THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GIADA

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This is surely the definitive book on the EU and Northern Ireland at least for the period from the UK & Ireland joining the European Economic Community in 1973 up to pre-Brexit times with a serious concentration on the period from 1980 to 1998 when much of what is there is in this relationship was forged.

In terms of content, the emphasis, and some might say the justification, for the book lies in its theoretical underpinnings, the evolution and identification of metagovernance and its relevance in conflict situations.

For me, however, the most rewarding, and major part of the book, is the chronicling and analysis of the IRL/NI/UK/EU relationship. The value of Lagana's work here is that it is meticulously sourced and draws on a number of archives not previously in the public domain (Delors & Logue) but it is also informed by a series of intensive interviews with a carefully selected sample of the main surviving players.

Not being an academic myself and having been familiar with Northern Ireland through observation and participation, I found the theoretical aspect of "metagovernance" a tough one to come to terms with and I don't think I have yet managed a full understanding of it.

An essential element in the EU approach is its subtlety, the 'nudge' I refer to below, as the networks involved may in some instances seem to threaten to undermine the state. As the book puts it (p36)

In a way the concept of metagovernance offers a means for governments to loosen the reins without loosing control.

If you want to get to the bottom of this, you'll just have to read the book. Metagovernance takes up the first 48 pages of the book which I am not going to attempt to condense further here.

The broad idea, however, seems fairly straightforward. Where a situation has many sources and layers of governance, as in the NI situation, it involves standing back, analysing the governance strands, and then coming up with a strategy for a holistic approach to the situation nudging and drawing the various governing authorities into a consistent and constructive approach to development.

Thus, where EU programmes, such as PEACE and INTERREG are involved, the EU is the metagovernor attempting to get the biggest bang for everyone's buck. No doubt that description will have me expelled from academia for ever, but it might help the layperson's understanding of this uniquely ambitious book.

JOHN HUME'S JOURNEY

Giada Lagana & John Hume

I am on much more familiar and understandable territory once we get down to the situation on the ground and the thread of continuity here is the parallel story of John Hume.

John had serious street cred in the struggle for civil rights in Northern Ireland. Shortly after the explosion of the Troubles in 1968/9, both Ireland and the UK (including Northern Ireland) joined the EEC in 1973.

John was quick to spot the neutral ground that was the European Parliament which was organised on Europe-wide party, rather than national, lines. And though the role of the Parliament was marginal at that stage in terms of EU governance, he saw it as an arena where opposing forces within Northern Ireland could be got to cooperate in the interest of the North as a whole.

He ended up cooperating with his "mortal enemies" from the Northern scene, Ian Paisley and John Taylor (followed by Jim Nicholson), in promoting the Northern interest within the EU, and in a way which made no small contribution to the eventual emergence of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in 1998.

But none of that came easy. The stage had first to be set to bring Northern Ireland onto the EU playing field.

As those of us who ever had dealings with the EEC/EU know, if you want to do anything at Community/Union level, you have first to find a legal base for it. Making speeches and the like is all very well, and pretty straightforward, but if you eventually want to mobilise funds, that is another matter, and by the time you get to that stage you will want to have your legal base sorted out.

Hume, and Colm Larkin in the Commission, set about trying to find a way to get the Community/Union involved in some way in Northern Ireland. The NI situation in 1979 was appalling and the case would have to be strong and decisivly presented.

They finally decided that the best approach would be to present the Parliament with a Motion for a Resolution calling on the Commission to involve itself in the Northern Ireland situation. This was an approach which had been rarely used in the past and the Preamble to the draft Resolution would have to firm up the legal base if it was to get any hearing at all. For a while they were stumped and could not find anything useful in the Treaty of Rome until Larkin had a Eureka moment when he checked out the earlier Coal and Steel Community Treaty. There it was, 'A wonderful almost biblical phrase':

Resolved to substitute for age-old rivalries the merging of their essential interests; to create, by establishing an economic community, the basis for a broader and deeper community among peoples long divided by bloody conflicts; and to lay the foundations for institutions which will give direction to a destiny henceforward shared (...).

Colm Larkin

This, of course, referred to war-torn Europe after WWII, but it fitted Northern Ireland like a glove.

That phrase figured in almost every future European initiative that Hume and the EU/Northern Ireland network took over the years.

THE MARTIN REPORT 1981

The Resolution led in due course to the "Martin Report on Community Regional Policy and Northern Ireland", published in May 1981 in the middle of the NI hunger strikes.

The report reviewed the outlook for the economy of Northern Ireland and assessed the policies and resources needed to bring the region up to the Community average as regards living standards and employment. (...) The Martin Report constituted the beginning of what became an ongoing role for the EU in Northern Ireland.

The debate on the Report in the European Parliament tesified to the unity of the NI MEPs in that forum, but it brought out an aspect of UK in NI that was not welcome to the UK authorities but which strengthened the hand of NI in maximising expenditure in the North.

The rapporteur, Simone Martin, highlighted the lack of "additionality" in current EU spending in the North. The observance of additionality is vital in EU spending and is taken very seriously by the EU. It simply means that any EU spending should be additional to that already being spent by the national authorities. This was clearly not being observed in Northern Ireland where EU spending, in whole or in part, was subsituted for national spending. Martin's observation allowed Ian Paisley subsequently to accuse Whitehall of stealing NI's EU money.

If you want to follow all the subtleties involved in the lead up to the report you need to read the book where they are clearly set out. I must remark here that the text clearly shows the value of the one-to-one interviews carried out by the author.

THE HAAGERUP REPORT 1983

This report went a lot further than its predecessor which was only concerned with economic matters.

The objective was to 'explain a terribly complicated situation of conflict and strife, alienation and sectarianism to non British and non Irish members of the Parliament' and through them, maybe to a wider section of the European public at large. The explicit objective of the investigation, reflecting a belief growing in the Community, was to see if and how the institutions of the European Community (EC) could be of additional assistance to the people of Northern Ireland beyond the support already rendered within the framework of the Community's regional policy and Social Fund.

(...) the report recommended cross border cooperation at a time when regional policies were the priority of EU member states. Furthermore the report proposed that the EC assume greater responsibility for economic and social development and for improved intergovernmental cooperation on security issues. Both suggestions were in areas that related to constitutional affairs and that, some might argue, exceeded the EP's competencies.

I would think that last sentence an understatement and see why Unionists were not at all pleased. However, as the book points out, the UK authorities, despite their public protestations, were privately not at all unhappy at the prospect of additional EU funds coming into Northern Ireland.

The British Government, the UUP and the DUP refused to cooperate with the report. This resulted from a refusal to distinguish between the "political" and the "constitutional", and an ideological view of sovereignty which saw NI as an exclusively British matter.

The report is careful to point out that the conflict in Northern Ireland is not a religious war, particularly as this is often the beginning and the end of some people's understanding outside of the North.

... the conflict is one of culture and loyalties, of memories of historic struggles rather than disputes of doctrine.

This statement is set against the background of the history of the North and the observation that

it is crucial that the history of Northern Ireland is understood as a 'sequence of Irish rebellions and British suppressions'
...
Many people who had little understanding of doctrine and who seldom attended Protestant or Catholic services appropriated the terms 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' as badges.

It is interesting, particularly in the light of the ramifications of Brexit, that the Haagerup Report describes Northern Ireland as a "constitutional oddity" and "a place apart". That it had surely become after a half a century of repressive Loyalist rule studiously ignored by Westminister.

Lagana sums up the importance of the report thus:

The report consequently constitutes the first instance in which the architechture of the EU peacebuilding strategy for Northern Ireland was outlined. This included a territorial dimension, an active and supporting role for civil society, and a respect for the autonomous role of the two national governments involved in full conformity with the metagovernance perspective.

We will see these elements taken up later in the Peace programme.

Laying the Foundation Stone
Source

THE ANGLO IRISH AGREEMENT 1985

The book also deals with the Anglo Irish Agreement of 1985 although this did not directly involve the EU. It was, however consistent with one of the recommendations of the Haagerup Report stressing the need for increased cooperation between the British and Irish governments.

THE INTERNATIONAL FUND FOR IRELAND 1986

When looking at EU funding in Northern Ireland the temptation is to jump straight to the Peace Programme, or even to INTERREG if you're aware of it. But Northern Ireland will already have benefitted from the EU Regional and Social Funds by that stage. These, however, are funds which have EU-wide application and are not just directed at Northern Ireland. Even INTERREG applies across the EU though there was a special programme within the overall for Ireland/Northern Ireland.

However the International Fund for Ireland, which was set up in 1986 following the Anglo-Irish Agreement, focuses on the same area of operation as the later Peace Programme and includes the EU in its funders.

This Fund was project based and set the scene to some extent for the specifically NI EU programmes that followed.

STRUCTURAL FUNDS AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Lagana refers to the evolution of the concept of a Europe of States into a Europe of the Regions. This was useful on a number of fronts and it downplayed questions of state sovereignty by concentrating directly on the regions most in need of assistance. The establishment of the Regional Fund (1975) gave expression to this and there was intensive lobbying for funds from all quarters, though certainly at the beginning there were national quotas to be divided up between the regions

The European Social Fund was established in the Treaty of Rome in 1957. It's general aim was to compensate for the effects of the abolition of national protectionism with the advent of the EEC Customs Union, but I'm mentioning it here because, in conjunction with the Regional Fund, it became a source of funding for NI programmes.

Lagana brings up an important point here. It is one I was very conscious of, particularly in the administration of funding in the Peace programme.

However, Northern Ireland, as legally part of the UK, was not directly involved in the lobbying or negotiations within the Council and was not part of the committee system. This constituted a huge issue in terms of representations of interests because the UK administration's preferences often diverged from those of the region. Irish representatives, on the other hand, shared common interests with Northern Ireland in certain economic areas and were sometimes better disposed than the UK government to protect Northern Ireland interests. This absence of adequate representation of the political interests created an additional impetus for Northern Irish groups to lobby Irish ministers for support. The lobby was facilitated by the EU/Northern Ireland public network within the European Parliament (EP).

From my own experience it was not just Northern Irish groups which were involved. The Irish administration at various points was open to observations from the Northern authorities on sectoral matters coming before the ECOFIN.

THE SINGLE EUROPEAN MARKET (SEM) 1993

The Single European Market is the lynchpin of the EU. The freedom of movement of goods, people, capital and services, is the glue that holds the whole structure together. For a long time since its foundation the EU relied on the Customs Union and its only European policy, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and this eventually led it into some very strange territory such as beef mountains, wine lakes and green pounds. But the SEM was the major milestone in the development of the EU as an economic unit and was seen as finally facing up to "le défi américain" that I had become familiar with during my days at the College of Europe in Bruges in 1967/8 - the challeng of the huge integrated US market both in its consumer and producer aspects.

Here is Lagana commenting on its significance for Norther Ireland.

In sum the SEM provided strong economic incentives for actors in Northern Ireland to become more integrated with the Republic of Ireland. The implicit objective was to support local efforts to cooperate on both sides of the border, not only by increasing trade but also by incentivising local actors to develope business links to combat the SEM's risks. In this way, the EU strategically indirectly provided incentives for increased cross border cooperation as outlined in the 1984 Haagerup Report. The potential of the SEM to accentuate economic differences between rich and poor regions was used to argue for greater Commission emphasis on EU regional policy and to compensate these poorer regions for their losses. The consequent reform of EU regional policy in 1988 provided another good opportunity to impact on Northern Ireland.

INTERREG

The Regional Fund was for those regions in the EU seen to be disadvantaged, as defined by a set of statistics. The INTERREG took this a step further and concentrated on border areas within regions which were disadvantaged by their peripherality and this disadvantage applied on both sides of the border. The borders in question were national borders, so an INTERREG programme required the participation of two or more member states.

Monitoring Committees had membership comprising representatives of the national administration of the member states concerned and further membership tended to be limitied to various state departments, bodies and organisations.

Lagana sets out the problems with the IRL/NI INTERREG which included the highly centralised nature of the two administrations which stressed national rather than local priorities. This was more extremely felt in the case of NI where the UK DTI was the competent authority. There was rivalry between organisations on both sides of the border. Then, within NI, views differed as between unionist (to whom cross border cooperation was anathma) and nationalists (who welcomed it). Unionists eventually came to appreciate the benefits of the initiative.

THE PEACE PROGRAMME

John Hume had been intimately involved in all the efforts described above to advance the position of Northern Ireland within the EU. But in many ways, the culmination of his trajectory was the introduction of what became known as the Northern Ireland Peace Programme. This did not just emerge into the world fully formed. It was the result of a lot of carefully managed preparatory work and there were many difficulties to overcome first.

Lagana describes the gestation of the programme in great detail. I will just make a few points from my own involvement having responsibility for its implementation in the Irish border counties adjoining Northern Ireland and also as Co-Chair of the programme's Monitoring Committee.

It had a strong emphasis on cross border co-operation.

It strove to advance cross-community participation, one of the most daunting tasks of the day in NI.

It even included a Consultative Forum to cater for wider participation from among NI interests.

It did, however, suffer from some constraints. In particular, funding was provided through the Regional and Social Funds and came with all of those funds' strings attached. The preparedness of the two communities in the North to avail of the opportunities provided by the programme varied enormously, the Catholic/Nationalist side being best prepared. This often led to accusations of bias against the programme as more funding went to one side than the other.

However, looking back on the wider significance of the programme, Lagana observes:

... the first EU programme for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland was the first major EU funding initiative aimed at specifically contributing to a political resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict from the bottom up. The programme was conceived as a way to complement the mainstream political efforts at peacebuilding undertaken by private actors, supported by the EU/Northern Ireland network.

THE GOOD FRIDAY/BELFAST AGREEMENT 1998 (GFA)

While the EU was not directly inolved in the GFA, all the work described above made an invaluable contribution to it and this has been recognised in various quarters. The EU was an important actor in sustaining the GFA both in funding underpinning initiatives, such as subsequent phases of the Peace Programme, but also in keeping open some of the channels described above.

BREXIT

Lagana has wisely avoided trying to deal with Brexit despite some pressure for its inclusion. Brexit is a separate and subsequent phase of EU/UK relations and at the time of publication of the book it was not clear what direction it was going in. She wisely left this to others and thereby protected the integrity of her own work.

CONCLUSION

I could do no better in conclusion than cite Lagana's own concluding paragraph.

Finally, the case of the EU role in the Northern Ireland peace process shows that any attempt to develop a strategic paradigm of peacebuilding must remember that its roots lie in the lives and the consent of real people and societies who have the capacity to make choices within their own context and aspire to it. To maintain its integrity, any EU approach to peacebuilding on their behalf must be able to offer a form of strategic peace that is rhetorically defensible across the range of platforms. Far from pursuing a utopian agenda, this book offers a realistic and pragmatic terrain, based on a historical analysis and never before seen archival sources, into which EU peacebuilding must evolve as it practically responds to the problems that have emerged in the current worldwide political context.

And my own overall conclusion on the book.

It is a magnificent work which should gain in publicity and popularity as time goes on. It is thoroughly researched, intensely referenced, contains a raft of original material, is well written and very readable. Lagana has put blood, sweat and tears into it. She must be very proud of it and rightly so. It is bound to become the go to book for the canvas she took on. Others may write up individual aspects but it is a magnificent panorama of NI/EU relations over its period of choice.