Steve Quayle News Alerts

October 20, 2002

DUBLIN, Ireland — Official returns showed Irish voters endorsing the European Union's eastward expansion, as counting continued Sunday from a referendum on plans to push the Union to the borders of Russia.

Results of Saturday's vote — Ireland's second on an EU expansion plan — showed a strong swing to supporting the plan to add eight former communist countries as well as Cyprus and Malta to the EU in 2004. Irish voters rejected the plan in June 2001.

With the results of manual vote counts showing a 60-40 margin of victory for the "yes" side in many areas, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said voters had delivered "an emphatic 'yes' to enlargement and a warm Irish welcome to our fellow Europeans from central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean islands."

With results coming in from around the country, state broadcaster RTE said it was clear the "yes" side had won.

EU officials welcomed the first official returns, including Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne, who is from Ireland.

"The vote, if it remains the way it looks, gives a clear message to Europe that Ireland — traditionally regarded as pro-European ... is still the case," Byrne said on RTE radio.

If the Irish ratify the treaty, EU leaders will formally invite Cyprus, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia to join in 2004. Romania and Bulgaria may get invitations to join in 2007 and Turkey — a 13th EU candidate — is hoping to be given a starting date for its entry negotiations.

"The Irish people just made about 100 million friends in Central and Eastern Europe," said Peteris Elferts, foreign policy adviser to Latvian Prime Minister Andris Berzins.

Several pubs in Riga, Latvia's capital, sold Irish beer and whiskey for half-price in appreciation of the vote.

In results announced late Saturday, voters in one rural and six Dublin constituencies where ballots were cast electronically endorsed expansion by nearly 66 percent to 33 percent, backing the treaty signed by Ahern and his 14 EU colleagues in December 2000 in Nice, France.

The Irish Alliance for Europe, which supports the Nice treaty, predicted a nationwide 65 percent "yes" vote and an overall turnout of 47.5 percent.

Last time, 54 percent of voters rejected the Treaty of Nice, but turnout was barely 35 percent — embarrassing Ahern into staging another vote.

The second referendum capped a campaign that generated ferocious opposition. Critics cited fears of losing EU handouts, an influx of immigrants, diminished Irish say in a bigger EU and — above all — loss of Ireland's prized neutrality.

"I think it is very clear now the 'yes' side have a resounding victory," said John Gormley of the Green Party, which campaigned for a "no" vote.

A second Irish "no" would cause the treaty to lapse at year's end, delaying expansion for years. It has already been ratified in the other EU states by votes in national legislatures.

Irish endorsement of the treaty will keep plans for Europe's post-Cold War unification on track, though major stumbling blocks lie ahead.

EU leaders meet Thursday and Friday to sort out a dispute over how much subsidies to pay farmers in Eastern Europe once their countries join.

Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain want the EU to agree first to reforming a system of farm spending that eats up half the union's budget. Others, notably France and Ireland, oppose that.

The complex Nice treaty also reforms EU institutions to streamline decision-making. It reallocates national votes, raises the European Parliament to 732 members from 626, limits the now 20-member EU executive Commission to 27 and extends majority voting to global trade, environmental, justice and other issues.

In the campaign, Irish farmers complained about losing subsidies. Pacifists, anti-free traders and conservative Catholics saw Irish influence in Europe fading and their country losing its automatic right to have one commissioner at the EU head office in Brussels.

Nothing plagued Ahern more than charges Ireland would lose its neutrality through a treaty that lays the legal basis for consultations to dispatch an EU rapid-reaction force of 60,000 peacekeeping troops.

Ireland has committed 850 soldiers to the force, expected to be operational next year.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,66162,00.html