European Diary:How times have changed. The Rev Ian Paisley's arrival in Brussels last week for talks with European Commission president José Manuel Barroso was greeted by EU diplomats with smiles, jokes and rapturous applause. The two men talked peace and even broke bread together, well, potato bread or "fadge" as it is known in Northern Ireland, writes Jamie Smyth
The good-humoured atmosphere, which characterised the North's First and Deputy First Ministers' visit to Brussels was a far cry from Paisley's experience back in 1988. Then, he was punched and booed by his fellow MEPs when he was evicted from the European Parliament in Strasbourg for noisily protesting a visit by Pope John Paul.
"For 25 years when I was a Euro MP I had to knock on doors and bow and scrape and sometimes nearly get thrown out," Paisley said following his meeting with Barroso.
"Things are different now. We in Northern Ireland have a voice in high places."
The truth is: peacemakers are popular on the international stage, while fundamentalist preachers denouncing the pope as an "anti-Christ" don't make friends quite so easily.
Barroso, who visited Northern Ireland last May before the devolved Executive got up and running again, spoke of his "emotional" commitment to the peace process. This is unlikely to stretch to new money for Northern Ireland - the 2007-2013 EU budget has already allocated €1.1 billion to the North - but it is clear Brussels is willing to consider other ways to help. Barroso will address an important investment conference in Belfast in May by video link, and the commission has set up a taskforce to investigate how it can help Northern Ireland access existing EU programmes and co-operate on new projects.
Regional development commissioner Danuta Hübner also promised to install a Northern Irish stagiaire (trainee) in her cabinet to give the North a voice inside the EU executive.
But while Brussels is bending over backwards to help Northern Ireland, the question could be asked: where do Northern Irish politicians stand on the question of Europe? Martin McGuinness and Paisley are both members of political parties that are traditionally deeply sceptical of European integration. For example, Sinn Féin's 2007 manifesto lauds the fact that it has "consistently challenged the acceleration of militarisation of the EU and its emergence as an economic and military superpower".
The party opposes EU battlegroups, the union's "neoliberal" economic policies, the common fisheries policy and diktats from Brussels on agriculture. More recently Sinn Féin has placed itself as a staunch opponent of the Lisbon Treaty, a project Barroso insists is necessary to enable the EU to function better and play a wider world role.
The DUP is also no friend of Europe. The party's 2007 manifesto, Getting it right, makes just two references to the EU. The first relates to concerns that EU and Irish nationals could have access to all jobs in the Northern Ireland civil service, while the second relates to the DUP's opposition to cuts in EU farm aid. Unlike the manifestos of most political parties in the Republic, there is no separate section detailing EU relations.
"Part of the legacy of the last 40 years in Northern Ireland has been the development of parochialism and an inward-looking society," says Bob Osborne, professor of social policy at the University of Ulster.
"The Free Presbyterians in the DUP saw the EU as a grand conspiracy directed from Rome . . . whereas Sinn Féin's European policy comes from the roots of its left-wing critique of capitalism. But these parties are now having to shift to the realities of holding public office in Northern Ireland."
Change was certainly in the air in Brussels, where both McGuinness and Paisley played up their EU credentials and mixed easily with British, Irish and EU diplomats.
"I'm not anti-European; I am very pro-European. I don't believe that Sinn Féin is anti-European at all. I think we are very committed to working with our fellow citizens in many other parts of the European community," McGuinness told The Irish Times.
"We are in Europe, we want to be part of the European experience," added Paisley, who nevertheless noted many decisions were better taken at a local rather than EU level.
Political leadership on Europe is badly needed in the North, where the last major opinion poll on attitudes to the EU, conducted in 2002, found just 46 per cent of the population thought EU membership was a "good thing". The equivalent score in the Republic, which has a less Eurosceptic media, is usually above 75 per cent.
There are signs that this popular detachment from Europe may be reducing the interest in European initiatives. For example, just 163 Northern Irish young people took part in the Erasmus student exchange programme in 2004/2005, compared to 1,572 students in the Republic. In comparison, 450 EU students travelled to Northern Irish colleges. With Northern Ireland beginning to look outwards after years of conflict, perhaps now is the time for new thinking on its relationship with Europe.
