We need to postpone ratifying the ESM Treaty until After the the Fiscal Treaty referendum

national | eu | opinion/analysis Tuesday March 06, 2012 19:41 by O.O'C. - National Platform EU Research & Information Centre janthonycoughlan at gmail dot com 24 Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9 01-8305792

The relation between two different treaties we are asked to ratify, which people Need to understand

The Government's announcement of a referendum on the so-called "Fiscal Compact Treaty" (properly titled the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union/TSCG) calls in question its original intention to introduce the quite different European Stability Mechanism Treaty (ESM) to the Dáil for approval of its ratification on Tuesday or Wednesday next, or else sometime in the present pre-Easter Dáil term, as the Taoiseach recently announced.

The ESM Treaty would set up a permanent Eurozone bailout fund of at least €500 billion form this July - an economic firewall against sovereign debt "contagion" spreading to Spain and Italy. It has to be ratified by all 17 Eurozone States by their appropriate constitutional procedures. The ESM Treaty would commit Ireland to contributing €11 billion to the permanent Eurozone fund - so much money up front and so much in guarantees called "callable" capital later if required. There is already talk of boosting this fund by another few hundred billion once it is established, to which Ireland would naturally have to make a contribution also.

The Preamble to the ESM Treaty, which can be easily downloaded from the Internet, states (Recital 5): "It is acknowledged and agreed that the granting of financial assistance in the framework of the new programmes under the ESM will be conditional, as of March 2013, on the ratification of the TSCG [that is, the "Fiscal Treaty"] by the ESM Member concerned..."

This means that if the ESM Treaty, is ratified by Ireland sometime this month - we will be committing ourselves to contributing €11 billion to a fund from which we can receive no benefit or advantage whatever if voters should vote No to the Fiscal Treaty referendum that will presumably be held sometime in May or early June, although the Fiscal Treaty need not be ratified until the end of this year. The ESM Treaty was signed on2 February, the Fiscal Treaty/TSCG was signed on Friday last.

Would the Government not be acting in a very foolish fashion to lay the country open to such a possibility?

Would not the Irish State appear to be acting really bizarrely in the eyes of international public opinion if the ratification of these two quite different treaties was put the wrong way round in this way - very much against the Irish People's interests?

Or has the Government in mind to introduce and ratify the ESM Treaty during March, as the Taoiseach said,

* thereby binding the State to contribute €11 billion plus to this permanent Eurozone Fund,

* and then use that as a moral bludgeon with which to browbeat a bamboozled electorate into voting Yes to the "Fiscal Treaty" - on the ground that if they should vote No to it, they will be depriving themselves of possible access to the permanent Eurozone fund at some time in the future?

Could our leaders really be so cynical?

Surely it becomes imperative in these circumstances that the Government should postpone ratification of the ESM Treaty until after the referendum on the Fiscal Treaty has been held?

The 17 Eurozone Prime Ministers and Presidents have agreed that they would try to bring the ESM Treaty into force by July. The original intention with this treaty's predecessor, ESM Treaty No.1, which Michael Noonan and the other Eurozone Finance Ministers signed last year, in July 2011, had been to bring the permanent ESM fund into being in 2013, although ESM Treaty No.1 was never sent around for ratification. The date of next July would still give Ireland plenty of time in which to hold its "Fiscal Treaty" referendum in May or early June and thereafter ratify the ESM Treaty (No.2) to come into force by July if the people should vote for it.

Anthony Coughlan (Director)