Does it matter?
Imagine, if you will, that the people of Europe are a tortoise taking part in a long race with the European Community, which for the purpose of this story, shall be called Achilles.
The tortoise challenges Achilles to a race, but, not being entirely naïve, the tortoise asks for a head start. A hundred yards in a long, long race? It’s not a lot to ask, and Achilles who is fit (and my God, doesn’t he know it) laughs and figures that a guy like him has to be able to beat a plodding tortoise.
Delighted that he’s done such a good deal, Achilles is a little taken aback when the tortoise tells him that he can never win.
It’s true, says the tortoise.
By the time Achilles has reached the 100 yard mark where the tortoise started from, the tortoise has moved on and Achilles still has to catch up on him. By the time he reaches the spot where the tortoise was when Achilles was at the hundred yard mark, the tortoise has moved on again.
The tortoise would argue that as Achilles arrives at the latest last point reached by the tortoise, the little green thing has created a further, if eventually infinitesimally small distance between them; a distance that Achilles has to overcome in order to catch up with him.
Theoretically however, all the little fractions will add up and eventually make a whole number.
In this story, however, there is a further consideration in that the EU is more like a 27 legged, legislation-writing Achilles, plus or minus a few institutions, trying to catch up with the needs and desires of almost half a billion people-shaped tortoises.
In this reality, Zeno is right; Achilles will never catch up on the tortoise but not because it’s a philosophical paradox (well, maybe that’s an argument for another day) but because the pace of change is simply too slow.
The point isn’t whether the EU is a giant anachronism, but whether when it comes to debating a treaty like Lisbon, there can ever really be any catching up between the institutions and legislation and those whom they are bound to serve.
There was nothing terribly profound in Maurice Hayes, Chairman of the National Forum on Europe saying in Letterkenny that the facts of the treaty are indisputable in the document but it’s the interpretation of those facts that is disputed.
Let's face it, we’ve never been very good at predicting the future.
The League of Nations ceased to exist in 1946 after less than 30 years. The USSR had been around less than 70 years when it fell apart in 1991.
The EU in its present guise has been with us since Maastricht in 1993, as the EC before that since 1967 and as the European Coal and Steel Community since 1951. Maybe the notion of yet another treaty is built on the triumph of hope over experience.
Maybe it’s the case that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The ECSC founders saw their actions as “a first stage in the federation of Europe.” There are those who oppose the Lisbon Treaty who would suggest that its ratification would be yet another stage.
But that isn’t really the issue either.
Is it realistic to assume that as the world faces those old chestnuts, the unprecedented changes that have precedents - just slightly different ones, that there will be an EU in ten years time? Or at least, will it be the same one whose form and functions we think we are ratifying (or not) later this year?
Does it matter, in the face of climate change, food crises, the awakening of a trembling China, a burgeoning India, an uneasy Middle East and the cluster bomb that is the US in the middle of all the action?
Or does it matter because of the above?
The world is in a state of chassis, Europe no less. Those who are concentrating in a dwindling economy on having their survival needs met aren’t particularly bothered about aspirational presidents and High Commissioners.
Spending a morning in your local District Court is an eye-opener. You’ll hear the names of people who can’t pay their Council mortgage, who are in arrears with one company or another and who were working, judge, but have lost their jobs because of the downturn in the economy. And yes it has always been thus, but it is more thus now than it has been in a while.
So the Treaty of Lisbon, while its effects may permeate down through the interminable layers, will have little impact on those citizens, on those on whom the EU will never catch up.
As far as the EU goes, the Treaty is as far away as it can get from those to whom it really, really doesn’t matter and for whom it should, perhaps, matter most. Abraham Maslow may be out of fashion but it doesn’t mean that his fundamental precepts are wrong when it comes to our hierarchy of needs. The kind of discussion that is taking place on the boards and on the airwaves is so far removed from the today of most citizens that again, one has to wonder whether it matters or not.
Those on the Yes side are worn out telling us that past performance is a good guide to future positive performance. The past matters, they say. To a man (or woman) they begin their presentations at Forum and other debates by telling us how well we’ve done out of Europe.
Those on the No side are a little less worn out telling us that it will matter in the future. We will lose our neutrality (such as it is), we will become part of a European army, we will see FDI go down the drain and tax harmonisation across the board.
It is perhaps the sad case that despite all the Rumpelstiltskin jumping up and down that we’re doing now, once the Treaty is passed – and I believe it will be passed despite the fact that at every meeting I’ve attended the No side has been far more vocal and energised than the Yes – life will go back to being pretty much how it is now, with Achilles slowly trying to catch up on an ever changing, ever moving tortoise.
And the pace of progress will be so subtle and incremental that we will wonder – and our children will wonder not whether it matters, but as is the case in the here and now, what matters.
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