David Quinn
Pic: iStock Christians are free to disagree about the EU, writes David Quinn
Ireland is rather smug just now about the whole Brexit situation. We believe that Britain has landed itself in a big mess (and it has) and we seem to be thoroughly enjoying its discomfort. I’m not sure we should be though, and there is both a practical and a principled reason for this.
The practical reason is that the extreme difficulty Britain is having in negotiating a satisfactory withdrawal agreement with the EU might result in no agreement at all, and then we will be faced with a hard Brexit. Britain will be a big loser in the short-to-medium term at least if that happens, but so will Ireland. That would soon wipe the smile from our face. We should be helping Britain to secure a good deal, not making life difficult for it. Our national interests lie half-way between London and Brussels.
Reason
The principled reason is that Britain is at least having a debate about the EU. We aren’t having any. We might think this is a good thing because we are happy members of the EU. But this implicitly assumes that the only debate we can have is whether we should be in the EU or out of it. In fact, there is a debate to be had about the type of EU we ought to be in.
I was on the Pat Kenny Show last week and one of the topics up for discussion was Brexit. Fianna Fail’s Stephen Donnelly, the party’s former spokesman on Brexit, was also on the show. I put it to him that we really need to start discussing here in Ireland how much further down the federalist, integrationist track we want to go with the EU.
I said we are like passengers on a train who don’t really know where the train is going or where its final stop will be. We should find out and pull the emergency brake if we don’t like where it is going. But instead of finding out we sit there passively and accept whatever happens.
French President Emmanuel Macron wants there to be a European army and a Eurozone budget. Both these proposals are strongly federalist. That is, they weaken the national states and strengthen Brussels.
What is the Irish attitude? We can’t just offer a tepid answer. Our politicians have to work it out properly, tell the Irish people what it is, and then fight for it within the EU.
If our politicians support a more federal Europe which gives more power to Brussels, then they should state it unambiguously and sell it to the voters via a national debate.
But if they believe nation-states should retain more of their sovereignty, or even take back a bit from Brussels, then let them say that instead, and sell that vision to the Irish people, fight for it in Brussels and ally with like-minded member-states to achieve their objective.
Instead, we do neither. We sit on the train hardly questioning where it is going.
What is the proper Christian attitude to the EU? In my opinion, there isn’t one. As Christians, we are obliged to use politics to maximise the common good, but what exactly does this is a prudential judgement.
Is the common good strengthened by a more federal EU, or by one that is a looser alliance of nation-states, or are we better off breaking it up completely?
All of these are valid questions for any Christian to ask, so long as the intention is to serve the common good.
I think that overall the EU has served the common good. Aggressive competitiveness between the nation-states of Europe twice led us to disaster in the 20th Century. The EU was a response to that. In particular, it was a response to continued enmity between France and Germany. The rise of a united Germany in the 19th century was a huge problem for France.
The EU has helped to end that enmity. But we shouldn’t exaggerate the EU’s contribution to the peace and prosperity of Europe either. The United States played a huge part by forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and shielding us from the Soviet Union.
It also opened up its markets to the countries of Western Europe and gave them direct aid following the end of World War II. In other words, the EU developed under the protection of the US.
If the Christian aim is to promote the common good, and if we see the EU playing a part in that by reducing tensions between nations, then we also have to be very alert to the possibility that the EU is having the opposite effect. That might well now be the case.
The EU is currently riven by tensions between its north and its south, its east and its west, and by internal national tensions often caused by EU policies.
The Euro has basically forced the likes of Italy and Greece (and arguably Ireland as well) into a currency that doesn’t suit them. They are all but trapped in it now.
The tensions between east and west are caused by the EU’s pursuit of multi-culturalism. The countries of Eastern Europe don’t want to be multi-cultural. They are still trying to find their national identities. They don’t like being lectured to on this point by the likes of Paris, Brussels or Berlin.
If the EU had remained a looser alliance of nations, as it was in the days of the EEC and before the Euro, arguably the growing tensions within the EU would either not exist or would be greatly reduced.
In that case, the common good might be best served by less EU, not more EU. But this is a prudential judgement and Christians are at perfect liberty to disagree about it, and so are Irish people, if only we could move ourselves to have a debate about the matter in the first place.