The National Forum on Europe, launched yesterday by political leaders in Dublin Castle, can play a valuable role in stimulating public debate on Ireland's position and interests within the European Union. This is an essential task after the electorate rejected the Treaty of Nice in last June's referendum. According to the Government, the result will not jeopardise EU enlargement nor reopen the treaty to another negotiation. It follows that the issue will have to be put to the people again. The National Forum will provide a platform for debate on whether, and how, the treaty should be amended. It will have the same function with respect to the wider debate on the future of Europe over the next three years.
Yesterday's opening session heard stimulating contributions from the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and other political leaders. Notably absent was Fine Gael. The party has stuck to its position that the forum is an open-ended talking shop which will conceal ideological divisions within the Government. The party calls for much more decisive leadership on European issues and insists they be dealt with in the mainstream political process.
These are telling criticisms of the Government. But the party is misguided in rejecting the forum, which provides a platform on which supporters and opponents of the Treaty of Nice can confront each other and debate their alternatives. Existing Oireachtas arrangements do not permit such an engagement between the mainstream parties and those groups which actually won the referendum. The forum is therefore a necessary instrument to consider Ireland's European involvement. It cannot be a substitute for trenchant political debate within the Oireachtas and in the forthcoming election campaign. Nor can it delay or deflect the urgent need to improve the Oireachtas's consideration of EU programmes and legislation. We have only ourselves to blame for that gaping democratic deficit.
What the National Forum on Europe can do, is supplement established political channels with a platform for public discussion and expert opinion. Ireland's economic and social well-being is indeed, as the Taoiseach put it yesterday, "absolutely dependent" on a full and committed membership of the EU.