[article] Dustin and Irelands future in Europe

mike65

Its by everyones favourite 'pop economist' David McWilliams

What Dustin teaches us about the Lisbon Treaty

Ireland's fall from Eurovision grace is geo-political. When we were the poor cousins, stroking billions of euros from the Brussels slush fund, we couldn't help winning the Eurovision. We got the sympathy vote as well as taking the thing seriously.

In economic terms, the correlation between structural funds and Eurovision crowns was unambiguous. We were flavour of the month and our Eurovision success was a reflection of this. (Granted, a drier economist might dispute cause and effect but bear with me here!)

Now that the axis of the EU has swivelled to the East, so too has the Eurovision. In the old days, before the Wall came down, the Eurovision used to be more or less a small west European club plus, bizarrely, Israel.

Over the past few years, the eastern European countries joined up, which has created problems for the traditional 'douze points' voting system.

With so many new countries and people and voters, the Eurovision had to change its voting system or the event would have taken all night to get through.

As a result, the great Eurovision gurus came up with the idea of a semi-final to make the thing less unwieldy.

Evidently, those which lose out are the original countries that used to be a shoo-in to the final, and those which profit are the new countries that were never in the Eurovision in the first place.

Without these new countries, the douze points status quo would have remained in place and Ireland's chance of winning would have been one in 12 rather than one in 22 or 32.

The Lisbon Treaty is just the same. It is a change to the voting system because Europe has become so big. To make the Union work, the rules have to be changed and there will be winners and losers in this new arrangement.

Suddenly is all clear.

Mike.

Sherifu

Makes sense to me. The vote follows the money.