Drawbacks to our EU embership ?

Carra23

Hi

Doing a course at the minute and I've to write an essay assessing our membership of the EU drawing attention to the benefits and drawbacks and on balance has our ecperience been positive or negative.

I am having trouble identifying the draw backs ! ! ! the benefits are obvious with all the funding we recieve etc but has any one any idea of what they consider the draw backs to be ? I'm not after any great detail just a few suggestions that I could research myself.

Thanks

Scofflaw

The most obvious drawback - and really the one that covers all the other bases - is that the EU involves pooling sovereignty and making joint decisions. That reduces Ireland's freedom of action in the areas which come under joint decision-making, and in any area where we have agreed to take the positions and interests of the other Member States into account, such as foreign policy and (more recently) economic planning.

One can argue that Ireland never really had particularly meaningful freedom of action in trade and foreign policy, because we were always going to have to consider the interests of the larger nations, but it also means adopting policies we wouldn't necessarily have adopted under a purely national regime, such as environmental and social legislation. However, the vast majority of EU legislation remains in essence trade regulations - compliance with them would be a feature of life whether we were in the EU or not. Much of the attention paid to non-trade EU legislation is the result of its rarity rather than its ubiquity.

The biggest other single drawback I would point to is the way that the existence of the European level, and the lack of attention frequently paid to that level outside treaty referendum campaigns, means that the government is less accountable, because its actions at the European level are rarely scrutinised or even known about by the general public. That allows the government to act as it chooses, while blaming "Europe" for the final result. An example of that would be perhaps the introduction of water charges as part of the EU Water Framework Directive - here the government blamed the introduction of water charges for schools on Europe, despite the fact that Ireland was offered (twice) a derogation for schools and turned it down. Having said that, of course, the answer there lies in our own hands.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Carra23

Scofflaw wrote: »

The most obvious drawback - and really the one that covers all the other bases - is that the EU involves pooling sovereignty and making joint decisions. That reduces Ireland's freedom of action in the areas which come under joint decision-making, and in any area where we have agreed to take the positions and interests of the other Member States into account, such as foreign policy and (more recently) economic planning.

One can argue that Ireland never really had particularly meaningful freedom of action in trade and foreign policy, because we were always going to have to consider the interests of the larger nations, but it also means adopting policies we wouldn't necessarily have adopted under a purely national regime, such as environmental and social legislation. However, the vast majority of EU legislation remains in essence trade regulations - compliance with them would be a feature of life whether we were in the EU or not. Much of the attention paid to non-trade EU legislation is the result of its rarity rather than its ubiquity.

The biggest other single drawback I would point to is the way that the existence of the European level, and the lack of attention frequently paid to that level outside treaty referendum campaigns, means that the government is less accountable, because its actions at the European level are rarely scrutinised or even known about by the general public. That allows the government to act as it chooses, while blaming "Europe" for the final result. An example of that would be perhaps the introduction of water charges as part of the EU Water Framework Directive - here the government blamed the introduction of water charges for schools on Europe, despite the fact that Ireland was offered (twice) a derogation for schools and turned it down. Having said that, of course, the answer there lies in our own hands.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Thanks Scofflaw, you have given me an angle there which is what I wanted.

RandolphEsq

What about the conflict between our love of our country against the need for greater EU integration into one EU super state? We are surrendering more and more power to the EU Parliament, and it is no secret that it hopes to take the position of a national parliament. Also, the European Court of Justice does not have any communication with the national courts; the EU institutions are bypassing national institutions more and more. So it is obvious that the EU is tending towards one central government, with national governments taking the role of local councils. I don't think this is a bad thing but it does lead to conflicting interests between national pride in Ireland and national pride in the U.S.E.

View

RandolphEsq wrote: »

What about the conflict between our love of our country against the need for greater EU integration into one EU super state?

You are presuming there is a conflict. Do you have a conflict between the love of your county and that of the (Irish) state?

Scofflaw

I've been reminded of another failing which is in some prominence at the moment - that because it's difficult enough to get 27 countries to agree a Plan A, it's almost invariably impossible to get them to agree a Plan B as well.

A good example of this is the euro, which was created during a period of prosperity without anything like adequate mechanisms for coping in adverse conditions. The outcome, as we've seen, has been an ill-coordinated response which has largely patched and covered on the fly, sometimes heavily bending the spirit if not the letter of the Treaties, with any permanent resolution mechanism at least a couple of years away and at the other end of some pretty rough horse-trading.

Still, to some extent that's no more than the natural unwillingness of politicians to concede anything in the way of national sovereignty before it really needs to be conceded.

cordially,
Scofflaw

RandolphEsq

View wrote: »

You are presuming there is a conflict. Do you have a conflict between the love of your county and that of the (Irish) state?

I personally don't have a conflict between my county and the Irish state, but as the EU integrates more it will become less and less about the Irish state and more about the general EU state. Cultures will become diluted into a melting pot.

Carra23

RandolphEsq wrote: »

I personally don't have a conflict between my county and the Irish state, but as the EU integrates more it will become less and less about the Irish state and more about the general EU state. Cultures will become diluted into a melting pot.

Thanks for the replies and you have a valid point but unfortunately for the essay our opinion isn't good enough we have to make reference to some study or some form of reports etc.

You mentioned in your previous post about our Government becoming like a local council and I'm afraid we are not much more than that as it is. Over 70% of the legislation passed through the Dáil is as a direct result of an EU Directive.

Local councils have a limited amount of autonomy in Ireland, they make some decisions for themselves but ultimatley the follow Government guidelines and if they are told to do something by the Government they will do it. That is the same position we find ourselves in with EU !

Scofflaw

Carra23 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies and you have a valid point but unfortunately for the essay our opinion isn't good enough we have to make reference to some study or some form of reports etc.

You mentioned in your previous post about our Government becoming like a local council and I'm afraid we are not much more than that as it is. Over 70% of the legislation passed through the Dáil is as a direct result of an EU Directive.

Local councils have a limited amount of autonomy in Ireland, they make some decisions for themselves but ultimatley the follow Government guidelines and if they are told to do something by the Government they will do it. That is the same position we find ourselves in with EU !

Eh, no, really not even close. We make the majority of our legislation - only at most 40-45% of our legislation in any given year actually refers to anything European at all, most of which is commercial law, and there are wide fields of law where the EU has no mandate of any kind. The idea that the Dáil is anything like a county council is so over-stretched as to be ridiculous - county councils have no autonomy, no sovereignty, no taxation powers, no vote on central government policy, and here in Ireland have been centralised nearly out of existence.

The Dáil is a rubber-stamp body for the Irish government (that is, the Cabinet), but that's a rather different problem, although it feeds into the perception you're suffering from, because the Dáil is supposed to scrutinise what the government does at the European level, and what European legislation we enact, and how. Instead, the government decides in Cabinet how it will act at the EU level, and passes down the legislation it votes on there as a fait accompli to be voted through the Dáil on the Whip's nod.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ro09

Where do I start.

Look around you we are in a recession.

Taking Money from the EU has made our Country Lazy. During the Boom years we were happy to just accept foreign companys and money which was a major mistake.

We neglected to develop our own Home Grown Manufacturing Industries in particular which is what all economic growth stems from and what all the "real tiger economies" have like china for example.

we are happy to just let foreign companys come in here for a few years , make their money and then pull out at the first sniff of recession.

The Country has been "FLOODED" with asylum seekers that the Government is still renting Hotels for and provided day trips , free legal aid and all sorts of stuff. The cost of this must phenomonal to the country.

All the Foreign workers have all the jobs because they work for cheap.

all sorts of things are being legalised like gay marriages and all sorts of stuff.

The EU has brought HELL to Ireland. must i go on. Does anyone know how I can denounce my EU citizenship please.

RandomName2

Carra23 wrote: »

Hi

Doing a course at the minute and I've to write an essay assessing our membership of the EU drawing attention to the benefits and drawbacks and on balance has our ecperience been positive or negative.

I am having trouble identifying the draw backs ! ! ! the benefits are obvious with all the funding we recieve etc but has any one any idea of what they consider the draw backs to be ? I'm not after any great detail just a few suggestions that I could research myself.

Thanks

Just for yourself, try naming our EU ministers?
Our Commissioner?
Any luck? Not me - I completely forget. Not that it makes much difference to me - no ordinary citizen in any EU country really has any bearing on these positions, or any contact, or much information at all really (besides their names, naturally).

Oh I think Kinnock has a significant role in the EU (sorry I cannot be bothered checking wikipedia). It is generally the case that if a high profile politician gets booted out by the electorate that he may end up appointed to some role... befitting his position.

But don't worry, they only make laws for us.

Because Democracy is be definition the Dictatorship of the Majority, our voice in the Parliament is minimul - that is the only way it SHOULD be. In fact it is unfairly weighted in our favour, yet our voice is still neglibile. But that's the problem when you don't share a common citizenship...

Oh but we do! So we are all citizens of Europe, living under a beurocratic, inefficient, non-centrified European govenrment groaning at the seams, and with individual Home Rule governments. And with EU courts that can arbitrarily rule on Irish matters.

I'm sure there's some stuff in that if you explore it.

View

RandolphEsq wrote: »

I personally don't have a conflict between my county and the Irish state, but as the EU integrates more it will become less and less about the Irish state and more about the general EU state. Cultures will become diluted into a melting pot.

That would appear (to me) to be a presumption as the Irish state will always have interests in the development of common EU standards/laws. Sometimes the state's interest will be for a proposal, sometimes against. Obviously that is where the hard work comes in...

If anything, to my mind, that should increase our concern about the Irish state - it clearly needs overhaul to try and get it to work at a much better level than it does.

I also have to confess that the melting pot analogy has never worked for me - I doubt many people would say they feel British here despite our shared history in an actual unitary state. I have serious doubts that in a 100 years time, we'll all have abandoned Guinness for Ouzo.

View

RandomName2 wrote: »

Just for yourself, try naming our EU ministers?
Our Commissioner?
Any luck? Not me - I completely forget. Not that it makes much difference to me - no ordinary citizen in any EU country really has any bearing on these positions, or any contact, or much information at all really (besides their names, naturally).

Oh I think Kinnock has a significant role in the EU (sorry I cannot be bothered checking wikipedia). It is generally the case that if a high profile politician gets booted out by the electorate that he may end up appointed to some role... befitting his position.

But don't worry, they only make laws for us.

The laws of the EU are made by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (in almost all cases).

RandomName2 wrote: »

Because Democracy is be definition the Dictatorship of the Majority, our voice in the Parliament is minimul - that is the only way it SHOULD be.

The Parliament largely operates on party political lines and unsurprisingly our MEPs tend to vote along their respective political/ideological lines.

Based on Votewatch.eu's information, our MEPs vote with their parties roughly as follows:

Labour (Socialist) 98% of the time
Fine Gael (Christian Democrats) 96% of the time
Fianna Fail + Marian Harkin (Liberals & Democrats) 86% of the time
Socialist Party/Joe Higgins (Communists et al) 89% of the time

Those are group averages, so it is clear that there is a relatively high level of "ideological" agreement at EP level. It is not as if the voters are going to punish an individual MEP for failing to follow the party line ....

RandomName2 wrote: »

Oh but we do! So we are all citizens of Europe, living under a beurocratic, inefficient, non-centrified European govenrment groaning at the seams, and with individual Home Rule governments. And with EU courts that can arbitrarily rule on Irish matters.

Substitute Ireland for Europe and the name of your individual county for Irish and you get a pretty good description of the Irish state. That hardly constitutes a strong case against the existence of an Irish state though, does it?

Carra23

Scofflaw wrote: »

Eh, no, really not even close. We make the majority of our legislation - only at most 40-45% of our legislation in any given year actually refers to anything European at all, .

That's way off the mark much closer to 70% , look into it !

RandomName2 wrote: »

Just for yourself, try naming our EU ministers?
all of our ministers become EU ministers at council for ex Environment council is attended by min for Environment, Ag council by minister for Agriculture etc



Our Commissioner? Maire Geoghan Quinn AFAIK

Any luck? Not me - I completely forget. Not that it makes much difference to me - no ordinary citizen in any EU country really has any bearing on these positions, or any contact, or much information at all really (besides their names, naturally).

Maybe no direct influence of who the Commissioners are but we vote for our Government who nominate a Commissioner. We have influnce on EU Parliament as we vote in the MEPs and the MEP have the power to sack the entire Commission or refuse to elect individual Commissioners. This power has been exercised in the past

We also have a few judges in the ECJ. Don't know exactly how many or their names but I could find out no problem

View wrote: »

The laws of the EU are made by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (in almost all cases).

That's not true. They are signed off at Council of Minister level but before this an amazing amount of work is done. Directives are instigated by the COmmission and pass through a hell of alot of working groups etc involving national experts and Departmental officials

View

Carra23 wrote: »

View wrote: »

The laws of the EU are made by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (in almost all cases).

That's not true. They are signed off at Council of Minister level but before this an amazing amount of work is done. Directives are instigated by the COmmission and pass through a hell of alot of working groups etc involving national experts and Departmental officials

I am not denying that all those groups have roles in shaping legislation at EU level, just as the Civil Service, Parliamentary Drafting Office etc all have roles in shaping level here. These though are essentially inputs into the legislation.

Formally, though a law is only "made a law" (i.e. we get an output) when it is formally considered and approved by the appropriate legislative bodies - the Council of Ministers and (post-Lisbon almost always) the EP at EU level, the Dail and Seanad here (for domestic laws). Should any proposed law fail to get approved by these bodies, it doesn't matter how good/bad the proposal was, it doesn't become law. Hence, without seeking to be too exclusive, I personally confine the term "make a law" to the bodies who must formally approve it for it to enter into force.

Carra23

View wrote: »

I am not denying that all those groups have roles in shaping legislation at EU level, just as the Civil Service, Parliamentary Drafting Office etc all have roles in shaping level here. These though are essentially inputs into the legislation.

Formally, though a law is only "made a law" (i.e. we get an output) when it is formally considered and approved by the appropriate legislative bodies - the Council of Ministers and (post-Lisbon almost always) the EP at EU level, the Dail and Seanad here (for domestic laws). Should any proposed law fail to get approved by these bodies, it doesn't matter how good/bad the proposal was, it doesn't become law. Hence, without seeking to be too exclusive, I personally confine the term "make a law" to the bodies who must formally approve it for it to enter into force.

Well if you have your own personal idea of the definition of who makes EU law thats cool , but you are wrong all the same. It's like saying whoever puts a cake in the oven made the cake ! what about identifying the required ingredients, exact weights of each ingredient, approprate oven temp and cooking time...... sorry bit bored at work today ! ! !

View

Carra23 wrote: »

Well if you have your own personal idea of the definition of who makes EU law thats cool , but you are wrong all the same. It's like saying whoever puts a cake in the oven made the cake ! what about identifying the required ingredients, exact weights of each ingredient, approprate oven temp and cooking time...... sorry bit bored at work today ! ! !

I don't think it is necessarily a "personal definition", nor necessarily wrong - most people if asked the question "Who makes our laws?" would I suspect say "The Oireachtas" (or other Parliaments in the other member states) rather than the more inclusive "The Oireachtas, Civil Service and any, and all, interest groups that make submissions in response to governmental Green Papers".

After all, if we really want to be inclusive about it, since we elect politicians to represent us who make decisions on proposed laws and are free to lobby them on proposed laws (either as individuals or as part of an interest group), then we could start saying that to be truely inclusive the average voter should be included as being part of the people who "make our laws". At that point though, the answer to the question becomes largely meaningless if not actually misleading.

View

Carra23 wrote: »

Scofflaw wrote: »

Eh, no, really not even close. We make the majority of our legislation - only at most 40-45% of our legislation in any given year actually refers to anything European at all, .

That's way off the mark much closer to 70% , look into it !

Scofflaw probably has looked into it - and, at a guess, has a database of sources to back his comments up.

More seriously, the % of our legislation influenced by the EU or anything European (the two not necessarily being the same) will vary from sector to sector. It will probably be zero (or close to it) for Defense but a clear majority for Food & Agriculture. Even then, it is a bit meaningless - as, were we not members of the EU, our Food & Agricultural legislation would almost certainly have to conform to EU standards so we could export our products to the EU.

Scofflaw

View wrote: »

Scofflaw probably has looked into it - and, at a guess, has a database of sources to back his comments up.

Indeed - a textual analysis of all Irish Acts and Statutory Instruments from 1992-2009 (11,313 altogether), plus an analysis of EU Regulations in the same period, because Regulations don't require transposition.

View wrote: »

More seriously, the % of our legislation influenced by the EU or anything European (the two not necessarily being the same) will vary from sector to sector. It will probably be zero (or close to it) for Defense but a clear majority for Food & Agriculture. Even then, it is a bit meaningless - as, were we not members of the EU, our Food & Agricultural legislation would almost certainly have to conform to EU standards so we could export our products to the EU.

Very much so - the original claim that "80% of legislation comes from the EU" was actually applicable in the environmental sector, which is what the statement referred to. Unfortunately, it now leads a life of its own, entirely free of context.

cordially,
Scofflaw