Bloggin from Gatwick

Just a few updates before leaving the country for Poland for a Conference in Warsaw on Trade Unions and LGBT equality.

This is an important initiative where hopefully the different unions (including UNISON, Ver.di (German Public services union) and OPZZ in Poland).

So only a few minutes to blog some issues of interest.

UNISON National Delegate Conference

Last day today. Yesterday saw the traditonal Thursday afternoon 'rules amendment' debate. Of particular interest to me was the proposal to create a Disabled Members position on the branch committee, but without the requirement that the position be held by a Disabled member.

No doubt it was well intentioned but there hadn't been consultation with the other self organised groups and the proposal wasn't particularly well thought through, either by Disabled Members or the NEC.

I hope that the proposal's rejection by the Conference on a card vote will allow a time for reflection so that better though out proposals can be brought forward. Branches, in the mean time, are able (and many are doing) appointing equality officers for the different areas of equality.

The Union also launched its Equality Scheme and there will be a workplace equality rep scheme which again will be another way forwards in promoting equality in the union at branch level.

Kudos to Louise who gave an excellent, well thought out and weighty speech laying out the reasons for our opposition and there were a number of other very good speakers as well making the case that we need to move forwards together with well thought out solutions.

Horizontal Directive

A change of jargon (instead of 'horizontal' it is now being descrived as 'cross cutting') the Commission has reversed its position and stated it will propose a Directive covering discrimination across all article 13 grounds (including sexual orientation) after intense lobbying by trade unions and other campaign groups.

Will update as and when I am able....

Can the Treaty work with 26?

This is currently being mooted around the capitals of Europe.

Reuters UK Germany says EU may still pursue EU Treaty

It's a fascinating legal and political question. I'd have thought not, but I think at a minimum there would need to be agreement from the Commission, unanimous agreement from the Council (including Ireland) and the parliament not to mention the ECJ' at least tacit agreement (maybe someone should ask them).

In practice I think it's a lot harder, you could end up with "Lisbon" members and "non-Lisbon" members of the EU. It's quite difficult to determine how you can be in the EU and not be affected by Lisbon if it enters into legal force. Proposals to end the rotating Presidency can't be adopted in part. Of course, if there's only one "non-Lisbon" member....

For this exercise to have any legs at all the Associate membership option ("non-Lisbon" membership) might be worked up into something attractive and non-punitive (keepng your MEP's and Commissioner etc). It would become an EU membership status for a member state that had not ratified a Treaty provision and under it the country concerned would retain their legal position as to internal law (and therefore any cases before the ECJ) as per the last treaty that had been ratified and in force.

And of course the Irish government would have to be willing participants.

Is this realistic? Is it pure fantasy? Denial?

All eyes now on Sarkozy and Merkel for the next chapter in what promises to be a long running saga.

An EU without Ireland and the UK?

Firstly Will Hutton in the Observer (Europe must not be derailed by lies and disinformation) envisages the EU will proceed without Ireland in the event of 26 countries ratifaying the Lisbon Treaty.

Second an editorial in Le Monde points the way to a new Treaty body (based on Lisbon, presumably).

What is therefore looking likely at the moment is the creation of an EU Associate status - probably designed for Ireland, the UK and Turkey.

Le Monde:

Pour sortir de ce cercle vicieux, il n'y a qu'une possibilité : créer, à côté de l'Union européenne actuelle, une avant-garde composée de pays prêts à accepter la règle de la majorité qualifiée pour approfondir l'intégration. L'idée n'est pas nouvelle, mais elle n'a jamais été mise en oeuvre. Elle suppose des dirigeants convaincus que l'unité européenne est une ambition nécessaire. S'il aidait à cette prise de conscience, le vote des Irlandais serait finalement une chance pour l'Europe.

Rough translation:

There is only one way out of this vicious circle - the creation, alongside the current EU of an 'avant garde' made up of countries ready to accept the rule of qualified majority voting in order to deepen integration. It's not a new idea, but it has never been put into practice. It would require leaders convinced that European unity was a necessary ambition. If it's any help toward such a position then the Irish vote might end up being a real opportunity for Europe.

Will Hutton:

On top of these there is the political problem that the treaty can't be rewritten to accommodate specific Irish concerns because it already does; Ireland's 'no' campaigners told lies. The voters' great concerns had been met. There is a specific protocol that guarantees Ireland's neutrality and excuses it from membership of any joint European defence effort, if any surfaces. There is no possibility of Ireland being told to enforce abortion. And all states have autonomy over tax policy.

Crucially, the treaty contains a clause that states that do not agree to its provisions are required to leave the European Union. The existing treaty can certainly be made more obviously Ireland-friendly within its existing provisions, but beyond that, the EU will have to get tough and invoke the clause. It will have to ask Ireland to resubmit essentially the same treaty for a second referendum early in 2009, rather as Ireland held a second referendum over the Nice treaty in 2002.

If Ireland votes similarly again, then it will have to accept associate status in the EU and not be a member of its governing structures. The EU will proceed without Ireland.

I don't entirely agree with Will Hutton's analysis but the logic of a Treaty being negotiated by all heads of government and ratified by 26 out of 27, and one of the countries stating they are unable to ratify means there is at least a possibility of being asked to accept associate status.

The irony is that for associate status to be enacted it would require an Ireland-EU Treaty ... probably requiring a referendum.

The real risk is for Britain as an incoming Tory government (in the event of that happening) might quite like associate status.

Let's be clear however, what associate status would mean. It would be more than free trade - this is already enjoyed by Norway and Switzerland as continuing members of EFTA as part of the European Economic Area (described on its website as being for [members] to:

participate in the Internal Market, while not assuming the full responsibilities of EU membership. The Agreement gives them the right to be consulted by the Commission during the formulation of Community legislation, but not the right to a voice in decision-making, which is reserved exclusively for Member States

in other words to have the right to have decisions made by others without your involvement.

It would therefore mean still being part of EU common policies (agriculture, fisheries), still paying a budgetary contribution, still being bound by EU law but having no MEP's, no Commissioner and no presence at the Council of ministers.

I am sure there are many eurosceptics who would vote for this as a stepping stone to rejoining EFTA (i.e. leaving the EU).

On the positive side, if the EU develops as a free association of peoples (as it undoubtedly is) then maybe it should allow for stepping stones, both to exit and entry via an associate status.

And I am sure that eurosceptics would then campaign to come out of the EEA to avoid being told what to do by the EU that we had just left.

The guilty parties

Who's to blame for the Lisbon Treaty fiasco?

I have two candidates.

I think Google and the Internet means that all information is at the fingertips of everyone and therefore allowing the great and good to go off and do their own thing in a well meaning way is increasingly not an option. Makes the politics of such treaties harder and harder to sustain against insurgent populist campaigns. Voters are less and less willing to trust their elected leaders on such matters and less tolerant of treaties they can't read.

But surely the single person most clearly blameworthy person has to be France's very own Valery Giscard D'Estaing.

After British politicians warned against calling it a Constitution - he went ahead and called it a Constitutional Treaty..... thereby guaranteeing the opposition of the die hard anti-Europeans, and incidentally pushing the French and Dutch to hold their own referendums, killing the first version of the Treaty stone dead and carrying the Reform Treaty in its wake.

Finally he gave this quote about the Lisbon Treaty, which wasn't the greatest help in the ratification campaign:

public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals we dare not present to them directly

When the Lisbon Treaty has friends like these, I don't think there's really much of a role for eurosceptic No campaigns.

Putting it all back together again

The biggest complaint that I hard against the Treaty of Lisbon is that it was too long and full of legal sounding phrases.

If you want a minimalistic treaty that does not grant excessive powers to the EU, seems to me that you will end up with a carefully written, long, legalistic, international treaty.

Whether this is appropriate material for a referendum is open to debate - I don't think it is and I am a firm believer in Parliamentary democracy.

I do not, in fact, believe that referendums are a more valid expresion of the popular will than representative democracy and I think the Irish result demonstrates that in abundance.

The Irish referendum demonstrates that people are wont to vote on all sorts of things, both real and unreal - the current government, fears over abortion, neutrality and so on, not focusing on the text of the Treaty which will (even if realy pared down) be too long and complicated for the electorate (how many people in the UK read the parties' respective manifestos?).

Any way, the fact of the matter is that Ireland does have this constitutional requirement of a referendum which is queering everyone's pitch so far as I can tell.

There might be some point adding protocols and binding declarations to the Treaty and then getting Ireland to vote again but that is not likely to work, as most people now admit.

Many of the No campaign in France and also Ireland state they are in favour of a "social Europe" and yet that is the first thing that has been killed off - it is now all but impossible to get things like the Charter of Fundamental Rights through the ratification process, and as for the rest. Certainly new accessions now seem very remote.

Future treaties are likely to be very simple, one issue only where the heavens will not fall in if the vote is not carried and where the matter at hand is so technical and minor only Ireland will have a referendum. And written on one side of A4, so it can be read by voters before casting their ballot.

There might even be a way of making changes to practice without a new Treaty, perhaps proceeding intergovernmentaly, perhaps by setting up new Treaty bodies that countries can opt into (and out of?) at their leisure.

I am sure, with Denis McShane in today's Times, that the EU will continue, but the EU that our political elites have imagined over the past decade is now well and truly at an end.


Comment in today's Guardian:

Fintan O'Toole The fear factory that devastated Ireland's political class
Colm Toibin A godsend to every crank in Ireland

Intergroup reports EU Commission agrees to propose a horizontal Directive covering all major strands of discrimination

Report from the Lesbian and Gay Intergroup, picked up by Pink News (at the same time as the Irish Lisbon train wreck) that the Commission has, in the face of widespread lobbying from around the EU agreed the new Directive covering discrimination outside employment would include sexual orientation.

There is of course a steep road ahead as the Directive needs to pass with unanimity and there will be a lot of tough arguing over the content and scope of any exemptions.

The news is not yet posted on the EU Commission website, so I am holding off from premature celebrations for the moment.

EU Lesbian and Gay Intergroup web site

Save the Horizontal Directive

Now is an urgent time for action to save the so-called horizontal Directive on discrimination in areas outside employment (i.e. in goods and services).

This would therefore cover race, gender (already covered through separate Directives), disability, age, religious belief and sexual orientation.

These seems to be being blocked by Germany and, seeing they actually have a General Discrimination Law covering sexual discrimination it seems somewhat perverse to oppose a new Directive on these grounds.

Many other EU countries enjoy a high level of protection from discrimination in areas outside employment and the development of piecemeal discrimination law is prfoundly harmful, especially as new countries join the EU - there needs to be a clear common standard to protect citizens of EU countries from discrimination.

This move is supported by many EU countries of different political colours as well as being supported by the ETUC and ILGA-Europe.

Also see the website of the Lesbian and Gay Intergroup at the Europan Parliament.

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