Let me walk you through a timeline that probably won’t get a lot of attention elsewhere.
First, here’s the Irish Farmer’s Association, in 2008:
“We will visibly be supporting the Yes vote because we have more to lose than any other sector if we do not get a Yes vote on Lisbon. We will campaign within the organisation and at major events like the ploughing championships,” (Then IFA President Padraig Walsh) said.
There had been a major change in farming and the rest of society since the last referendum, there was an entirely different economy and less confidence that we can get on without Europe, he said.
Second, also from 2008, here is what the Lisbon Treaty meant for EU trade:
The Lisbon Treaty will also simplify and streamline EU external trade policy. It will dispense with mixed agreements in external trade policy. These were agreements of mixed Community and Member State competence. With the Lisbon Treaty there will be no more shared competence and thus no more mixed agreements in trade. All trade will be European Union competence and agreements will be ratified by the EU. There will no longer be a requirement for agreements to be ratified by national parliaments
Third, here is the IFA yesterday, demanding ratification of the Mercosur trade deal by national parliaments:
“IFA President Francie Gorman will travel to Brussels over the weekend to meet farm leaders from across Europe on Monday to step up the campaign against the Mercosur trade deal.
This comes after EU Commission President Von Der Leyen agreed a trade deal with the Mercosur countries in Uruguay today.
This sell out deal needs to be ratified by the EU Council of Member States; the European Parliament; and should also have to be ratified by national Parliaments. The Commission may have sold out European farmers, but there is a distance to travel yet. Essentially, we are back to where we were in 2019 with an EU Commission-agreed deal without a democratic mandate,” he said.
Here is the bottom line: Ireland cannot block the Mercosur trade deal, because Irish voters voluntarily gave up their right to veto EU trade agreements when they ratified the Lisbon Treaty at the urging of, amongst others, the IFA. The IFA is thus demanding a vote in national parliaments on the Mercosur deal having actively campaigned, in 2008, to get rid of the requirement for such a vote.
If Ireland wishes to block the Mercosur trade agreement, it will have to assemble a coalition of other EU countries to block it, using the Qualified Majority Voting mechanism introduced in the Lisbon Treaty.
Now I must declare an interest here, albeit one that is very relevant: In both 2008 and 2009, I was employed by campaigns for a “No” vote on both the first and second Lisbon referenda. So I remember those campaigns very well. And in particular, I remember the utter fecklessness of the IFA, which might well be summed up in the paragraphs above.
The truth is, the IFA lacked basic foresight then, much as it does today. The organisation campaigned for yes votes essentially because it was asked to by Government, and without taking any kind of look at the implications that the Lisbon Treaty might have on EU trade agreements. Indeed I remember being at a debate in Limerick with an IFA representative, who openly laughed at the idea that Ireland was losing its veto over trade, even though that was right there in the text of the treaty.
The IFA exists to defend Irish farmers. That is the whole point of the organisation. For most of the last several decades, that has meant that the IFA’s primary interest is in a protectionist EU trade policy that subsidises inefficient Irish agriculture while locking out cheaper foreign produce, usually on specious grounds of health and safety or environmentalism. That’s a perfectly legitimate thing for a group like the IFA to do, because it amounts to simply protecting the interests of its own members.
But here’s a simple fact of the matter: If the Mercosur trade deal had to be approved by individual national parliaments in every EU state, it would be dead in the water. That is why the IFA now wants such a vote.
Yet it was this same IFA that actively campaigned to get rid of the requirement for trade agreements to be ratified by national parliaments.
The IFA, as such, has only itself to blame. The current situation was entirely foreseeable in 2008 – indeed many farmers saw it coming and voted No. The IFA thought it was smarter.