Ireland says ‘Yes’ to Nice

The vote was a 63 percent Yes, compared to a 54 percent rejection 16 months ago. The turnout was just over 48 percent, compared to just under 35 percent in the June 2001 referendum.
The highest Yes vote in the 42 constituencies was over 73 percent in Dun Laoghaire and the highest No vote was over 47 percent in Donegal Northeast. In the first Nice vote, only two constituencies came out in favor of the treaty.
This week’s meeting of the European Council in Brussels will now be devoted almost exclusively to enlargement.
Breathing a sigh of relief that he did not have to deal with the embarrassing fallout at home and abroad from a second rejection, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described the result as an historic one, an emphatic endorsement of the treaty and a “warm Irish welcome” to new EU members.
“We have examined more closely the Euroskeptic option and rejected it,” he said. “When we joined the EEC, as it was then, we took a different path from Britain and Denmark.
“We decided to be active contributors. We have never wanted to be part of the awkward squad. Enlargement will overcome the division of Europe, and for the first time secure the freedom and prosperity of the nations belonging to the European Union.”
Ahern said the decision showed that as a nation Ireland wanted “to welcome the peoples of the applicant countries into the Union with open hearts as well as open minds.”
Tanaiste Mary Harney said the Yes vote was a “defining moment for Ireland and for Europe as a whole.”
“The people have voted to remove the last vestiges of the Iron Curtain and the division of Europe,” she said. “Today, Ireland had played a lead role in Europe, and we have all won.”
Giving a glimpse of the future and the tension-sapping effect of electronic voting, the drama of the count process had effectively gone after the results of seven of the 42 constituencies became available within hours of the polls closing on Saturday.
The seven counts in Dublin and Meath involved 9.24 percent of the total vote and the result was a 67 percent Yes to 33 percent No.
With a larger turnout, it was obvious that those who sat on their hands in the first referendum — described by some commentators as a soft, middle class vote — had made the effort to head for the polling booths for the rerun.
It would have needed an extraordinary shock to overturn the swing of 10 to 20 percent emerging in the capital — Yes campaigners uncorked some of the champagne early.
Dun Laoghaire and Dublin South, the only two constituencies to have voted Yes last time when the treaty was rejected by 54 percent, moved overwhelming to emphasize their point this time with 73 and 72 percent Yes votes, respectively.
The demographic reversal of the vote was emphasized in largely working-class Dublin West (62 percent Yes) and rural Meath (65 percent Yes)
Saturday’s official count became almost a formality.
Euro-MP and president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, said Ireland had “removed the last brick of the Berlin wall.”
“There is a great ray of sunshine shining eastward telling people that the Irish have chose enlargement and chosen reconciliation as our message,” he said.
Harney said Irish people showed they wanted “to be generous.” However, she warned that EU leaders must learn the lesson of Ireland’s Nice experience — EU development cannot move ahead too rapidly and leave a democratic deficit.
“We learned a big lesson for the country and, hopefully, Europe has learned a lesson too: that we can’t take the population for granted, we can’t move too far ahead of the people on the issues of importance within the European Union,” Harney said.
“Reference is made to democratic deficits. There are information deficits. Certainly we need to do an awful lot more explaining to connect with the citizens throughout Europe. Perhaps we have got to consolidate what it is we have agreed.”
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the Yes vote was an “historic decision for democracy and for the future of Europe.”
However, one of the main No campaigners, Anthony Coughlan of the National Platform, said it was a “dark day for democracy in Ireland and in Europe.”
“Irish voters have succumbed to threats, pressure and bamboozlement by their political class,” he said, adding that people had been “variously pressurized and deceived” by a mendacious campaign to open the way for the division of the EU into two classes or two tiers. He said the size of the No vote was quite an achievement after a David and Goliath struggle in the face of the 20-to-1 imbalance of campaign expenditure in favor of Yes and in the face of “a trick referendum question that required one answer to two different joined propositions.”
Controversial No to Nice Campaign leader Justin Barrett said the result was “a major step toward a European superstate, and that’s not going to do anyone any good.”
A second rejection of the plan would have put expansion on ice and caused a constitutional crisis for Brussels.
The blueprint for enlargement will bring in ten new members by 2004 — fulfilling the post-Cold War dream of integrating former communist states into the European fold.
The treaty, named after the French city where it was negotiation, will reorganize EU institutions to streamline decision making to deal with nearly half a billion people.
The expected first wave of candidates to join the reconstituted EU comprise Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.