Libertas can't both oppose Lisbon and campaign for democracy

How unpredictable the future is! Can it really be only a year ago that we were congratulating ourselves on how well the EU's 50th anniversary year had passed, looking forward to the Lisbon Treaty being ratified (and ready to enter force the week after next), to getting to grips with climate change under the first 'new nation' presidency (Slovenia) and with only the Balkans and the status of Kosovo showing some glimmer of uncertainty.

If history is bunk, as Henry Ford is supposed to have said, then predictions must be überbunk. I will refrain from speculating on 2009.

Few people foresaw the economic collapse, the spectacular see-sawing of oil prices, the fracas in Georgia, the Irish referendum result, the Napoleonic bustle of energy and organisation that has characterised the recent French EU presidency, or the appearance on the European political scene of Declan Ganley and Libertas.

Mr Ganley is the head of Libertas, under whose banner marched many of those who campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty in the Irish referendum last June. Buoyed by this success, Mr Ganley registered Libertas as a political party and last week declared that it would fight the next European elections in June 2009 on a pan-European platform - the first party indeed to so declare itself.

Libertas propounds two themes: the first is opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. The second is for more democracy in Europe. Scrap Lisbon and give us a new, more democratic treaty, says Mr Ganley. Whether European voters in any number will fall in behind this call to arms we shall have to wait and see.

Nevertheless, he has already stirred the political establishment. Mr Sarkozy's final speech this week to the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, in which he reviewed the climactic French EU presidency, will be remembered for his 'Europe of Nations' declaration: "Europe is not the enemy of nations and nations are not the enemy of Europe."

Sarkozy did not refer to Mr Ganley, or to Libertas, but his words encapsulate a traditional view of Europe that disturbs many ordinary folk. This was a clear case of 'get your rebuttal in first'.

Change through the ballot box

Anyone reading these columns will know that I believe that Europe cannot evolve much further without creating new democratic linkages between the mass of its citizens and those who set its broad directions.

Existing mechanisms by which the democratic member states dance together, with the acquiescence of the European Parliament, to the tunes played by an unelected European Commission, leave most citizens feeling out of touch and without control over the directions in which Europe is evolving.

Above all, they leave ordinary folk without the fundamental right to dismiss a set of rulers they can stand no longer.

This is more or less the view of Libertas. The party rejects the idea of a 21st Century Europe in which the power balance lies so heavily with the member states. It identifies correctly, however, that the member states are not about the relinquish their powers voluntarily. Change will therefore have to come through the ballot box, through, that is, elections to the European Parliament. So far, so good.

Were Libertas then to be successful we should enter a new era of more democratic relations between our elected parliamentarians and the personalities who hold the levers of European power.

Mr Ganley took Libertas to prominence on the back of campaigning successfully against the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland. The Libertas platform for the European elections is equally hostile to the Lisbon Treaty and in this, I fear, lie the explosive seeds of its own downfall.

For I fear Mr Ganley is fighting yesterday's war. The anti-treaty platform might have succeeded in the euro-elections of 2004. In 2009 the world will have moved on.

Pan-European platform

It is probable that Libertas could find a very substantial minority, and perhaps even a majority of European voters in favour of a proposition for greater democracy or in favour of a proposition to scrap the Lisbon Treaty. But not for the two at the same time.

The two positions do not overlap. Indeed for many people they are opposed. Maybe they would not have been opposed in 2004, but they are opposed now. I myself would vote for greater democracy but I could not advise that Lisbon should be discarded.

Of course, not everybody's view nor every country's view would be the same. Indeed we could play a parlour game here setting Ireland against Britain, Scandinavia against the Mediterranean, old member states against new member states.

Nevertheless, I conclude that the number of people that would vote for both propositions is a fraction of those who would vote for one and against the other. Europe is not Ireland writ large.

Moreover, having a theoretical measure of support is very different to votes in a ballot box.

What can be done in a few months in a single issue referendum - or even what can be done to support a charismatic leader competing for high office - cannot be replicated in the complicated structure of a multi-candidate election where voters have to be wooed from traditional preferences and a message put to electors in 27 countries.

Indeed, Libertas would be in a stronger position were these 2009 euro-elections taking place under the Lisbon Treaty.

For the parties that chose to fight on a pan-European platform could each agree on candidates whom they would support for the posts of European President, foreign minister and head of the commission. These posts are not, of course, presently in the gift of the parties, but it would be hard for member states to go against clearly expressed democratic opinion.

Moreover, such nominations would give focus to the campaign. Electors watch leaders rather than parties.

If Libertas nominated Mr Ganley, for instance, he could make his case and drum up support for his party in every member state. By voting for his candidates, voters would, indirectly, be voting for him.

So Libertas stands much more chance of securing the democratic changes it wants by accepting Lisbon and the treaty modifications that have now been offered. By accepting the treaty, Libertas could go on to become a great European political party and eventually to achieve its democratic goals.

By rejecting the Treaty it risks becoming a forgotten footnote on the page of Irish history. Principles have sometimes to be pursued pragmatically.

Peter Sain ley Berry is an independent commentator on European affairs.