The Evolving Role of a National Parliament in European Affairs
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE OIREACHTAS AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: the Evolving Role of a National Parliament in European Affairs House of the Oireachtas new.indd 1 06/03/2013 11:49:12 3 House of the Oireachtas new.indd 2 06/03/2013 11:49:12 Acknowledgments What follows constitutes the fruit of the author’s work carried out under the Oireachtas Parliamentary Fellowship in the year 2010-2011. I am thankful to the Oireachtas for having created the Fellowship – a valuable and all-too-rare acknowledgment of the value of, and need for, increased research and understanding concerning the institutions which govern this state. I am thankful, most especially, to Dr. Maurice Manning, Professor John Horgan and Maria Fitzsimons, who made up the panel which decided to award me the Fellowship. I am grateful too for the support in this regard of Professor Brigid Laffan and Brendan Halligan, Chairman of the Institute for International and European Affairs. Professor Laffan, who has written extensively on the topic of this study herself (and indeed is cited in the pages that follow), rendered me the immense service of uncomplainingly reviewing the work for quality control purposes during the period of the Fellowship, at a time when she was extremely busy and indeed, latterly, was engaged in a research sabbatical. Members and former members of the Oireachtas and of the Oireachtas staff were kind enough to grant me many interviews during the course of the year, which gave me a far more accurate feeling for the research work I was doing. The requirements of confidentiality preclude me from naming them individually here, but I hope that all concerned will accept this acknowledgment as an expression of my sincere gratitude. While working on the Fellowship, I shared an office with the staff of the Library and Research Service, a team of superb researchers who were a pleasure to work with and who collectively showed me innumerable acts of kindness throughout the year, each of which was very much appreciated. The Oireachtas library staff were also extraordinarily helpful. Maria Fitzsimons, director of research in the Library and Research Service, offered unobtrusive and ever-ready support – as well as deadlines for chapters which ensured that the work kept moving along at a very fast pace. On a personal level, my wife Madeleine was as supportive and uncomplaining as ever throughout the period of this research, especially towards its latter stages when weekends and time off began to be eaten into by the combined demands of writing up on the one hand and administrative and teaching work in University College Dublin on the other. Marie-Hélène, Stéphane, Sébastien and Matthieu also contributed mightily, mostly just by being their own wonderful selves. Thanks are also due to Della, Michael, Conor and Dr. Max Barrett, to André and Hélène Roussel-Coumont in whose home some of the work reproduced here was written, and to the former dean of the School of Law at UCD, Professor John Jackson. What follows, although reasonably extensive, should nonetheless be regarded as a work in progress, rather like the subject it addresses - the evolving role of the Oireachtas in European affairs. 3 House of the Oireachtas new.indd 3 06/03/2013 11:49:12 5 House of the Oireachtas new.indd 4 06/03/2013 11:49:12 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 006 Getting to Grips with Europe: A History of Oireachtas Involvement in European Union Affairs in Context Chapter 2 044 Where We Are Now: The Post-2002 Relationship of the Oireachtas and the Executive in the Field of European Affairs Chapter 3 126 Europe Expects: The Evolving Precepts of the European Union Regarding the Role of National Parliaments Chapter 4 192 Reacting to Lisbon: Developments in the Lifetime of the 30th Dáil Concerning the Future Role of the Oireachtas in European Affairs Chapter 5 240 Great Expectations: But Why Should We Increase the Role of National Parliaments like the Oireachtas in European Affairs? Chapter 6 262 Conclusion: In What Respects Should We Augment the Role of the Oireachtas in European Affairs? 5 House of the Oireachtas new.indd 5 06/03/2013 11:49:12 CHAPTER 1 Getting to Grips with Europe: A History of Oireachtas Involvement in European Union Affairs in Context1 1. Introduction – Adjusting to Europe “It might well be that for all the supra-national and non-parliamentary bodies that influence governance, the biggest democratic deficit may be sitting at our own doorstep.”2 At least one positive outcome of the recent economic misfortunes of this country has been that, for students of the Irish political system, the dangers of being distracted by the ‘gravity of past success’ 3 have declined. Ireland, to borrow the words of two academic commentators, has now seen “the economy weather four dreadful economic crises in less than a century”,4 and the dictum that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it5 now serves as a grim warning for this country insofar as the management of its own affairs is concerned. The moment thus seems opportune for critical appraisal of Ireland’s method of conducting its affairs in a whole range of areas. The operation of the Oireachtas is one such field6 and, more specifically, the role of the Oireachtas in European Union affairs, which is the topic of this chapter. It is widely recognised that Ireland’s entry into the then European Communities in 1973 constituted the laying of a key foundation stone for later economic success, most prominently during the so-called Celtic Tiger era, which was to span the final years of the twentieth century and most of the first decade of the twenty-first. The magnitude of what had been achieved in 1973 by gaining accession to the predecessor organisations of today’s European Union may not have been obvious in the years that immediately followed this step: before the fruits of membership could be harvested, the crippling effects of oil crises, followed by inflation, economic recession, large-scale unemployment and, last but 1. What follows builds on earlier material written by the author in Oireachtas Control Over Government Activity at European Union Level: Reflections on the Historical Context and the Legal Framework in G. Barrett (ed.) National Parliaments and the European Union: The Constitutional Challenge for the Oireachtas and Other Member State Legislatures (Clarus Press, Dublin, 2008). 2. B. Andrews, “Who Runs This Country? Certainly Not Dáil Éireann” Irish Times, 19 July 2003. Andrews was a Teachta Dála from 2002 to 2011 and later Minister of State for Children from 2008 to 2011. 3. A phrase used in G. Kasparov, How Life Imitates Chess (Bloomsbury, New York, 2007) 4. D. Vines and M. Watson, “Ireland’s Unexpected Economic Comeback”, Financial Times, 16 August, 2011. 5. G. Santayana, The Life of Reason Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense (Dover, New York, 1905) 6. See generally now M. MacCarthaigh and M. Manning, The Houses of the Oireachtas: Parliament in Ireland (2010, Institute of Public Administration, Dublin) 6 7 House of the Oireachtas new.indd 6 06/03/2013 11:49:12 Chapter 1 far from least, self-inflicted economic mismanagement, had first to be worked through by Ireland. This was above and beyond any of the normal economic adjustments and institutional reforms which might have been expected to be required by, and to accompany, membership. Economic success did, in the closing years of the twentieth century, follow the early years of economic hardship – only to be followed, however, by the current ongoing period of economic difficulty, which began in 2008.7 Within a number of years of Ireland’s joining the European Economic Community, the realisation became ever clearer that, at European level, a succession of adjustments to the institutional machinery of the EEC would be needed if the Community itself were ever to fulfil its potential. In the first place, institutional reforms were required: most importantly, the gradual dismantling of the understanding that decision-making could be carried out in the Community only when unanimous agreement existed (a decision forced on its unwilling fellow member states by de Gaulle’s France through the Luxembourg Accord of 1966). The initial step towards more widespread majority voting, brought into effect by the Single European Act in 1987, succeeded in facilitating the establishment on a much firmer basis of the Common Market (rechristened the Single European Market at this time). A succession of further institutional reforms brought about by the Treaties of Maastricht (1992), Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2007) have facilitated both successive enlargements and the gradual evolution of an economically-focused European Economic Community of only six members to the present European Union of twenty-seven member states, with much broader political aims and objectives.8 The process of change at European level has rarely been an easy one, as the political convulsions over the (ultimately successful) effort to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon have most recently demonstrated. At national level too, economic, political, institutional and social adjustments were always going to be required by membership of the European Union. Nor would it be accurate to regard such adjustments and adaptations as have been required of Ireland by virtue of the process of integration as now complete. The need for adjustment has, in several respects, been an ongoing one. This is not merely because the constantly changing and evolving nature of integration requires a correspondingly evolving response – although this is certainly true. It is also because some of the original challenges stemming from Ireland’s adherence to the European Union were never adequately met. This, as will be seen in this chapter and the next, has arguably been the case concerning Oireachtas involvement in European Union matters.