As Brian Cowen gets ready to greet French President Nicolas Sarkozy today on his whirlwind stop over in Ireland the Fianna Fail leader and Taoiseach has taken some time out today in the Irish Times to write about Ireland’s relationship with the EU and his interpretation of what democracy means.

Cowen writes that, “we live in a democracy. Indeed, the union itself is founded on the principles of democracy. I fully respect the verdict of the Irish people, and I have made that clear to my European colleagues. And I have made clear that I expect them to do likewise”.

However there is a catch. According to Cowen, “with democracy comes responsibility”, and he writes that, “Those in other member states who hoped to see the treaty implemented from January 1st, 2009, are entitled to ask why the Irish people voted No. They are entitled to ask what the underlying concerns were, and whether they can be addressed.”

Cowen argues that, “They are also entitled to …ask whether the union’s record of working for consensus is to be jettisoned on the back of the Irish vote”. And here is the nub of Cowen’s failure to understand the Lisbon vote and his deliberate misinterpretation of it.

The Lisbon Treaty was not a referendum on whether Ireland wanted to be in or out of the European Union, a series of post Lisbon polls have shown considerable support for continuing EU membership, all that happened is the rejection of terms not that different from those rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, but there is no mention of this in Cowen’s article.

Instead Cowen writes that, “Here at home, we also need to better understand the concerns underlying the referendum result and its implications.”

Maybe the reality of Cowen’s position is that he like Sarkozy sees things in simple terms, his way is always the right one.

It is only a few months since a National Consumer Agency report angered the Taoiseach so much that he said in Leinster House to tanaiste Mary Coughlan to, “ring those people and get a handle on it will you. Bring in all those f**kers.”

Today the EU is negotiating on World Trade talks, on defusing the row between Iran and the US over Iran’s nuclear development programme and with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for new EU-US credit ratings agency regulations. This is the work of EU consensus politics still ongoing since Lisbon was rejected.

So once again Mr Cowen, you must look up today when you greet President Sarkozy and both acknowledge that the sky has not fallen.

“The ECB has to care for the superior interest of the euro area,” This was the judgment given by Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB president and one of the most powerful people in formulating economic policy in Europe today.

The ECB’s policy of consistently increasing interest rates has in Ireland raised mortgage repayments for tens of thousands of home owners who are now struggling to pay huge loans as house prices fall.

Trichet in an interview this week with four European papers, one of which was the Irish Times also said “Our monetary policy must be optimal at the level of the whole euro area – exactly like the Fed [the US central bank] would not look at what is in the interest of Missouri, California or Texas.“

The most interesting piece of the Trichet interview was his assertion that, “Responsibility for solving specific economic problems confronting individual euro area members rests with national governments, parliaments and social partners”.

One thing Trichet seems to have forgotten is the EU Stability and Growth Pact which was supposed to be resolute and unchanging in the standards EU member state economies would have to adhere to, particularly in terms of government debt and borrowing.

The original pact which was part of the Maastricht Treaty had to be reformulated because some EU members, particularly Germany and France could not meet the criteria. Just over a week ago EU finance ministers voted to censure Britain for not meeting borrowing criteria. They are the first state to be censured under the new Growth and Stability criteria.

What Trichet didn’t say this week was that when big countries got into trouble in the past the rules changed, so here we are today with recession, low growth and rising fuel costs in many EU states, how long before the ECB realises that this is not as Mr Trichet describes as “a significant market correction” but an acute crisis?

Some days it is hard to fathom how the EU really works and just how the ‘rules’ are supposed to apply. Take two examples in recent days, the fishing industry and Polish shipyards.

In Ireland today, the Irish Times reports that Fisheries minister Tony Killeen believes that “Ireland’s case for emergency EU aid for the fishing industry would be “undermined” by provision of exchequer funding” and that, “Economic realities” would rule out Government support for the ailing sector.

The Times writes that Killeen “represented Ireland at this week’s EU fisheries council where a €600 million emergency aid package was agreed for vessel owners “hardest hit” by the current fuel price crisis. However, the money would not be available until next year”.

The Federation of Irish Fishermen (FIF) proposed “immediate action at home, with exchequer funding if necessary”.

So why do we have to wait when there is a clear crisis in Irish fishing, the latest blow being the increasing price of diesel?

But while the EU’s fishing industry, and Ireland in particular is being told that it has to wait for aid, as trawler owners run increasingly into debt a different message is being sent to the ship building industry.

A variety of news outlets are reporting today on the decision to give extra time to Poland’s shipyards to repay state aid loans.

The Guardian said, “The European Commission gave Poland a last chance on Wednesday to present new plans by September for overhauling its historic shipyards, and avoid a huge state aid repayment that would force them into bankruptcy”.

The state-owned Gdynia and Szczecin and the privatised Gdansk yards must repay state aid of €2.3 billion unless their new restructuring programmes are deemed to comply with EU competition rules. Their deadline is 12^th September

The Guardian also reports that, “Under EU competition rules, governments can give financial help to ailing companies only if the cash is accompanied by plans that would make the firms viable in the long term”.

So we have such a plan for the fishing industry, surely the Irish government can act now, as Sinn Fein’s Martin Ferris said in a statement yesterday “The fact that the funding will not become available until next year means that it will be too late for the many fishermen in this country”.

Is this what more EU efficiency means – doing too little, too late. Can we not safe guard fishing jobs and shipbuilding ones at the same time?

No doubt many Irish and other Europeans will have by now digested the blunt assertion of French President Nicolas Sarkozy that the Irish will “have to vote again” on Lisbon.

It was once again an insight into the two tier EU of double standards and a widening democratic deficit.

President Sarkozy also said that France would veto any further EU enlargement until the Lisbon Treaty was ratified, so in fact what Sarkozy is proposing is a double veto. He is vetoing the Irish referendum result and adding a second veto on enlargement.

So here is how the EU really works, two vetoes for the French President none for the Irish people.

As the G8 summit comes to an end we got an insight this week into what life might be like with an EU president. Our test run comes in the form of current EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso.

Climate change was the issue for Barosso this week speaking after a meeting with leaders of the world’s 16 biggest economies. There had he said been “a useful and wholly constructive exchange of views”. But “We have to get real.”
There was the expected talk from Barosso about ‘taking responsibility’ and the need for a ‘global response’ on climate change, but he didn’t discuss how this matches up with the refusal of the G8 summit to set an actual target for CO2 reduction. Though the G8 and larger emerging economies such as China and India said they supported a “shared vision” for on climate change and “deep cuts” in greenhouse gas emissions, there was no firm or strategy  on how they would do this.

Also unsaid by Barosso was the EU Commission’s support for new nuclear power stations as their solution to cutting Greenhouse gas emissions, swapping one form of pollution for another.

So no chance of Barosso getting real on nuclear power. Maybe someone should send him the recent Friends of the Earth Report on Sellafield, which has the world’s largest uranium and plutonium stockpile and which was deemed to be more dangerous than Chernobyl.

Titled Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance it can be downloaded at: http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/voodoo_economics.pdf

As the post Lisbon debate simmers on the back burner gently fueled by French President Sarkozy’s pronouncement on the weekend that there would be no Treaty III, the day to day business of the EU continues and highlights how the Irish Government are getting it wrong on engaging with the EU.

Already this week there have been issues about fingerprinting, VAT and GM products which have an Irish context but public Irish Government discussion and debate on these questions is as usual, at best muted, and more than likely, not happening at all.

Associated Press is carrying the story today of EU parliament criticism of “Italian plans to fingerprint tens of thousands of Gypsy adults and children”, The MEPs are “calling it a discriminatory action that smacked of Nazi Germany”.

The English Telegraph among others is reporting on EU Commission plans to cut VAT on key labour intensive service industries, and in a recession hit Irish economy these changes in EU tax code could be quite positive.

Finally, Reuters is reporting that “European Union farm ministers will debate next week whether to allow imports of genetically modified strains of cotton and soyabeans to be used as food ingredients and in animal feed“.

The chances of any of these issues being discussed by the Irish Government in the next week are minor…

There is though comment today in the Irish Times from Irish Justice minister Dermot Ahern on French government proposals for “setting up European “police stations” in tourist areas staffed by officers from all over the EU major European tourist areas“. Is this the most important and pressing EU issue this week?

The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) unveiled its plans for two new giant aircraft carriers this week. The contracts to build and equip the ships are worth almost £4 billion, and the carriers will be the largest ever built in Britain, but who will really foot the bill for them?

The two carriers, to be named Queen Elisabeth and Prince Of Wales, could fit in quite easily to the activities and strategies of the European Defence Agency (EDA) of which the Irish Government is a part.

The United States Navy aircraft carriers play a huge role in its international military strategies, the invasion of Iraq would not have been possible without them. The quotes below sums up the political role carriers can have. (I borrowed them from the author Tom Clancy’s website (http://www.clancyfaq.com/)

“When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident that the first question that comes to everyone’s lips is: ‘Where’s the nearest carrier?‘” Remarks by President Bill Clinton on March 12, 1993 during a visit to USS Theodore Roosevelt

“Four and a half acres of sovereign U.S. territory anytime – anyplace.” Author unknown

The further embedding of the EDA into EU structures was an important part of the Lisbon Treaty. Part of the “mission” of the EDA is strategies such as:

(1) Common procurement, (a nice word for sharing the bills of buying weapons)

(2) Investment, (which probably means buying ever increasing amounts of weapons etc)…. which brings us right back to the two new carriers…

It might be a conspiracy theory but we should ask if Irish defence personnel may end up serving on one of these carriers and could the Irish taxpayer end up funding their running costs?

If you want to find out more about the EDA why not visit http://www.eda.europa.eu/Default.aspx

“Wait and see what happens… “there is no reason for us to hurry”. This is the view of Urban Ahlin, foreign affairs spokesperson of the Swedish Social Democrats, the largest opposition party in the Swedish parliament.

Ahlin aired his thoughts in an interview yesterday with  Swedish Radio News and  proposed that Sweden should be cautious after Poland and Germany both expressed their doubts over signing earlier in the week. The Swedish parliament is due to vote on ratifying the treaty on 20 November.

Meanwhile the New York Times is reporting this morning that Polish President Lech Kaczynski will only sign the Lisbon Treaty  if Ireland approved it in a new referendum.  Kaczynski told the New York Times that “If Ireland makes another decision — but not under pressure and without changing its Constitution — in the same way as the first, then Poland will not place a block on the treaty. And I myself will not place a block.”

Is Sarkozy listening on Lisbon? Sinn Fein’s Marylou McDonald posed the crucial question yesterday when she was in Paris speaking at a joint press conference with senior French politicians including Jean Luc Melenchon French Socialist Senator, and President of Pour la Republique Sociale (PRS), PS member of the Assemblee National Marc Dolez, and Marie-Georges Buffet, General Secretary of the PCF.

McDonald said that, “Will Mr. Sarkozy listen to the people and begin the process of securing a better deal for the peoples of Europe or will he collude with those unwilling to respect the Irish referendum, as they did the French and Dutch before us“.

Added to Sarkozy’s to do list is not just the refusal of Poland to sign the Lisbon Treaty into law but also Germany where President Köhler will not to sign treaty documents until a legal challenge is decided on by the  Constitutional Court.

Sarkozy has also delayed his visit to Ireland. he was expected here on July 11th but will not reach Ireland until 21st.

The glittering EU presidency envisaged by Sarkozy is crumbling. Today’s English Times highlights a number of emerging differences between France and some of the larger EU states.

Germany does not support the idea of a Mediterranean Union. Britain does not support the French proposal for an interim review of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Times claims that other EU states are wary of his “Bonapartist instincts”.

Napoleon never got to Ireland, Sarkozy is definitely coming, will Lisbon be his Waterloo?

In a Europe  that seems dominated at times by the latest happenings in the soap opera that is the political and personal life of the French President Nicolas  Sarkozy, it is refreshing to see that some EU heads of state have not lost touch with the actual rules of the EU.

Yes I know that France holds the rotating EU presidency for the next six months and that Sarkozy has proved very adept at using his private life and a growing range of outspoken sound bites as a clever means of deflecting attention from domestic economic and political problems in France, but it can still be a bit wearying that the EU equivalent of Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, (all photo op and glib quips) is to set the EU agenda for the next six months.

For example, yesterday Sarkozy’s pronouncement on Lisbon was, that his “first priority is to find a way to contain the problem to the Irish“. Are we to be quarantined?

So enter today the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, who yesterday refused to sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty into law in Poland. Kaczynski said it was pointless after Ireland voted No.

More importantly he said that, “If one breaks the rule of unanimity one time, it will never exist again. We’re not strong enough for this type of solution“. I wonder if Sarkozy was listening?

And well done  Lech.