Irish secure concessions on Lisbon treaty

Irish foreign minister says EU leaders have backed a plan to revive the Lisbon treaty, including concessions on major points of concern for Ireland.

Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheál Martin, said at the end of the first day of the EU’s winter summit that a plan to help Ireland ratify the Lisbon treaty by giving it guarantees on a range of sensitive issues had received wide support from EU leaders.

The plan is designed to address concerns that led Irish voters to reject the Lisbon treaty in June 2008. These included the possibility that Ireland would lose its member in the European Commission and its military neutrality, as well as fears that it would have to cede control over taxation and ethical and social issues.

Martin, speaking after leaders had heard from Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen about Irish voters’ concerns over Lisbon, said: “Broadly speaking [it was] warmly welcomed.”

He admitted that “some countries said they preferred a reduced Commission” and that reversing a decision set out in the Treaty of Lisbon to cut the number of Commissioners to fewer than one per member state would “upset the institutional balance” reached through the treaty. As part of the bargain, some countries accepted losing votes in the Council of Ministers – for EU member states – in exchange for a smaller Commission. The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg favour a smaller Commission because they believe that a consolidated Commission is better able to defend the interests of small and medium-sized member states against the EU’s largest countries.

Martin said that other countries had asked for “more clarity” on the type of guarantees Ireland was seeking on issues like neutrality and social and ethical policies. The UK has asked for more precise legal language to ensure that guarantees for Ireland do not affect how the treaty applies to countries that have already ratified Lisbon. But Martin said that Ireland was looking for the “most robust” guarantees possible.

The Irish government is aware that if the guarantees only take the form of declarations they could be accused of having no value and could fail to convince voters that Ireland had won real concessions by voting ‘No’. But the guarantees cannot take the form of additional protocols to the treaty because this would amount to a modification of the treaty and would then force all EU member states to re-start the ratification process.

The concessions offered by other member states come with the proviso that Ireland should complete the process of ratifying the Lisbon treaty by the end of next October, when the term of the current European Commission ends.

The Irish foreign minister said the government had not expected that a deal on a package of measures for Ireland would be “signed, sealed and delivered” straight away. But the government had presented “elements of a solution”. The fine detail, including the precise nature of the guarantees, would be worked out during the Czech and Swedish presidencies of the EU in the first and second half of 2009.

The language on what Ireland concessions could expect will form part of official summit conclusions to be endorsed by EU leaders on Friday.