funds beneficiary, orthe suggestions that post-1999 fundingshould be functionally directed (eg atlong-term unemployment) rather thanregionally targeted.13

A European Commission official an-ticipated that the 75 per cent criterionfor objective-one status would persist af-ter the current tranche of funds runs outin 1999 and that there would be less scopefor a political compromise to favourNorthern Ireland in this regard (as pre-viously). Moreover, there was a desired“democratic effect” of regions graduatingout of objective one, and the union facedpressures from the World Trade Organi-sation to diminish regional aids in thename of global ‘market freedom’. Andthat was all apart from the competing

demands enlargement would, eventually,generate.

One thing is clear: there is no chancewhatever of the republic coming withina kilometre of the 75 per cent thresholdin the new millennium. The assessmentis made on the basis of the most recentavailable three-year series, and the fig-ures take some time to emerge. Never-theless, while GDP per capita in therepublic is still only 78 per cent of the EU

average in the latest available series,1991-93, so dramatic has been growth inthe last few years that Eurostat esti-mates that the republic overtook averageEU per capita GDP in 1996—and, by theby, that of the UK.14 Thus the regional af-fairs commissioner, Monika Wulf-Mathies told the House of Lords inJanuary 1997: “Ireland needs to weanitself off regional aid from the EuropeanUnion.”15

Gross national product gives a some-what more sober measure, excluding asthe latter does repatriated profits (whichthe republic’s high multinational pen-etration and low corporate taxationrender substantial). A commission officialin Brussels estimated the differential asaround 10 per cent. So the republic iseven on the cusp of losing its status asone of the four member states entitled tosupport from the Cohesion Fund—thethreshold being a per capita GNP less than


90 per cent of the average. But the factthat it is one of the 15 member statesaround the European table means it willhave the power to ensure transitionalarrangements, rather than a cut-off of allfinancial life-support (outside of the Com-mon Agricultural Policy) from the year2000.

While the republic has taken off inthe past few years, Northern Ireland’s position remains laggardly.

Thus, in 1993, its per capita GDP was 79per cent of the EU average.16 In 1988,when the original judgments were beingmade about objective-one status, the fig-ure was 76 per cent, on the margin ofqualification—the balance tipped by thepolitical factor. Partly because of the1989-93 tranche of funds, Northern Ire-land has now moved away from the bor-derline. The ‘special’ political situation,sadly, still pertains. But it is hardly anattractive case to have to advocate: ‘okay,we’re not really so poor, but we remain apolitical basket-case—please give gener-ously’. Indeed, the failure of the ‘peaceprocess’ may make it a case that is lessreceptively heard externally than in thepast.

In a BBC interview last year, the Eu-ropean Commission vice-president, LeonBrittan, warned that Northern Irelandshould make the most of the current

round of funds since support was onlyguaranteed to 1999: “There won’t be asudden cut-off of the money but there willbe a need to focus on the poorest regionsof Europe and by then Northern Irelandis not likely to be so poor by comparison.”Since a drop in funding would reflectNorthern Ireland’s economic improve-ment, this should be a “source of pride”,he suggested.17

So a key concern for Northern Irelandhas to be to make maximum use of EU

assistance as a small lever for a muchbigger reconsideration of mainstreamprogrammes—both in terms of their con-text and their delivery. And here the‘peace package’ has been of great signifi-cance, especially its ‘partnership’ theme.Thus in April 1995, making his first visitto the UK since becoming president of theEuropean Commission, Jacques Santertold a conference on the ‘peace package’in Belfast, convened by Northern Ire-land’s three MEPs, that it represented a“bottom-up approach involving local andgrassroots organisations”.

As Hooghe and Keating rightly pointout, while partnership has been a leit-motif ever since the 1988 reform of thestructural funds, “Member states, how-ever, reserved for themselves the rightto decide who would be part of the part-nership.”18 The UK took this to imply azero option, leading to frustration


amongst the social partners in NorthernIreland, growing commensurately withthe structural-fund assistance to the re-gion, at their absence of involvement.19

But the commission official referredto earlier argued that member stateswere likely to be allowed less discretionover partnership arrangements in thepost-1999 structural-funds régime. Simi-larly, tighter guarantees of addition-ality—that EU funds are genuinelyadditional to those from the Treasury,rather than being used to offset them—were on the cards. And he said it was“disgraceful” that the commission didn’teven know the “financial circuits”through which structural-fund moneyswent.

All these concerns are interlinked.Genuine additionality is only assuredand transparency evident if funding isdirected to discrete, innovative projects/programmes, rather than looking suspi-ciously like it is being attached to pre-existing departmental activities.20

Innovation is thus at a premium, in turnrequiring transparency in debate abouthow money should be spent, and maxim-ising the ‘value added’ which relativelymarginal sums can generate. The focusthus needs to shift from how much towhat for—the latter question has so farreceived disturbingly little attention.

Given that the structural funds

represent a social-democratic mechanismof redistribution towards disadvantagedregions—to offset the tendency of capi-tal to concentrate around the London-Milan axis—it might be thought that anegalitarian effect within the regions towhich they are applied would be central.(Of course, the Common AgriculturalPolicy is openly regressive, being paid forby all European taxpayers but givingmost assistance to the largest farmers.)

Not so, however, as a joint analysisby the Northern Ireland Council for Vol-untary Action and the Community Work-ers’ Co-operative (a sister body in therepublic) has shown.21 Only 23 per centof structural-fund support in the north(marginally more in the south) goes topeople living in poverty, people with dis-abilities and minority ethnic groups. In-dicators of equality outcomes are sparselyused, monitoring of fund allocationstends to focus on financial control22 andnon-governmental organisations com-prise only 6 per cent of the representa-tives on monitoring committees. Thereport recommends much more rigorousequality-proofing of programmes, greaterrepresentation of women and NGOs onmonitoring committees and a pooling ofbest practice north and south on indica-tors and monitoring.

Here again the innovative charac-ter of the ‘peace package’ should be


underscored. Terry Stewart, originallyfrom Belfast but then a senior official inDG V, told the 1995 Belfast conference thatit was a unique programme, especiallyin its emphasis on social inclusion. Ithighlighted the need for involvement of,and ownership by, local people in disad-vantaged areas.

The experience of the EU ‘Poverty 3’project in Northern Ireland, BrownlowCommunity Trust, which had adopted anintegrated and multi-dimensional ap-proach, had been “extremely useful”, MrStewart said. Social inclusion was itselfabout involving people in a bottom-upway. And here much of the experience atlocal level was outside of the formal po-litical arena, particularly among womenwho had held communities together. Thatemphasis on women’s role—and the as-sociated need for childcare—was en-dorsed by Ms Wulf-Mathies from thecommission, later in the conference.

But politics more narrowly is not ir-relevant here, particularly to theadditionality issue. Supposing there wasa highly autonomous regional adminis-tration in Northern Ireland, to which re-sponsibility for the negotiation ofEuropean assistance—given its recog-nised ‘special situation’—was trans-ferred. While the additionality issuevis-à-vis the British exchequer could re-produce itself internally, there is at least

the possibility, particularly if such an ad-ministration operated in a transparentand accountable manner, that this long-running sore could finally be healed.23

And, as earlier indicated, it would alsoopen up fresh possibilities of north-southco-ordination.24

There is, moreover, a wider and sobering political point. The innovativeMarxist thinker Antonio Gramsci ar-

gued that politics needed to be under-stood as an “autonomous science”. Yet,ironically, there has been a vulgar-Marx-ist tendency in Northern Ireland to as-sume that economic initiatives—such asthe ‘peace package’—can in and of them-selves conjure political change, in the di-rection of reconciliation.25 On the eve ofthe Belfast conference, Mr Santer saidinternational funding could not buypeace. In a now-poignant comment, hewent on: “That can only be achieved whenpeople are prepared to live together inmutual respect and harmony.”26 Just so.

But then people have an uncanny ten-dency to be factored out of the Europeandebate.

Footnotes1 Brigid Laffan, Integration and Co-operation inEurope, Routledge, 1992, pp 108-92 derived from Northern Ireland InformationService press release, November 21st 19963 Northern Ireland: A Region of the European

DD


Union, Representation of the European Commis-sion in the United Kingdom, London, 19964 Lisbet Hooghe and Michael Keating, ‘The poli-tics of European Union regional policy’, Jour-nal of European Public Policy, vol 1, no 3, 19945 Harvey Armstrong, ‘The role and evolution ofEuropean Community regional policy’, in BarryJones and Michael Keating eds, The EuropeanUnion and the Regions, Clarendon, Oxford, 1995,pp 51-556 Laffan, conclusion to Laffan ed, Constitution-building in the European Union, Institute ofEuropean Affairs, Dublin, 1996, p2127 European Commission Representation in Ire-land, The Week in Europe, 42/96, November 29th19968 Laffan, Constitution-building ..., p2119 David Arter, The Politics of European Integra-tion in the Twentieth Century, Dartmouth, Al-dershot, 1993, pp ix-x10 Lionel Barber, ‘Brussels seeks to point way’,Financial Times, November 22nd 199611 Armstrong, op cit, p6212 Hooghe and Keating, op cit, p38513 See ‘Price of progress, EU to phase out aid forIreland’, Irish Independent, November 4th 199614 European Commission, EC Economic DataPocket Book, no 11, 1996. I am grateful to thecommission office in Dublin for this and the sub-sequent reference.15 Frank Mulrennan, ‘Ireland told it must weanitself off EU regional aid’, Irish Independent,January 29th 199716 that is, of the current 15 members, not thethen 12. See Eurostat, Statistics in Focus: Re-gions, no 1, 1996, Luxembourg17 Newsline 6.30, BBC NI, June 19th 199618 ibid, p38019 This was a recurring theme in research car-ried out by the author for the Irish Congress ofTrade Unions in the run-up to ‘Delors II’. SeeICTU, The Participation of Trade Unions and otherSocial Partners in the Community Support

Framework for Northern Ireland, Belfast, 1993.20 ibid, p4821 NICVA/CWC, Equality and the Structural Funds,Belfast/Galway, 199622 One exasperated member of a monitoring com-mittee, interviewed for the ICTU study, exclaimed:“To be honest it’s gobbledegook as far as I’m con-cerned.” (ICTU, op cit, p50)23 ICTU, op cit, p4824 See chapter five.25 Paul Nolan and Robin Wilson, ‘No reconcilia-tion—no receipts’, Fortnight 353, September199626 ‘Euro cash aid cannot buy peace, says Santer’,Irish News, April 10th 1995


Whatever measures are taken to im-prove the governance of the EU, theultimate test of the viability of the

European project is its relevance to thecitizens of the union. On Europe Day(May 9th) last year, the commission presi-dent, Mr Santer, went on television tomake that appeal.

The IGC was paving the way for Eu-rope in the 21st century, he said. “It willbe a more democratic Europe, closer toits citizens. All of you will have to playyour part in shaping a more caring Eu-rope with a commitment to shared pros-perity.” He spoke of placing “the citizenat the very heart of political and economicaction”.1

One of the origins of the idea of Euro-pean citizenship was a 1985 report to theEuropean Council inviting it to bring intoexistence “the citizen as a participant inthe political process of the Community”.2

Eventually, this materialised as theMaastricht provisions for ‘citizenship of

the union’. Yet because this is premisedon citizenship of a member state, themeasures in the TEU represented a lim-ited top-up. And thus they are also verythin—principally to vote, and stand foroffice, in local elections in a member stateto which a citizen has moved and in elec-tions to the European Parliament, to pe-tition the parliament and to complain toan ombudsman.

As Siofra O’Leary concludes, “TheCommunity’s democratic deficit will notbe reduced by vague attempts to forge aEuropean identity or by giving MemberState nationals limited electoral rightson the basis of residence in another Mem-ber State.”3 And she tartly points out thatthe concept of union citizenship emergedwithout reference to actually existing citi-zens4—until the post-Maastricht refer-enda gave the citizens their reprise.

One test must be that citizens feel theunion acts as a guarantor of their indi-vidual rights as citizens. No more so than

Uptight citizens


in Northern Ireland where the generalabsence of operational democratic normsand specific human rights depredationshave had a corrosive effect on the region’spolitical culture. These matters arehighly germane to the future of the so-called ‘third pillar’ of the union, that deal-ing with issues of justice and homeaffairs.

The third pillar is so called because,like the ‘second pillar’ group of concerns(common foreign and security policy), itfalls outside the primary pillar of theunion, the European Community in thenarrow sense. In these second and third‘pillars’, matters are decided essentiallyon an intergovernmental basis, withoutthe same exclusive initiative role for theEuropean Commission, the same demo-cratic input from the European Parlia-ment and the same judicial oversight viathe European Court of Justice. This gen-eral lack of accountability has fosteredserious concerns about human rights pro-tections in third-pillar matters, for exam-ple the treatment of asylum-seekers ordealing with ‘terrorism’. As PatrickFitzgerald warns,

The emergence of the infrastructure ofthe new European state has taken placeall but unnoticed in this country[Britain]. The ‘security deficit’ that so wor-ries the British government with the dis-solution of internal border controls is

overshadowed by a far more significant‘democratic deficit’ that grows ever wideras unaccountable democracies assume key

security and law enforcement functions.5

The three-pillar structure agreed atMaastricht arose from the lack of consen-sus, especially as regards the UK (thoughthe republic had concerns about the fu-ture of neutrality in terms of the secondpillar), as to how much integration thetreaty would entail. But most memberstates would like to see moves to inte-grate the second and third pillars moreclosely into pre-existing Communitystructures. Britain, however, does not. ABritish government official—disturbinglywith a brief to address human rights is-sues in Northern Ireland—said third-pil-lar issues “touch directly on matters ofconstitutional principle”. Solutions mightnot “conform to the neat communitarisedmould”.

An official of the parliament said that,to date, the third pillar had been “a monu-ment to massive failure”. Not only wasthere a complete lack of parliamentarycontrol, but he also pointed out thatthe exclusive right of initiative for thecommission, in Community affairs, was,as guardian of the general European in-terest, a key safeguard for the rights ofregions.

The irony of all this is that BritishConservative hysteria about the union as


a ‘centralised super-state’ misses thepoint entirely. If, by implication the rightsof ‘freeborn Englishmen [sic]’ are positedas under attack from European integra-tion, the opposite is in fact the case. Inreality, it is the absence of integration inthird-pillar matters, largely at Britishbehest, which has allowed a secretive, un-accountable apparatus in this area toemerge.

C rucial citizenship concerns are alsoraised in the arena of the second pillar—common foreign and security

policy. For many citizens, the pretensionsof the EU were punctured in the early 90sby its utter impotence in the face ofthe biggest crisis in the wider Europesince World War II—the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia. As Gerard Delanty gloomilyends his survey of the idea of Europesince antiquity,

Bosnia posed a fundamental questionabout the identity of Europe. This was thequestion of whether or not Muslims andChristians, both Orthodox and Roman,can live together in a single multi-ethnicstate. Europe’s answer was no ... [T]hetragedy of Sarajevo encapsulates thefailure of Europe as a multi-culturalcivilisation.6

He concludes: “The crucial question forthe future is whether it is possible to cre-ate a post-national kind of citizenship.”

And the crucial issue, he rightly adds, is“the institutionalisation of pluralism”.7

Yet currently EU citizenship is, by defini-tion, merely national citizenship plus. Infleshing out his notion of ‘post-national-ist citizenship’, Vince Geoghegan has pro-vided a richer alternative, highlygermane for Northern Ireland both interms of fostering internal compromiseand encouraging a more outward-lookingperspective:

Amongst the rights of citizens there mustbe recognition of a right to one or moreidentities of nationality, or to none at all... There are, of course, a whole range ofsub- and supra-national identities that areof immense importance, and that must be


addressed in a deeper and broader citizen-ship. In this way one can conceive of apossible plurality of national identities atthe individual level, and certainly at thecommunity level, coexisting with a multi-tude of other identities, guaranteed by acitizenship, located in a state, multi-state,

or conceivably non-state, political system.8

Post-national citizenship, challenging asit does the monopoly of the nation-state,thus chimes well with the emergence of‘multi-level governance’ as the architec-ture of the evolving union. Citizens mustfeel that they can meaningfully partici-pate in, or engage with, the institutionsof the union if they so choose to do. HereElizabeth Meehan finds some positivepointers in the dealings of the EuropeanCommission with regions, cities and lo-calities, voluntary bodies, sectoral repre-sentatives and pressure groups.

The ‘peace package’ provides an excel-lent example. Following consultationsbetween the then commission president,Jacques Delors, and the three NorthernIreland MEPs, three representatives weresent to consult widely with opinion on theground as to the shape of the package.Subsequently, the regional affairs com-missioner, Monika Wulf-Mathies, hasthroughout been concerned to widen par-ticipation in the deliberations around,and delivery of, the programme.

As Meehan argues, this commission

style opens up “a new framework—a com-plex, multi-dimensional configurationthat is both difficult to cope with and pro-vides opportunities ... While the complex-ity of this framework is intimidating inthe demands it makes in finding our wayaround the European public space, it canprovide many openings for challengingauthority, for expressing our various loy-alties associated with our various iden-tities, and for exercising our rights andduties in more than one arena.”9

But transparency is at a premium ifthe union is to be accessible to all. It wasthus that the Comité des Sages con-cluded: “Inclusion of civic and socialrights in the Treaties would help to nur-ture that citizenship and prevent Europebeing perceived as a bureaucracy assem-bled by technocratic élites far removedfrom daily concerns.”10

Which brings us to the future.

Footnotes1 European Commission office in Northern Ire-land, press release (EC/02/96)2 report of the Adonnino committee, cited inElizabeth Meehan, Citizenship and the Euro-pean Community, Sage, London, 1993, pp 147-83 Siofra O’Leary, European Union Citizenship:Options for Reform, Institute for Public PolicyResearch, London, 1996, p974 ibid, p1005 Patrick Fitzgerald, ‘Repelling borders’, NewStatesman & Society, February 17th 19956 Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea,

DD


Identity, Reality, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1995,p1587 ibid, p160-18 Vincent Geoghegan, ‘Socialism, national iden-tities and post-nationalist citizenship’, IrishPolitical Studies, vol 9, 19949 Meehan, op cit, pp 159-6010 For a Europe of Civic and Social Rights, re-port by the Comité des Sages, European Com-

mission, Brussels, 1996, p13


The post-Maastricht referenda markeda watershed in the evolution of theEuropean Union.

As Eddie Moxon-Browne has written,

The 1990s witnessed an apparently wid-ening gulf between the determination ofélites to pursue the consequential and col-lateral policies associated with the singlemarket, and a wariness on the part of

European electorates as to the content,scope and direction of these policies, nevermind the institutional mechanisms forachieving them. Put another way, the ‘per-missive consensus’ which had long beentaken for granted by governments, andhad allowed them to assume at least tacitsupport for integrative policies in the1980s, had virtually evaporated by the

1990s.1

The referenda, especially the initial Dan-ish ‘no’ and the very narrow French ‘oui’,blew apart such complacency. In theiraftermath, no proposals for further Eu-ropean integration can ignore the demo-cratic imperative they raised. As AndrewGamble has put it, “A technocratic andélite-driven process can no longer providean adequate basis for European govern-ance.”2

Moreover, there is a deep uneasiness,in the wake of the fall of the Wall, the1990s recession and mounting socialstresses, as to where Europe is going.

Future imperfect


Donald Sassoon is withering:

A community whose great boast is to havebrought prosperity to Europe faces up totwenty million unemployed and has littleidea ... what to do to put them back to work... A community exulting in its contribu-tion to the maintenance of peace on thecontinent found itself paralysed whenfaced with the war in Bosnia. Uncertainty

and doubt prevail.3

“Europe,” writes Paul Gillespie, “lacksvision and spiritual vitality. It has nosense of direction and purpose.”4 AndBrigid Laffan, citing Vaclav Havel’s ironicobservation of the EU as “an absolutelyperfect and immensely ingenious modernmachine”, warns that it must address theissue of values: “The central question re-mains just what objectives and values arefeasible, desirable and sustainable in thenew Europe ... The union must move fromcontracts among governments to the con-sent of the people.”5

The academic assessment is backedby leading parliamentarians. In the Eu-ropean Parliament’s second annual ‘stateof the union’ debate last September,Pauline Green, leader of the dominantsocialist bloc, spoke of a “general moodof disillusion and depression. The unionis dismally uninspiring. Indeed, to theoverwhelming number of people it is com-pletely irrelevant.”6

So what is to be this vision; what is to

comprise these values? Des Geraghty, aformer MEP and a leading official of therepublic’s largest union, SIPTU, told the1996 conference of the Irish NationalOrganisation of the Unemployed:

One vision is of a massive supermarket.This view is promoted assiduously by theUK government and the free market andneo-liberal advocates who see progressbeing achieved only by a rapidly expand-ing market-place ... with competition asthe driving force, a reduced level of socialprotection for workers and consumers, andminimal institutional reform. The othervision is of a ‘social Europe’ driven by theneed for economic and social cohesion,balanced integration and institutional ef-fectiveness with economic, social and en-vironmental protection and increasedinvolvement by the citizens in a more

democratic society.7

Rejecting the first vision, Sassoon rightlyargues that, for the future, politics—notmarket integration—has to be the guid-ing force. “One must start on the basis ofthe common values which underline theUnion: these include liberal democraticvalues, social cohesion, economic growth,environmental protection, anti-discrimi-nation and the struggle against jobless-ness. These are all, ultimately, politicalvalues.”8

These values, Sassoon contends,should be incorporated into a European


Charter—the union has no public state-ment of the sort of club it is, its princi-ples, its rules, and the rights of itscitizens. This would set out:• the purpose of the union and itsvalues;• how it defends the cultural and politi-cal rights of its member states and theirdiverse ethnic communities;• the rights of citizens, including incor-poration of those in the European Con-vention on Human Rights;• the principle of subsidiarity; and• the decision-making structure of theunion.

The charter would establish the coreof the otherwise indigestible acquiscommunautaire (accumulated EU legisla-tion) which new entrants must accept,thereby speeding enlargement. It wouldbe non-negotiable (except unanimously)and so constrain the expansion of vari-able geometry. It would give Europeansa real stake in the union, thereby ren-dered accessible and intelligible; its pro-visions would automatically become partof domestic legislation in member states.9

N othing so radical, unfortunately, islikely to eventuate any time soon.Far from starting from the concerns

of Europe’s citizens, the process of ‘suc-cessive approximation’ through which thetreaties are revised in intergovernmen-

tal conferences starts from what is ac-ceptable to the larger states. Far from es-tablishing a compelling vision, based onwidely supported values, the emphasisis on particular and complex trade-offsand fudges. And far from opening a de-bate to ‘citizens of the union’ about Eu-rope’s future, the real business goes onin endless meetings behind closed doors.

Thus, as Deirdre Curtin notes, the IGC

process is taking the form of a “focus onspecific problems, in particular in the in-stitutional context, at the expense of anoverall vision as to the requisite direc-tion and nature of the further progresstowards European Union in the light ofthe worldwide changes which have takenplace in recent years. This approach mayultimately prove problematic. The Eu-rope of Maastricht suffered from a crisisof ideals and hence had no mobilisingforce. The signs for 1996[-7] are not re-assuring in this regard; the more ‘realis-tic’ or pragmatic the goals, the lessthey will be capable of capturing thehigher ground and truly mobilising pub-lic opinion.”10

The republic’s draft treaty11 does cer-tainly address several problems, thoughit leaves big questions for later. But takethe key issue of ‘the struggle against job-lessness’. The new employment chapterwould enshrine in the treaty the goal ofa ‘high level of ’ employment and, inter


alia, establish an employment commit-tee of the Council of Ministers. The ideais that this new goal and this new com-mittee would ensure that an emphasison job creation would match that onfinancial criteria enshrined in EMU andin the ECOFIN committee of financeministers.

But first note the indefinable ‘high’—some delegations, the treaty commentaryreports, preferred the more tangible ‘full’.Secondly, the only practical reference isto ‘incentive measures’, again undefined.On the very first day of the republic’spresidency, the commission president, MrSanter, said he thought it a reasonablegoal to secure a halving (to 9 million) ofunemployment in the union by the year2000.12 Yet for that, far more radical sub-stantive provisions would be required.

‘Euro-Keynesian’ measures entailinga dramatic, continental-wide reflationwould be necessary, allied to equally dra-matic reductions in working time. Noth-ing like that is on the political agenda. Acynic (and there are many among themore than 50 million Europeans endur-ing poverty and social exclusion) wouldsay that when governments won’t do any-thing in practice, but want to be seen tobe doing something in principle, they setup a committee. There is indeed a veryreal danger that unemployment in theunion will keep rising into the new

millennium—apart from 1985-90, it’sbeen doing so since 1973. Only little Lux-embourg has achieved a ‘high level’ of em-ployment for a sustained period.13

Social provision is another key area,yet the Irish draft is notable for confin-ing itself to a two-page commentary onthe matter. It indicates a preference(against British opposition, of course) forthe incorporation of the modest socialchapter of Maastricht into the treaty. Andin a sentence notable for its many condi-tional terms, the commentary continues:“The Presidency considers that in exam-ining in due course the incorporation ofthe Social Agreement into the Treaty, theConference should consider whether cer-tain improvements of substance shouldbe made in order to strengthen the effec-tiveness of the Community’s social policyincluding for example the proposal whichhas been made to strengthen the Treatyprovisions on social exclusion.”

Or take the whole area of citizenship.The draft treaty offers a ringing state-ment of citizens’ rights: “The Union isfounded on the principles of liberty, de-mocracy, respect for human rights andfundamental freedoms ...” Yet it merelysays it will “respect” the European Con-vention of Human Rights, rather than theunion acceding to the convention corpo-rately. Welcome assertions on genderequality are similarly largely declaratory.


Particular concern in human rightsterms attaches to the so-called ‘third pil-lar’, co-operation in justice and home af-fairs. The treaty commentary suggests,though no more, that issues related tofreedom of movement and asylum/immi-gration within the pillar should bebrought within the European Commu-nity framework (with the associatedmechanisms of accountability via thecommission, parliament and court). Noneof that, however, addresses the substan-tive problem of the increasingly hostile,‘Fortress Europe’, tone of asylum policyacross the union.14 Indeed, the drafttreaty underscores the principal that EU

citizenship is premised on member-statecitizenship.

Moreover, it is striking that the Irishdraft makes no proposal to ‘commun-itarise’ those third-pillar provisions re-lating to police and intelligenceco-operation. Yet there are very seriousconcerns indeed here about the account-ability of Europol and the regulation ofcomputer databases and exchange of in-formation on persons. The taoiseach,John Bruton, was right to describe amajor public concern across Europe as‘safe streets’, yet not only terrorists anddrug traffickers but also unaccountablepolice and intelligence services can jeop-ardise the rights of citizens.

Turning to the ‘second pillar ’ of

common foreign and security policy, thedraft proposes a new early-warning unitin the Council of Ministers and provisionto relax unanimity requirements on de-cisions in this, again intergovernmental,arena. Unanimity would still, however,be required in any decisions with mili-tary implications. If one were to ask thequestion whether these would have ledto a coherent and effective response to,say, the crisis in ex-Yugoslavia which soundermined the union’s credibility in thisarea, the answer would still have to beno.

Finally, on institutional reform, thetreaty recommends an increase in thepowers of the parliament—to approve thenomination of the president and in theareas where it is involved in ‘co-decision’with the Council of Ministers. Butsubsidiarity remains defined in member-state terms and the role of the Commit-tee of the Regions (as against itsadministrative autonomy) remains un-changed. Crucially, a number of issueswere left unresolved in the Irish draft:the balance of power between smaller andlarger member states (as reflected incommission representation and theweighting of votes in the council), theextension of majority voting in the coun-cil into new areas and, above all, thevexed question of ‘flexibility’. The com-mentary on the draft describes the


latter as “of the greatest significance forthe future development of the Union”.

The Irish draft in general will otherwise no doubt closely resemble whatfinally emerges in Amsterdam in

June, or later in the year if agreement isfurther postponed. The issues left unre-solved were implicitly rendered condi-tional on the behaviour of an incomingLabour administration at Westminster.

This battle over ‘differentiated inte-gration’ goes to the heart of the difficultyin concluding the IGC, given British op-position to the German-led continentalfront. But the willingness of the primeminister, Mr Major, to embrace a more‘flexible’ Europe to allow proliferation ofUK ‘opt-outs’ is a riskier strategy than heseems to have realised. ‘Flexibility’ cutsboth ways—and every insistence on a UK

right to detachment will be met witheven mightier insistence on the part ofall or most of the other 14 that theyshould be entitled to embrace strength-ened co-operation:

The problem with Britain under the Con-servatives is that the country has no clearand consistent policy towards Europe ex-cept maintaining the status quo. Yet, of allthe possible scenarios available—andthese range from utter disintegration torapid integration and expansion—thepreservation of the present state of affairs

seems to be the least likely. Creating ob-stacles to further integration by usingone’s veto and negotiating further opt-outswill have an impact, but it will not pre-

vent the expansion of variable geometry.15

The ‘flexibility’ idea was originally MrMajor’s. In a speech at the University ofLeiden in late 1994, he said a flexible,multi-track Europe would be necessaryif the union were to be enlarged to theeast and accommodate the diversity of itsmembers. But it is France and Germanywho are now pressing the flexible Europeidea—not so that Britain doesn’t have tochange, but so that they can securechange against British wishes.

A Franco-German paper of December1995 said: “The temporary difficulties ofone of our partners to keep up with theforward movement ought not to be anobstacle to the Union’s capacity for ac-tion and progress. For this reason wejudge it desirable and possible to intro-duce into the treaty a clause of a generalnature which would permit states whichhave the will and the capacity to developbetween themselves closer co-operationin the single institutional framework ofthe Union.”16

By last June it was being reportedthat “Twelve of Britain’s 14 EuropeanUnion partners are ready to join a hardcore grouping committed to closer inte-gration in key areas of foreign policy,


defence and internal security—if neces-sary without the UK.”17 And in October,France and Germany submitted a jointdocument to the IGC presenting their ideaof a ‘flexibility clause’ to be included inthe redrafted treaty. This would permit,through the Council of Ministers, ‘en-hanced co-operation’ between those mem-bers states who wanted furtherintegration in a particular area, with noveto right for a dissenting state—the ‘ins’and ‘outs’ of EMU would be the model.18

Indeed, in January 1997, the Inde-pendent revealed confidential Franco-German proposals, taken up by thecommission, to include harmonisation oftaxation and social security policieswithin the area of ‘flexibility’, once thesingle currency was up and running.19

The Labour leader, Tony Blair, has how-ever declared that in government hewould be prepared to exercise a Britishveto on defence, taxation, immigrationand border controls: “If it is in Britain’sinterest to be isolated through the useof the national veto, then we will beisolated.”20

This may ‘neutralise’ the Europeanissue in the British election campaign,but there is only one problem: it is notsustainable practical politics. As IanDavidson argues, while in theory theunanimity requirement for treatyamendments underpins Mr Blair ’s

position, “if the large majority of themember states remains committed tocloser political integration in Europe, itis simply not plausible to suppose thatthey will for very long allow Britain todictate their future”. An informal hardcore will emerge if a formal distinction isblocked.21

I t should also be recognised that theEU will be likely to offer a cold climatein coming years for radical social

change. The prolonged recession of theearly 90s and enduring mass unemploy-ment—more than 4 and a half millionnow, in Germany alone—have strength-ened in particular the populist, nation-alist right.22 And the convergence criteriafor participation in EMU reflect historicalGerman terror of Weimar inflation anddetermination that the beloved Markshall not be exchanged for a weak euro,rather than the condition of the diverse‘real’ economies of member states—nevermind the weak regions.

As Wolfgang Streeck anticipated, thishas meant “austerity measures”,23 as evi-denced by the sharp welfare contractionspursued in France (1995) and Germany(1996) and the painful ‘Euro-tax’ intro-duced in Italy (1996)—in each case evinc-ing massive popular protests. Not onlydo the convergence criteria excludenon-financial considerations, such as


maximum tolerable unemployment orminimum acceptable social protection,but also EMU will render impossible re-sort to reflation or devaluation to en-hance demand and employment.

The ‘stability pact’ agreed at the Dub-lin summit in December, while less toughthan Germany wished, will neverthelessensure that struggling EMU participantsdo not break fiscal ranks. Warning thatunemployment had trebled in the past20 years or so, a British corporate econo-mist said the stability pact risked build-ing a “constant deflationary bias” intofiscal policy across Europe.

Christopher Johnson points to the dif-ficulties posed by the contrast betweenthe centralisation of monetary policyunder EMU and the continued decentrali-sation—in theory—of fiscal policy tomember states.24 Given its minimalbudget as a proportion of EU gross domes-tic product, the union has very little scopeto offset co-ordinated monetary restraintby co-ordinated fiscal reflation. (As agenuinely federal system, the UnitedStates has a federal budget of 11-13 percent of GDP, depending on how counted.)

As the economics editor of the Ob-server puts it, “For some time it has beenobvious that economic policy in Europeaccords too much respect to central banksand price stability and not enough to thedemocratic process and employment.”25

In line with that perspective, the Flor-ence summit last June refused to backthe plea by the European Commissionpresident, Jacques Santer, for an extra£800 million to invest in the trans-Euro-pean network infrastructure projects.Afterwards, he said: “To tolerate the con-tinuing unemployment of so many mil-lions of our people is unacceptable.”26 Hispredecessor, Jacques Delors, subse-quently accused Germany of reducingEMU to deficit reduction and thereby sti-fling growth and jobs.27

Disadvantaged regions like NorthernIreland face particular challenges in thiscontext. As Keating points out, the sin-gle-European-market project was under-lain by neo-liberal economic assumptions,of perfect competition and perfect mobil-ity of ‘factors of production’, such as la-bour. Yet what if these two conditions donot apply? What if, for example, as islikely, capital is far more mobile towardshigh-productivity regions than (givenhuman realities) is labour? Or what ifparticular regions face what economistscall ‘asymmetric shocks’—those which donot affect the system as a whole—suchas the renewal of high-intensity conflictin Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland has of course alwaysbeen part of a monetary union itself—theUK—and its experiences in the late 50s/early 60s and early 80s are salutary ones.


DD

Deflationary Treasury measures prem-ised on the economic state of the homecounties gave the region a very nastyshock indeed in both cases, bringing soar-ing unemployment in their wake. In thefirst case these led ultimately to the ejec-tion of the then Stormont premier, Vis-count Brookeborough from power in1962; in the second, they were associatedwith the hardening out of militant repub-lican (and loyalist) sub-culture after aperiod in the late 70s of declining politi-cal tensions.

Membership of EMU will similarlymean that the behaviour of major eco-nomic instruments (exchange rates andinterest rates) will be essentially deter-mined centrally by the European Mon-etary Institute—the Bundesbank writlarge—while fiscal laxity by memberstates will be prevented by the stabilitypact. These decisions will reflect the pri-orities of core regions which enjoy whateconomists call ‘agglomeration econo-mies’ (the coming together in one placeof key economic factors like skills, re-search establishments, investment banksand so on), as against the more adverseeconomic circumstances facing periph-eral areas.

Thus, as Hooghe and Keating put it,“economic and monetary union ... impliescommon monetary and fiscal policies,which may involve imposing restrictive

anti-inflationary measures, designed forbooming areas, in places which have sub-stantial under-utilised resources”.28 Likepeople. And, as we have already seen,Northern Ireland can not in future ex-pect an infinite supply of Euro-funds tocompensate for this stringency.

It is now time, finally, to turn to North-ern Ireland’s place in this scheme ofthings.

Footnotes1 Eddie Moxon-Browne: ‘Citizens and parlia-ments’, in Brigid Laffan ed, Constitution-build-ing in the European Union, Institute of EuropeanAffairs, Dublin 1996, p712 Andrew Gamble, ‘Economic recession and dis-enchantment with Europe’, in Jack Hayward ed,The Crisis of Representation in Europe, FrankCass, London, 1995, p1713 Donald Sassoon, Social Democracy at the Heartof Europe, Institute for Public Policy Research,London, 1996, p54 Paul Gillespie, ‘Diversity in the union’, inLaffan ed, p415 Brigid Laffan, ‘Governance in the EuropeanUnion: towards a new architecture of state-hood?’, paper presented to the COST A7 workshop,organised by the National Economic and SocialCouncil, on Negotiated Economic and Social Gov-ernance and European Integration, Dublin, May19966 Neill Buckley, ‘European MPs attack lack of EU

vision at top’, Financial Times, September 19th19967 ‘EU focus on unemployment stressed’, IrishTimes, April 24th 19968 Sassoon, op cit, pp 11 & 279 ibid, pp 28-3110 Deirdre Curtin, ‘IGC priorities for 1996’, in


Laffan ed, p17211 The European Union Today and Tomorrow,European Commission (CONF 2500/96), Brussels,December 199612 Interviewed on RTE Radio, July 1st 199613 Eurostat Yearbook ’95, Office for Official Pub-lications of the European Communities, Luxem-bourg, 1995, p28514 Leonard Doyle, ‘EU slams the door on fleeingvictims’, Guardian, March 23rd 199615 Sassoon, op cit, pp 21-216 Ian Davidson, ‘Orthodoxy reversed’, FinancialTimes, March 6th 199617 John Palmer, ‘Vetoes hasten two-tier EU’,Guardian, June 11th 199618 Imre Karacs, ‘UK set for Europe’s slow lane’,October 19th 199619 Sarah Helm, ‘EU fleshes out how “flexibility”would work’, Independent, January 16th 1997,and ‘EU confirms common tax plan’, Independ-ent, January 17th20 Colin Brown, ‘I’ll use the Euro veto, says Blair’,Independent, December 16th 199621 Davidson, ‘Will Blair lead us out of Europe?’,New Statesman, December 20th 199622 Carolyn Rhodes and Sonia Mazey eds, TheState of the European Union Vol 3: Building aEuropean Polity?, Longman, Harlow, 1995, p323 Wolfgang Streeck, ‘Neo-voluntarism: a newEuropean social policy régime’, in Marks et al,op cit, p8624 Christopher Johnson, ‘Fiscal and monetarypolicy in economic and monetary union’, in ADuff, J Pinder and R Pryce eds, Maastricht andBeyond: Building the European Union,Routledge, London, 1994, pp 71-8325 William Keegan, ‘Major’s war machine hitswrong target’, Observer, May 26th 199626 John Palmer and Michael White, ‘Days num-bered for EU’s new truce’, Guardian, June 24th199627 ‘Bonn, Paris out of tune on Emu pact’, Finan-cial Times, November 28th 1996

28 Lisbet Hooghe and Michael Keating, ‘The poli-tics of European Union regional policy’, Jour-nal of European Public Policy, vol 1, no 3, 1994,

p369


Where does Northern Ireland fit intothis broader canvass? We need tostart from a sober assessment.

A former commission official, origi-nally from Northern Ireland, summa-rised its future in Europe as “ratherbleak”. Enlargement and fiscal tighten-ing across the union, he believed, wouldindeed end Northern Ireland’s privilegedposition in terms of fiscal transfers; itcould no longer be a “cosseted region”. Ina world where economic success de-pended on the interplay of human capi-tal and geography, meanwhile, it wouldbe those regions and city-states thatcould best secure that interplay whichwould succeed. Yet Northern Ireland hadno institutions for working out where itwanted to go.

The former Stormont premier TerenceO’Neill once claimed that Northern Ire-land was ‘at the crossroads’. Updating hisassertion we might say it lies on a sliproad to a trans-European network. It can,

in theory, remain in the relative tranquil-lity of the back roads, but only at the costof the mainstream European traffic—in-cluding to and from Dublin—accelerat-ing past. Worse still would be to chooseto enter the cul-de-sac signposted LittleEngland.

What Northern Ireland can not expectis an indefinite tow. Broader Europeanopinion has its expectations, as well ascompeting demands. It expects that theroad to Dublin will be open and widelytravelled in both directions (even if, ironi-cally, renewed IRA activity requires a vis-ible border); it expects that it will not beasked indefinitely to fund an instead-of-peace package; and it faces the budget-ary constraints associated with thedomestic burdens on its biggest paymas-ter (Germany), alongside the prospect ofmore European mouths from the east tofeed in the next decade.

Nor can Europe provide politicaldeliverance: some of the more wistful

Conclusion


accounts of the ‘peace process’ have im-plied that the ‘internationalisation’ of theconflict would somehow spirit NorthernIreland’s glaring internal divisions away.On the contrary, Europe can no more de-liver a political than an economic salva-tion for Northern Ireland. Rather, all theevidence indicates that in an ever-morecompetitive global environment it is onlythose regions which have got their politi-cal act together which will flourish.

In a sense, then, it is time to reversethe telescope. Instead of endlessly ask-ing what Europe can do for Northern Ire-land, all those concerned with the futureof the region should be asking what theyand it can do to maximise the opportuni-ties the evolving EU architecture provides.

In establishing just where NorthernIreland does want to go, a three-dimen-sional approach is required. The first isa pragmatic focus on establishing a demo-cratic and egalitarian regional adminis-tration, which can act dynamically in aEuropean context rather than see North-ern Ireland left in the slipstream. Re-treating into a Eurosceptic, integrationist(in a British context) bunker offers noalternative. For the regionalisation ofEurope, as against a Euro-regionalism,1

remains an unavoidable reality.The goal would have to be for such

an administration to follow the mo-del of Marks et al by articulating “an

autonomous voice at the European level”and seeking “to exploit the multiplicityof cracks for potential influence in a frag-mented multi-level polity”.2 As a seniorcommission official pointed out, North-ern Ireland is perceived by the EU as “adistinctive European region”, and thereis a case for it enjoying “self-governance”(by which he didn’t mean independence),rather than, as had been the case sincethe Anglo-Irish Agreement, the EU look-ing to the two governments in Londonand Dublin. Were such an administrationto be established, a beefed-up NorthernIreland Centre in Europe could then be-come its official representative before theinstitutions of the European Union.

This need not require agreement onthe elaborate trappings of the frameworkdocument; what is required is a collec-tive, cross-sectarian commitment to mak-ing it happen and building the trust tomake it work. It needs to be a highly au-tonomous administration, if it is toachieve the concertation of social forces,the engagement with the EU institutions,and, in that context, the collaborationwith the republic that is necessary if theregion is not to remain an uncompetitivelaggard.

The second dimension is a further,deeper level of democratisation, neededfor as long as the first is absent and asone guarantor against undemocratic


abuse as and when it is secured. A Blairadministration at Westminster will cer-tainly not be Euro-sceptic, but all indi-cations are that it will indeed beEuro-wary. While an agreement in theIGC, if it is limited, seems possible, andeventual participation in EMU unavoid-able, Labour is so terrified of beingpainted as recreating 70s ‘corporatism’that it has already ruled out European-style social partnership arrangements forBritain. Yet in Northern Ireland, sucharrangements do exist in embryo.

Firstly, there is the official context ofthe Northern Ireland Economic Council;secondly, there are voluntary coming-togethers in the Social Partners Forum,as well as the ‘G7’ group. The SocialPartners Forum, drawing togetheremployers’, workers’, farmers’ and volun-tary-sector representatives, and deli-cately described as an “informalgrouping” by the European Commis-sion—mindful of UK government sensi-tivities—has offered a sounding board forcommissioners visiting Belfast, and inOctober the group spent two days inBrussels, meeting the social affairs com-missioner, Padraig Flynn, at his invita-tion, as well as relevant commissionofficials.3

Moreover, as the Northern Ire-land Economic Council commentedon the Dunford and Hudson study it

commissioned, successful European re-gions have managed to create environ-ments “conducive to widely accepted andmutually-supportive choices ... across theregional economy”. And, frankly, any newregional administration for Northern Ire-land would—or, at least, should—be des-perate after such prolonged politicalatrophy for concerted input from thosewho had, in effect, been running thesocio-economic show in their absence.

The third dimension, related to boththe previous two, is the north-south as-pect. As Elizabeth Meehan and Paul Bewargue, while ‘top-down’ proposals for EU

political involvement in Northern Irelandhave met resistance,

the EC has features which might amelio-rate NI’s conflict from the ‘bottom up’: thelessons of its peace-making origins and theContinental tradition of coalitions and al-liances, the idea that interdependence ismore significant than impregnable bor-ders, and new legal and administrativeframeworks for development programmes,

particularly cross-border ones.4

The former president of the EuropeanCommission, Jacques Delors, once con-fided to this writer—conscious as he wasof the sensitivities involved—that hewanted particularly to see this aspectdeveloped. The senior commission officialwho referred to a Euro-view of NorthernIreland as a distinctive region equally


indicated that Ireland tended to beviewed as an entity. And it is herethat the socio-economic focus of meaning-ful north-south co-operation and theBritish-Irish disjunction on attitudesto the European social model dovetailinterestingly.

For all these arguments point both notonly the desirability of an autonomouspolitical voice for Northern Ireland butalso a strong association with the repub-lic, to develop the socio-economic agendaon an island-wide basis. Institutions areneeded, because there has been an evi-dent ‘market failure’ to exploit the poten-tial of the island economy in the contextof partition; the history of the EU

demonstrates how achieving a singlemarket can not be done across na-tional boundaries without institutionalencouragement.5

Here, indeed, the recent literature onEuropean integration, as Paul Teaguehas shown, offers us a way through, ulti-mately unsatisfactory for unionist or na-tionalist ideologues but surely acceptablefor pragmatists of either hue (or neither).The politically controlled north-southbody envisaged in the framework docu-ment may again not represent the an-swer, as the experience of othertransfrontier arrangements in the unionsuggests.6 It implies a belief in an omni-competent central apparatus no longer

accepted anywhere as appropriate fordomestic governance.

More frightening for unionists, how-ever, may be that the answer may welllie in more north-south institutions,rather than fewer. What is important isto develop an ever-thickening fabric ofinstitutional links, undoing the negativeeffects of partition, through trial and er-ror in an iterative ‘social learning’ proc-ess. Underpinning this should be thetrust that can only be built through thedirect participation of the various socialinterests concerned, as well as politicalrepresentatives.

Unionists can only resist this scenarioin terms of cutting off their noses to spitetheir faces. Given the material disben-efits involved—not to mention its churl-ishness towards reconciliation—this issimply not a sustainable stance. Equally,nationalists cannot expect to secure asupranational, ‘dynamic’ north-southbody which has an implied teleologicalfuture as a proto-government of a unitedIreland; but surely they can recognisehalf a loaf when they see one.

Northern Ireland’s political class mustthus take its collective head out ofthe sand and realise that indefiniteprosecution of its diverse subjective con-stitutional aspirations is a luxury its citi-zens can no longer afford. Even ifunionists were to achieve the ‘victory’


over nationalism of integration with aEurosceptic Britain, they would be thuscondemning Northern Ireland to a de-pendent relationship with a theoreticallyindependent state which was in realitylanguishing in Europe’s backwater. Andif nationalists were to sit back to awaittheir only hope of displacing unionism—that Irish unity will somehow fall intotheir lap in a supranationalist Europe—their day would never come.

Part of the problem is that there hashitherto been no punishment for North-ern Ireland’s politicians, or paramil-itaries, for failure: Stormont Castle keepsgoverning; Westminster keeps paying thecheques. Its citizens do suffer, however.Just take the comparative economic per-formances of the two parts of the island:while there can be argument as to quitehow big a factor it has been, no one inthe republic doubts that the ability of thestate to engage effectively with the Eu-ropean Union, and of its major social sec-tors to act concertedly in that context, hasbeen a significant force in the emergenceof the ‘Celtic Tiger’.

Of course, the republic is a memberstate and therefore is well placed to takeadvantage of the union’s opportunities.But much of the thrust of this report hasbeen to say that modern globalising eco-nomic trends, domestic pressures for po-litical decentralisation and regional

lobbying in Europe have established aworld where ‘sub-national authorities’can potentially punch their full economicand political weight in a régime of ‘multi-level governance’. It is really up to them.

The hope must be that such a focus onthe external challenges Northern Ireland faces, rather than its internal

demands, will spur a trend away fromideology towards pragmatism. This is al-ready clearly the drift of much businesscriticism of the political class, especiallyits unionist members. (It is also, usuallysotto voce, present in some southern po-litical comment on the leadership ofnorthern nationalism).

In addition to that external motor ofchange, however, internally the citizensof Northern Ireland need not wait forpolitical accommodation to avail of Eu-ropean opportunities. Thus, Mark Bren-nock of the Irish Times writes about theIGC that “as the debate on the futureshape of Europe continues, the absenceof democratic structures in Northern Ire-land, and the absence of a forum for de-bate on these issues, will minimise anyeffect Northern Ireland can have on de-cisions made”.7 Or, rather, soberingly, hewrote that about the IGC—the 1991 treatynegotiations.

Yet this report has also emphasisedhow social movements have increasingly


sought to become a force on the Europeanstage, often developing transnationallinks—the voluntary sector in NorthernIreland having been particular wise tothese opportunities. Similarly, while theNorthern Ireland Centre in Europe dif-fers from the German Länder offices, forexample, in not representing a demo-cratic administration, that didn’t stop itbeing set up and securing cross-partyendorsement.

What is needed in the region is to de-velop a much more thick web of relation-ships between the various interestsengaging in Northern Ireland with theEuropean context, and with the intellec-tuals involved, the union institutions andother cognate interests—especially in therepublic. This is part and parcel of theneed to shift the European debate in theregion from a focus on funding to a focuson policy. The challenge must be to cre-ate a mechanism for key actors in thewider society in Northern Ireland to beactively engaged in a debate about re-gional and social policy, in preparationfor the new millennial context, in a man-ner which people in Brussels (if not al-ways in London) can understand.

Here, the round-table which has pro-vided so much intelligence for this publi-cation provided an embryonic instance ofwhat is required. What is needed is amore regular and formal forum, widely

‘owned’ by all those with a stake in theargument, with input from all the socialsectors and elected representatives inEurope, facilitated by the European Com-mission, with access to intellectual andgovernmental support (including in Dub-lin), and with an open hand to involve-ment by interested players in therepublic.

Such a standing Northern IrelandForum on Europe could be a valuablecomplement to the work of the NorthernIreland Centre in Europe and provide apoint of engagement with and for themany institutions in the republic in-volved in the Euro-debate. It could be ahot-house for the rapid cultivation of in-formed policy, a clearing-house for thesharing of experiences and ideas, and anopen-house for dialogue with the region’srepresentatives in the European Parlia-ment and the Committee of the Regions,as well as representatives of the institu-tions themselves. The consultative forumestablished under the ‘peace package’was a useful innovation, but its life willcome to an end with the package itself.

The impact of the republic’s engage-ment with the EU, as a member state, hasnot merely been about the moneysthereby secured. What has been ac-quired, more fundamentally, is a famili-arity with the policy portfolio and theinstitutional architecture of the EU.


DD

Perhaps even more important still,though least tangible, has been the rub-bing off of a certain policy style—consen-sual and (at best) intellectually driven,rather than adversarial and ideological.All this is reflected in a highly Europhilepublic opinion at home and a reservoir ofgoodwill towards the republic in thewider EU.

It is here that a Northern Ireland Fo-rum on Europe could make real strides.The aim should be to ensure the debatein the region about its place in the EU

aims at the high level evident, and hope-fully to be sustained, in the republic—rather than the low level which has beenplumbed, hopefully reversibly, in the restof the UK.

That this report should conclude thusmay surprise some. Where are the de-mands for more Euro-funding?

Where are the calls for assistance for thisor that interest group?

In fact, what is being suggested hereis something wholly more radical thanthis or that ameliorative (and unrealis-tic) demand. That is precisely thetraditional stuff of the culture of com-plaint that passes for politics in North-ern Ireland.

What is advocated here instead, un-der the searching spotlight of the irre-sistible demands of a dramatically

changing Europe, would amount to noth-ing less than a cultural and institutionaltransformation of the internal govern-ance of Northern Ireland and its relation-ships with the rest of these islands.

Some years ago a Belfast critic, re-viewing a season at the city’s LyricTheatre (under a previous régime),excoriatingly concluded that the LyricPlayers had set themselves a standardof mediocrity and mostly they hadachieved it. If ‘Europe’ tells us anything,it is that—in political as much as in ar-tistic culture—Northern Ireland can nolonger risk setting its sights so low.

Footnotes1 a distinction made by John Loughlin in hispresentation to the QUB Institute of EuropeanStudies on the Committee of the Regions in No-vember 19952 Gary Marks et al, ‘Competencies, cracks andconflicts: regional mobilisation in the EuropeanUnion’, in G Marks, F W Sharpf, P C Schmitterand W Streeck, Governance in the EuropeanUnion, Sage, London, 1996, pp 42-33 Colin Wolfe (DG V), ‘Social partnership at work’,Europe in Northern Ireland, European Commis-sion office in Northern Ireland, no 97, October19964 Elizabeth Meehan and Paul Bew, ‘Regions andborders: controversies in Northern Ireland aboutthe European Union’, European Journal of Pub-lic Policy, vol 1, no 1, 1994, p965 This observation was made by Paul Teague ata DD seminar, The Economic Backdrop to theConstitutional Argument, in Derry in March1996.


6 A very senior former civil servant in the repub-lic once confided to this writer that the thentaoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, would have been pre-pared to accept the plea by the chair of the power-sharing executive, Brian Faulkner, that theCouncil of Ireland be sacrificed to save thepower-sharing executive in the crisis of 1974,had it not been too late to do so. Asked why thisshould have been so, given the ideological in-vestment by the republic’s government in thecouncil plan, he said that a calculation had beenmade, based on the numbers of civil servants inthe two jurisdictions and the functions whichthe council could have, of how many officialsmight be required to staff it: it worked out at44,000. This may have been a tendentious cal-culation—the point is that the mandarin mindhad balked. As it happens, in any event eachjurisdiction was so jealous of its ‘sovereignty’ thatDr Maurice Hayes, then the official working forthe executive responsible for collating bids fromnorth and south for matters to transfer to thecouncil, frustratingly found that only a régimefor protection of wild birds was volunteered byboth sides—an ironic reprise of the fact that anact governing wild birds was the only legisla-tion ever passed in the old Stormont parliamentat nationalist initiative. See his Minority Ver-dict: Memoirs of a Catholic Public Servant,Blackstaff, 1995, p174.7 ‘No sovereignty, nothing to surrender’, IrishTimes, December 9th 1991


A s with every other issue in North-ern Ireland, the European agendacannot be prosecuted adequately in

the absence of progress in the wider po-litical arena. And perhaps the most chal-lenging issue raised by this report is thatthe debate as to how Northern Irelandshould be governed usually takes placeentirely outwith the wider debate on gov-ernance in Europe: it remains trapped inthe language of 1920-22.

It thus not only fatally ignores thefast-changing competitive environment,within which, it should be remembered,Northern Ireland only stays afloat cour-tesy of the mighty Westminster subven-tion. It also misses out on a whole styleof politics, with which Northern Irelandcould not only raise itself from the bot-tom end of the regional league table butalso assist in the resolution of its owngovernance crisis—and the two areinterrelated. Here, the Northern Ire-land Economic Council has opened up a

crucial debate with its valuable work ondecentralised governance and successfulEuropean regions.

The fundamental lesson of this reportis that Northern Ireland’s future in Eu-rope is at best a challenging and at worsta very difficult one. The benign scenariocan only be elaborated through consciousaction, cognisant of the changing Euro-pean environment, as part of an emerg-ing ‘culture of commitment’ and backedby the necessary political will. As a re-sult, the recommendations which followare directed to a range of actors and re-quire a raising of horizons beyond sec-tional or sectoral concerns:

1. Northern Ireland forumTo begin to cohere an autonomous re-gional voice in Europe, a Northern Ire-land Forum on Europe is required,drawing together the employers, farmers,trade unions and voluntary sector, alongwith the MEPS and delegates to the

Recommendations


Committee of the Regions, the NorthernIreland Centre in Europe, intellectualsupport and representation from the Eu-ropean Commission. This could be initi-ated by the NICE as a neutral broker butit would be desirable that ‘ownership’ beshared. The forum should establish anagreed statement of broad goals of North-ern Ireland’s engagement with the EU. Itsongoing work should air in the publicdomain topical European concerns, withan emphasis on collaboration and prag-matism in how they should be addressed.It would give the MEPs and representa-tives on the Committee of the Regionsmore public recognition and raise broaderawareness of the issues at stake. And byincluding representatives from the bor-der counties in the republic—in line withthe ‘peace package’ forum—it could adda cross-border dimension.

2. Governance seminarsThe government should initiate a seriesof seminars for the parties in NorthernIreland, chaired and facilitated by theNIEC, on the theme of governance, teas-ing out the parameters of successful re-gional régimes in Europe. Utilisinginvited political practitioners from acrossthe continent, as well as academics, andbringing in Northern Ireland socialactors as appropriate, these shouldalso freely involve Irish government

representatives and other players in therepublic. Themes to highlight would bethe significance of political concertationand trust, the role of non-governmentalorganisations and the potential of inter-regional co-ordination. The aim would beto explore the application of these ideasto Northern Ireland, and to north-southco-ordination, in a collaborative fashion.

With, at the time of writing, the po-litical talks at Stormont threatening togo into cold storage, until the Westmin-ster election at least, this could providea means, perhaps for a new government,to inject fresh energy and ideas into anotherwise stale debate, while building onthe way the Northern Ireland ‘G7’ groupof business and union organisations hasalready engaged with the talks parties.It might provide a simultaneously morestimulating and less threatening avenuethrough which that debate could be ap-proached, as well as orienting it towardsleading-edge practice in Europe and topractical outcomes.

3. Party spokespersonsEach of the Northern Ireland parties, inso far as they have not already doneso, should designate a spokesperson onEuropean affairs and ensure they enjoyadequate research back-up and pro-per liaison with any representativesin the European Parliament or on the


Committee of the Regions. Such spokes-persons should familiarise themselveswith the perspectives of social interestsoutside the party-political world and withthe wider European debate as it appliesto Northern Ireland. There should be con-siderable scope for informal cross-partydialogue in this regard.

4. Policy communityThe quality of European debate in therepublic highlights the need for a policycommunity in the north of adequate un-derstanding and critical mass. The estab-lishment of the Institute of EuropeanStudies at Queen’s University is a wel-come initiative in this regard. It is cru-cial that it receives the supportrequired—especially financial—fromgovernment and other interests if it is todevelop its role to the full, like the Insti-tute of European Affairs in Dublin. Thetwo institutes should themselves do allthey can—through joint conferences,publications and exchanges—to maxim-ise cross-fertilisation of ideas and expe-riences and to throw up ideas fornorth-south co-ordination.

5. Government unitWithin government, the Department ofFinance and Personnel tends to have thelead role on matters European, driven asthese have been in the past by issues of

funding. But as this report has arguedthat the focus should shift from fundingto policy, what is really needed is a stra-tegic policy unit at the heart of govern-ment, in the Central Secretariat, coveringthe broad gamut of matters European. Itshould be sufficiently high-powered todevelop an intelligent and strategic dia-logue with senior officials in the Depart-ment of Foreign Affairs and otherdepartmental officials in Dublin, andwith the European Commission andother EU structures—this report makesclear that on many issues, notably theframework document proposals, thinkingis disturbingly woolly and requires con-siderable fleshing out. There should be awillingness to abjure traditional civilservice hierarchies in recruitment to thisunit to bring in talent from outside—in-cluding the voluntary sector, for exam-ple, or individuals with experienceworking in or for EU institutions.

6. Funds evaluationA particular task for such a unit shouldbe to supervise an evaluation of the ex-perience of the structural funds and the‘peace package’ to date, with a view todetermining how the associated pro-grammes and practices could supersede,amend or inform programmes alreadyfunded by government. This would acceptthat the current fiscal climate allows


little or no scope for additional commit-ments; rather the aim would be to usethe lessons of experiment at the marginsto innovate in the mainstream.

7. NICVA unitThe Northern Ireland Council for Volun-tary Action already has its own excellentEuropean affairs unit. It would be highlydesirable if the other social sectors could‘buy into’—including a financial contri-bution and an associated managerialstake—this unit, so that it could providean extended resource for all the socialpartners. It would make considerablesense if part of its role was then to act asa secretariat for the Social Partners’ Fo-rum, which could thereby be put on amore robust footing.

8. North-south agendaThere could also be a more concerted ex-ploration of the north-south agenda inthis context. Currently the private andvoluntary sectors and those concernedwith the work of reconciliation tend toplough different furrows. DD hopes tomount a further round-table later in theyear, involving all these players on eitherside of the border, on the practical insti-tutional requirements of maximisingnorth-south co-ordination. The focusshould be on how, reinventing itself as ahighly autonomous European region,

Northern Ireland could exploit that au-tonomy to the full in optimising north-south synergies—and how the variousexisting actors already working in thefield can prefigure such arrangements.

9. Belfast-Brussels directIf Northern Ireland’s semi-detachmentfrom the European Union is to end, di-rect links must at some point be estab-lished between Belfast and Brussels.Existing travel arrangements via Lon-don, Dublin or Schiphol are unsatisfac-tory and the Department of EconomicDevelopment should commission a fea-sibility study into existing and potentialdemand for a Belfast-Brussels air link.The business community, through theConfederation of British Industry and theInstitute of Directors, should engage ina concerted search for an airline willingto take on the service. Were this researchto indicate that there would be a need toloss-lead for a time, then there should beinvestigation of whether a combinationof public and private finance could beassembled as a bridge. The approachmust be that what is a long-term inevi-tability must not be endlessly postponedby considerations of short-term viability.

Broadcast and newspaper editors inNorthern Ireland should similarly con-sider, assisted by the Northern IrelandCentre in Europe, whether they could in


tandem establish a common Brussels fa-cility. This would clearly not be a com-mercial decision but would be ofoverarching public service. Normal con-siderations of competition need hardlyapply in this area. A collectively fundedBrussels office could achieve a highstandard of coverage not otherwise af-fordable individually. A step towards thatwould be for the newspapers commonlyto pay a stringer. At home, specialist jour-nalists should be developed through sab-baticals, either spending a periodworking in Brussels or taking the mas-ters in European integration at Queen’s.

This report began with the problem ofthe impenetrability of Eurospeak.It has concluded with a series of rec-

ommendations which, were they all to beeffected, would mean Northern Irelandwould acquire a coherent, autonomous,institutionalised voice in the EuropeanUnion. It would speak a language Europeunderstands and be heard where it mat-ters. While it would be a voice with a dis-tinctive Northern Ireland accent, it wouldbe in concord with other voices on thisisland. Perhaps above all, it would rep-resent not a discordant cacophony but thepleasing output of an orchestra of diverseplayers. DD

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