Ireland will "be the laughing stock of Europe" if its citizens reject next year's European Union treaty referendum, Ireland's EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has said.
The Irish public will be defying their common sense if they vote against the treaty, he told the Association of European Journalists. However, he acknowledged that the Yes campaign could face its toughest-ever battle, given the state of public opinion revealed by the most recent Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll.
This showed that just 25 per cent of those polled are minded to vote Yes, while 12 per cent say they intend to vote No. Nearly two-thirds are in the don't know category.
The Yes vote, said Mr McCreevy, Commissioner for the Internal Market, has always been substantially higher before past campaigns got into full swing.
"The referendum is not a time for self-government, for putting the two fingers up at a member state government or at the EU institutions towards which people may well have some heartfelt grievances.
"This is a time to recognise that a strong and efficient Europe interacting with the rest of the world from a position of strength is the only kind of Europe in which Ireland and its citizens can prosper," he told journalists.
If the treaty is passed by all 27 countries, Mr McCreevy said, the EU should refrain from any further institutional changes for "quite some time to come".
"I think we should stop to pause; to deepen rather than to extend; to reinforce what we have and to implement what we have, and that we will have a good period of time before there is further advancement. We should stop and think," he said.
However, he conceded that the more ambitious in the EU may want further expansion "within five years" if this treaty is ratified by all member states.
The changes in the treaty are necessary, he said, if the EU is to face the global challenges of migration, global warming, terrorism and drugs.
"The EU has achieved success in the past by using previously-agreed treaties to alter the union's decision-making rules," he declared. "Make no mistake about it: there would be no single market, no free movement of goods, services or capital - and the much higher living standards they have brought - without the power and strength the previous treaties gave to the European institutions to successfully initiate, advance and enforce the legal framework that has delivered that market," he said.
"We will not achieve the end if we are denied the means. Reformed institutional structures are the means to these ends," he said.
Ireland is still the EU state to have best used EU aid: "When the 12 new states were joining all of their civil servants came to Ireland because we are regarded as the best utiliser of EU funds. There are hundreds of firms based in Ireland using Ireland as their entrée into the rest of the free market. We have been enormous beneficiaries of a common market. It would defy common sense for the Irish people to vote anything but Yes," he said.
