The EU Is A Prison House Of Nations

The European Union is a cage, a prison house of nations. Behind the liberal rhetoric the union is a ruthless undemocratic bureaucracy that enforces neoliberal economic policies, privatisation and outsourcing. The rulers of the core nations, like Germany and France, used the EU to force peripheral nations like Ireland, Greece and Spain to bear the terrible cost of the 2008 financial crisis, devastating working class lives and now we are seeing the move to greater military integration as the European Union attempts to take to the world stage as an imperialist power, coming out from under the wing of US imperialism.

It will be the working class that will be offered as a sacrificial lamb at the altar of war. While the working class in Ireland have always seen through much of the propaganda waged on behalf of the EU by the Irish establishment, the Palestine solidarity movement has awakened many more to the vicious nature of those running the European Union.

Illusions in the EU are widespread particularly in the wake of Brexit - but it’s vital that socialists don’t leave criticism of the EU to the far right. We have to tell the truth about this prison house of nations, and organise to break free.

A significant 43% of Irish people, surveyed by Amárach in 2025, did not believe that their views were represented at an EU level. This survey found that almost one third, 26%, were dissatisfied with the EU’s direction. While 53.4% of people in Ireland voted against the Lisbon Treaty, and only after false promises from the establishment, and a second vote, the powers that be got it through. They’d done the same with the Nice Treaty. Only 34% of the electorate had turned out to vote in the first Nice Treaty referendum, so they just ran a second vote and despite reassurances from the government just over 37% still voted no.

While a third of people have stood against most EU treaties, people’s attitudes are contradictory with 83% saying we’re better off inside the EU (in a 2022 Ireland Thinks Poll) with 11% saying we’re better off out, while 7% were unsure. A huge majority, 94%, of students thought we were better off in the EU yet among those who self-defined as working class it was lower, at 77%. But those opposed to the EU were generally concentrated in the poorer estates and on the lowest incomes. The majority, or 52%, of those earning under €20,000 thought there were “disadvantages” to EU membership. 57% of younger people agreed with this. The main reasons listed as disadvantages were loss of fishing waters (42%) and loss of sovereignty (34%). Loss of sovereignty was a bigger issue for those earning below €20,000 - coming in at 42%.

When it comes to an EU army though 70% of those earning under €20,000 thought Ireland should remain neutral. This rose to 72% among those who self-defined as working class. When asked if they understood how laws were passed in the EU a majority, 55%, said they were “unsure” and 22% said “no”. Despite all these fears and contradictions when asked what relationship they’d like to have with the EU only 7% said “leave entirely”. The framing of the question matters. People are more likely to agree to tear up EU treaties if, for example, it’s framed as a necessary step in solving the housing crisis or preventing a loss of Irish neutrality.

History of the EU

The EU is a dysfunctional and contradictory attempt at a trans-national state, built in the interests of capitalism, with imperialist strategy at the heart of the project since the beginning. The various nations at its core, like France and Germany, can differ on economic and political goals. But they agree on the subordination of other nations to their own economic and political interests. After World War Two the USA promised to militarily babysit the European powers, forming NATO in 1949. The 1950 Schuman Plan was a plan to pool French and West German coal and steel production under a single authority. This led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) which was established with the Treaty of Paris in 1951.

The Treaty of Paris established the High Authority (now called the European Commission) and the so-called Common Assembly (now the European Parliament). The High Authority was the unelected cabinet of the union. Its members were appointed, not elected. Jean Monnet, the first President of the High Commission, was a wealthy capitalist Cognac producer and banker. He said: “Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation.”

France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) formed the European Economic Community signing the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The claim was integration would prevent future war but the truth was they were fighting for the recovery of lost power. The French wanted to use the new union to build up their economic strength and hold onto their crumbling Empire. The West Germans were able to use it as cover to build up their economic power over Europe behind a rhetoric of cooperation. This went hand in hand with building up military power through NATO. The Germans knew that no one would accept Germany as a lone military power, so they fought for economic domination.

The Treaty of Rome was clear in its ambition to remove all barriers to free trade. They wanted a customs union, common policies and expansion into the rest of Europe. Jean Monnet understood that by starting with coal and steel he could pressure governments into pooling an ever expanding range of production. The US Marshall Plan transferred $13.3 billion (equivalent to about $130 billion today) into Europe with the declared aim of preventing the spread of communism. George Marshall said: “The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.” Money wasn’t given directly to governments. The US gave goods and services to governments who then sold these on to businesses and individuals.

The end of the First World War had led to a wave of revolutions. US and European capitalists weren’t taking any chances this time around. The European project was helped by the so-called Golden Age of capitalism after the war. The massive destruction of capital during the war, post-war rebuilding and massive arms spending saw a temporary capitalist boom that lasted two decades, only beginning to falter in the late 1960s before collapsing in 1973. Tying economic success to policy during this period evades the actual birth of this boom in massive destruction of human lives and capital in the war.

The Treaty of Rome, signed on March 25th 1957, formed the European Economic Community (EEC) and a European Atomic Energy Community. These two new communities were created separately from ECSC, although they shared the same courts and shared the Common Assembly. They each had their own “commission” (a new name for their “High Authority”). The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein, who’d served in the German Army and dismissed national sovereignty as a “doctrine of yesteryear.” But there was a big difference between unity of peoples won from below and forced unity under the rule of German and French capitalists they were building.

Hallstein was the author of the so-called “Hallstein doctrine” that imposed a strict state of siege on East Germany. Authored by Hallstein and Wilhelm Grewe the strategy saw the West Germans cut off all relations with anyone who traded with the East. France began to feel uneasy about these European alliances, particularly talk of military union and the inclusion of the British. France still saw US imperialism as a rival and Britain was too tied to the USA for their liking. This was a key difference between the USA, as a federation of states, and the EU, as federation of competing imperial powers. These nations had common interests and opposed interests. Despite these French reservations the “Merger Treaty” was signed in Brussels in April 1965 bringing the ECSC, EEC and Atomic Community together.

A new unelected Commission of the European Communities would replace the ruling bodies of the other groups. The European Court of Justice had been established in 1952 but it was through landmark cases in the 1960s that it rose to jurisdiction over national courts. This was another unelected body with judges appointed by member states - yet these appointed judges held immense power over nations. Van Gend en Loos (a transport company) took the Dutch government to court over tariffs, appealing to the European Court. It was decided that:

“The Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights.” The doctrine of “direct effect” now meant that individuals or companies could take their own government to court for breach of European Law. Flaminio Costa was an Italian shareholder of Edisonvolta, an electricity company nationalised by the Italian government. He claimed this nationalisation broke EEC law. While the Italian Constitutional Court said EEC laws did not occupy a special rank the European Court of Justice decided that they did have authority:

“In fact, by creating a Community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality and its own capacity in law… the member-States, albeit within limited spheres, have restricted their sovereign rights and created a body of law applicable both to their nationals and to themselves… It follows from all these observations that the law stemming from the treaty, an independent source of law, could not, because of its special and original nature, be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed.”

The nationalisation was eventually found to not be in breach of EEC law but the case was a milestone because the hierarchy of law was established in favour of the European body.

Ireland and the EU

Denmark, Ireland and the so-called United Kingdom eventually joined the European Communities in January 1973. Britain had been humbled by the Suez crisis of 1956 which saw Britain, France and Israel attack Egypt to overturn the nationalisation of the Suez canal. The Empires got a bloody nose. When 465 delegates gathered for the annual delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Limerick in July 1971, one of the most debated topics was the proposed membership of the European Economic Community. Motions showed workers’ concern about loss of control of political and economic policy and the possible loss of Irish neutrality.

A special union conference on the EEC was held in January 1972. While the vote against membership won, a significant minority of unions were for joining. The unions distributed half a million copies of a booklet called “Economic Freedom” which outlined the impact membership of the EEC would have on workers. Aligned against the unions were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, all the major media outlets and the farmers’ organisations.

The Department of Foreign Affairs played a direct role in planning the propaganda campaign, they wrote ministerial speeches, pamphlets and booklets, distributed thousands of leaflets targeting specific industries. Journalists were encouraged to write with direct guidance and assistance from the government. The government booked themselves onto the Late Late Show and used every means available to swing the vote. Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Jack Lynch turned up at GAA matches, with areas plastered with posters reading “Vote yes, back Jack!” They claimed voting against membership meant returning to the life of poverty of earlier decades. The irony being that just after the vote took place the global post-war boom collapsed and the structures of the EU would be used to implement Thatcherism.

The government even used the North as a point of moral leverage, arguing that the EEC would save us from economic dependence on Britain. They claimed the no side were hypocrites because rather than keeping Ireland free they were guaranteeing reliance on the British economy. Not that Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael had any inclination to break with British capitalism. But it worked as propaganda. Ironically the reason Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Jack Lynch had tried to get into the EEC along with the British in 1963 and 1967 was because the two economies were so intertwined. But France had scuppered those applications. The government had promised 50,000 new jobs would come with EU membership. In fact, the economic situation deteriorated as the 1970s went on.

The Labour Party opposed entry but without much enthusiasm, as Labour TD Conor Cruise O’Brien said: “I felt, and probably looked, like a dog being washed… and I disliked our ‘allies’ more than I disliked even either set of adversaries.” They preferred Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to both wings of Sinn Féin, who were opposed to entry. Labour even proposed “associate” membership of the EEC to try to please everyone. They’d soon be in government with Fine Gael, betraying the expectations built up by a huge wave of worker militancy in the late 1960s. It was the bitter experience of the Fine Gael Labour coalition of the 1970s that paved the way for a spectacular Fianna Fáil vote in 1977.

In May 1972 Ireland had held a referendum on entry. Just over 81% of voters voted in favour. Ten years later Fine Gael Taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald admitted that “the benefits of membership proved less clear-cut than might have been hoped” and that support now may be “less enthusiastic and widespread” than it was in May 1972. In 1980 family-farm income per head was actually lower, allowing for inflation, than it was in 1972 while the big capitalist farmers were benefiting from subsidies. The trade unions quickly adapted to EEC membership and the opportunity to negotiate with European bosses, they said: “We see in this confederation the beginning of an attempt to meet the employers on an international basis, throughout all Europe.”

The unions also fell into the habit of appealing to the higher powers in the EEC for help winning progressive legislation like equal pay. But this attitude was self-defeating and disempowered workers. Why fight the Irish government when the EU Commission would order the Irish government to introduce legislation? But what happened when the Commission ordered measures that weren’t in the interests of the working class? It was a weak strategy, relying on legal declarations from the EU rather than on workers’ power, which the unions were intent on undermining after the militancy of the 1960s.

The Irish unions were enthusiastic about the adoption of the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers in December 1989, which was watered down by the request of the British Tory government under Margaret Thatcher. The Charter ended up with no legislative base in the Treaty of Rome and would not have any legally binding effect on any member states. This was in stark contrast to measures that helped the bosses. Neoliberalism was enshrined in the statutes of the union and strictly enforced.

The Single European Act of 1986 had taken this further. Lord Cockfield, Margaret Thatcher’s appointee as Commission Vice President, played a pivotal role in drafting a white paper that suggested removing 300 “barriers to trade”. Thatcher’s government was spearheading the charge for neoliberal capitalism - they wanted to privatise and outsource everything public. They wanted this neoliberal approach enshrined in Europe. The EU was to have a single market by December 1992 and the European Community would become, in sociologist Wolfgang Streeck’s words: “a machine for the liberalisation of European capitalism”.

Thatcher wasn’t a supporter of closer political union but she was a class warrior for the capitalist class and wanted a Europe fully committed to neoliberalism. They wanted to sell off anything public that wasn’t nailed down, privatise and outsource the continent to death. Governments, like those led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in Ireland, were only too happy to have the green light to enact neoliberal policies. Union leaders in Ireland negotiated the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, which tied workers hands just as attacks on our class were accelerating, and were thanked in the Dáil by then Minister for Labour Bertie Ahern.

A farmer, Raymond Crotty, took the Irish government to court arguing that this neoliberal agreement could only be ratified after a referendum had been put to the people and the constitution changed. For Thatcher this act represented her vision for Europe. She wanted: “Action to secure free movement of capital throughout the Community.” The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 1987 was proposed in the Dáil by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey on the 22nd of April 1987 on behalf of his minority Fianna Fáil government. The Irish government got Thatcher’s policies through with 69.9% voting in favour to 30.1% against, on a turnout of 44.1%.

But pro-capitalist policies were there from the very start, after all the EEC had started with German “ordoliberals” (the German variant of neoliberalism). Ordoliberals believe there is a role for the state in creating the best environment for capitalists. The neoliberals theoretically claim they want the state limited but in reality state power is prominent in enforcing capitalist rule in both cases. Just look at Thatcher’s use of state power to hammer the miners’ strike, or the role of the Irish state in bailing out European bankers after the crash. To get the Single European Act through Thatcher had to make some concessions to future monetary union which upset many in her Tory Party.

Thatcher was fighting for the implementation of policies dictated by the bosses. The European Round Table of Industrialists, made up of 60 European businesspeople, had met in April 1983 demanding greater European competitiveness (code for attacks on workers) and a single market. The meeting included the CEOs of Volvo, Thyssen, Olivetti, Fiat, Renault, Shell, Phillips, Nestlé and European Commissioner Étienne Davignon. In 2025 the Belgian federal prosecutor sought Davignon’s referral to a criminal court on war crimes charges for his role in the 1961 assassination of left wing leader Patrice Lumumba.

Another lobbying group was the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe which was founded in 1987. It was a powerful alliance of several hundred European multinational companies – including Philips, BP, Volkswagen, Fiat, Alcatel and Solvay – as well as the major European banks. Even today companies declaring over €1 million in annual lobbying costs collectively spend at least €343 million per year on lobbying the EU, according to the Corporate Europe Observatory.

The Russian revolutionary Lenin had long ago observed that “the more highly democracy is developed, the more the bourgeois parliaments are subjected by the stock exchange and the bankers.” Every nation state is a machine for the suppression of the workers at home, that acts to create the best environment for capital accumulation and acts in the interests of its national grouping of capitalists abroad. These European transnational state structures were every bit a tool in the hands of the rich as the state machine of each nation state. The only thing they were missing was a European military. But they’d baby step by baby step try to achieve that too. But the attempt to impose a transnational state structure over very different economies led to cracks.

The growing power of German corporations dominated European markets through the export of manufactured goods and so the Germans wanted a strong currency. In December 1991 the German Bundesbank raised interest rates to slow down the German economy. They were experiencing a boom after they’d ravaged East Germany, privatising and selling off everything they could. The destruction of East Germany came back to haunt the West when they realised they’d need to support the united economy. When other European states were forced to follow the Germans, they tanked their economies. This led to what’s known as “Black Wednesday” - an economic crash on the 16th of September 1992. Even Germany went into a recession. The so-called Rexrodt report called for a reduction in state spending and cuts to spending on health and unemployment. The German working class was going to pay for unification.

John Major’s Tory government had decided to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1990. In order to keep their currencies tied to the Germans other European nations had to hike interest rates. But this approach didn’t fit the other economies, particularly Britain which was in recession and facing high unemployment. Faith in the pound collapsed. Speculators bet against the currency. The British pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, as were the Italians. The British stayed outside EMU but the City of London grew to become Europe’s financial centre, tying British financial capital to Europe.

Meanwhile German workers’ wages were being held down leading to massive capital flows to banks in the periphery of Europe like Anglo Irish Bank in Ireland, or banks in Greece and Spain. This in turn helped fuel a property bubble. German banks alone had an estimated €135 billion invested in Ireland. The core countries were also able to use their greater investment in technology to produce more cheaply and capture far more of the total pool of profit, stealing from the less advanced countries. While Ireland had received €1.2bn per year in grants from EU regional and social funds from 1989 to 1999, when the banks crashed the EU started the threats and Ireland was to pay far more.

Philippe Legrain, an official of the European Commission, said that “It was outrageous of Germany, the European Commission and above all the ECB to threaten to force Ireland out of the euro… Throughout the crisis, the ECB has furthered the interests of French and German banks and proved itself to be unimpartial”. When the Troika - a group made up of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund - came to Ireland they threatened: “We don’t want you to default on these payments, it is your decision ultimately. But a bomb will go off and the bomb will go off in Dublin, not in Frankfurt”.

We put €64 billion into the banks. The Irish government would claim we recovered a lot of that money but when debt interest repayments were taken into account we still paid €50 billion that we’ll never get back.The Irish Independent called the arrival of the Troika “the week Ireland gave up its sovereignty” but they seemed to have failed to notice the occupation of the North and the ongoing subordination of the working class in Ireland, not only to our own local bosses, but to British, US and EU capital.

But the Irish rich and their political pets were never unwilling players in this exploitation. They were junior partners. The Irish ruling class has always been like a small mafia gang constantly out to impress the bigger players. That’s why they’d forced through every EU treaty they could. They could implement the policies they’d always wanted to and just claim their hands were tied by the EU. The Irish establishment’s ties to US capitalism were looked on with suspicion in Berlin and our votes on EU treaties were a cause for major frustration. But the Irish political class could be relied on to get the treaties through only breaking with Europe in exceptional cases, for example when they needed to prove to Apple Corporation that they wouldn’t take tax from them.

The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, representing the foundation of the European Union. The treaty merged the previously existing European Communities: the European Economic Community, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. The treaty sought to control government spending in subordinate nation states, insisting that inflation would stay at a rate no more than 1.5 percentage points higher than the average of the three best performing (lowest inflation) Member States. All governments were to maintain a “budgetary position” that avoided “excessive” government deficits defined in ratios to gross domestic product (GDP) of greater than 3% for annual deficits.

This created and gave power to a European Central Bank and gave it “a degree of independence from elected officials”. The bankers were above democratic oversight: “neither the ECB, nor a national central bank, nor any member of their decision-making bodies, shall seek or take instructions from Community institutions or bodies from any Government of a Member State or from any other body.” The treaty outlined a neoliberal model - it was about restrictive control of government spending and reducing barriers to lower labour costs. Labour “flexibility” was the main economic mechanism to adjust the economy, that is, lower wages and more precarious work. The policies enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty were used to destroy Ireland and Greece after the 2008 crash.

In June 1992 voters in Ireland went to the polls on Maastricht. 69.05% voted yes, while 30.95% voted no. The turnout was 57.31%. The highest no vote was in Dublin North West, which includes Finglas and Ballymun, with 43.1% against. Maastricht set the EU on a path towards greater centralised control over money, while German reunification shifted the balance of power in the direction of West German capitalists to an even greater extent. The economies of the former Eastern Bloc were subjected to neoliberal shock therapy, while most Labour style parties embraced neoliberalism and surrendered to Thatcher’s mantra that “there is no alternative!” In Ireland the 1990 Industrial Relations Act tied workers hand and foot, making effective strike action illegal.

Momentum is as important in economics and politics as it is in war and the neoliberal order’s expansion eastwards was also matched with an internal intensification of neoliberal economic policies as enshrined in Maastricht and subsequent EU treaties. The Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 saw member states hand over far more power to the EU, these included on civil and criminal law, defence and security and immigration. There was also greater integration of policing.

The vote in Ireland was 61.74% yes to 38.26% no on a turnout of just over 56%. Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats, Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left all supported the yes vote. Sinn Féin, the Greens and Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins were against. These debates carried over into the Nice Treaty of 2001 but voters gave the establishment a surprise - 53.87% voted no to Nice, while 46.13% voted yes. Turnout was only 32%. The formation of a European Rapid Reaction Force would compromise Irish neutrality and dominated the treaty debates. As an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph noted: “Neutrality in Ireland is like wheelchair access, motherhood and polio jabs: you attack it at your peril.” 40% of those surveyed in the aftermath of the referendum favoured strengthening Irish neutrality.

The treaty set up a new Political and Security Committee and gave it “political control and strategic direction of crisis management situations”. The government spoke about “voter confusion” but many working class people were rightly concerned about sovereignty and neutrality. There was a right wing campaign that focused on abortion laws but that wasn’t the main concern for working class voters. The far right focused on the EU as some kind of “liberal” institution and counterposed a return to old Ireland, the dark old days of Church abuse and cover up, but this was just an argument about methods of control over workers - the old authoritarian boot of the Bishops or the new neoliberal oppression of the EU bureaucrats. Socialists always rejected both.

In polling done after the vote voters listed reasons for voting no in the following order: 39% lack of information, 16% loss of independence, 12% neutrality with only 3% saying they voted no to prevent refugees and just 1% voting no because of abortion. The Irish Times moaned that: “Europe’s democratic deficit has come home to roost. Eurocrats careering down the fast track to integration need to pull into the next lay-by and take the time to explain the grand plan in ordinary language to ordinary citizens.” They wanted the EU to become better salespeople. The government had described opponents of the treaty as engaged in “hysterical rhetoric”. The no campaign thought that the vote signalled the death knell of the treaty, but they were wrong. Europe isn’t democratic and they would demand another vote. Democracy in Europe is about voting the way you’re told to vote.

Former Fine Gael Taoiseach John Bruton stated that it would be: “more democratic to vote twice than to try and find a way round enlargement” He added “We are a nation of just 4 million citizens, but we are affecting a Union of 470 million people” He has also suggested ending the practice of putting each new EU treaty to the popular vote. This was stupid logic - because 470 million didn’t get a vote why should the Irish? Why not have given the whole 470 million a choice? Wasn’t it problematic that Ireland was the only nation that got to vote on these key changes?

In the Irish Times on the 26th of May 2001. Mary Harney, then Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, insisted that Irish military participation in the European Rapid Reaction Force would be guarded by a “Triple Lock”. This would “require the approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas and under our laws we could only participate in UN-mandated operations.” Then in February 2002, the Minister for the Environment, Noel Dempsey, defined the Triple Lock during the second referendum debate as “being comprised of a unanimous European ministerial decision, a separate decision of the Irish Government and then a ‘UN mandate”. In the Dáil, the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, defined the ‘Triple Lock system’ as: “a UN mandate, it has to be a decision of this House and it must come within the remit of our Defence Acts.”

But if they were convinced the treaty was rejected because of confusion then why all these promises on neutrality? They ran the vote again but inserted the following text into the treaty:

“7° The State may ratify the Treaty of Nice amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the European Communities and certain related Acts signed at Nice on the 26th day of February 2001.

8° The State may exercise the options or discretions provided by or under Articles 1.6, 1.9, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13 and 2.1 of the Treaty referred to in subsection 7° of this section but any such exercise shall be subject to the prior approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas.

9° The State shall not adopt a decision taken by the European Council to establish a common defence pursuant to Article 1.2 of the Treaty referred to in subsection 7 of this section where that common defence would include the State.”

The European Council met in Seville and the fifteen member states adopted a joint declaration conferring to the Irish government the right to decide whether they would participate in military missions. The yes side won 62.89% of votes, the no side got 37.11% on a turnout of 49.47%. The establishment strategy was to assure voters that tailor made changes had been inserted especially to address the concerns of voters in Ireland. The government had focused on positive messaging during the first campaign but in the second they threatened voters with slogans like “ruin versus recovery” replacing “Europe - let’s be at the heart of it.”

Opposition to joining the EEC in the 1970s had been just 17%, the first Nice vote saw 54% oppose. Despite massive pressure from all the mainstream parties, the bosses and even the unions one third of voters consistently opposed EU treaties. These debates continued into the Lisbon Treaty vote in 2008 which saw 53.4% vote no to 46.6% yes. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions joined with Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour in advocating for a yes vote. Sinn Féin and the far left opposed. The Green Party was torn. Independent TDs like Dublin’s Tony Gregory campaigned for a no vote. The Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) advised its 45,000 members to vote No as did the small Independent Workers Union.

Bertie Ahern tried to link opposition to Europe to the far right “Eurosceptic” politics of Le Pen in France or Nigel Farage in Britain. The government even roped in German Chancellor Angela Merkel to visit the country during the campaign. The Lisbon Treaty was a dense series of amendments to previous treaties and even the Referendum Commission couldn’t explain the whole thing, this was confirmed when 22% of no voters said they wouldn’t vote for something they didn’t understand. Just like with Nice they ran the vote again. The government won by 67.1% to 32.9%, on a turnout of 59%. Panic surrounding the banking crisis meant the government could offer the EU as an economic safety net, the irony being the EU would be the very ones to crucify us.

The second campaign saw the Greens support the yes vote alongside all the usual establishment parties, including Labour. President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso said the vote was “a great day” for both Ireland and Europe. He’d threatened Ireland saying the country would lose its right to nominate an EU commissioner if it rejected the Lisbon Treaty for a second time. He said: “The only way to ensure that Ireland will always have a commissioner is to vote Yes to Lisbon… If not, of course we have to reduce the amount of commissioners. This is in the current treaties and we are legally obliged to do it.”

Barroso was one of those upper class 1970s student revolutionaries who reversed course in his latter years. As Prime Minister of Portugal he’d implemented vicious austerity from 2002 to 2004. He’d also joined George Bush and Tony Blair’s “coalition of the willing” to invade Iraq in 2003. After helping to massacre tens of thousands in Iraq he was President of the European Commission from 2004 to 2014. In 2005, Die Welt reported Barroso spent a week on the yacht of the Greek shipping billionaire Spiro Latsis a month before the Commission approved €10 million of Greek state aid for Latsis’s shipping company. He held democracy in contempt saying: “Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong.”

After saving the banking system he was rewarded with a job at Goldman Sachs when he stepped down as President. He was also on the steering group of the elite “Bilderberg Club” - a meeting of over 100 of the world’s richest capitalists, key politicians, academics and journalists that work together to push policy in a more neoliberal direction. The EU elite acted as loan sharks using the Irish banking crash as a chance to offer loans with many strings attached. Even the Irish Times called the arrival of the Troika - the International Monetary Fund, EU and European Central Bank - the week Ireland lost its sovereignty. But that was an exaggeration, the power had been handed over long before that.

In the press centre in Government Buildings on Sunday November 28th 2010 the IMF, EU and ECB representatives settled into seats just vacated by the Taoiseach and two cabinet ministers. The Troika presented the whole affair as a rescue of the irresponsible Irish who’d made a mess of the economy through reckless banking policies. But deregulation and neoliberalism were baked into the foundations of the EU itself and the Irish establishment couldn’t really be taken to task for jumping headfirst into an orgy fuelled by German cash and accelerated by removing financial controls.

The Irish banks owed €113 billion to German banks, €107 billion to British banks and a large amount to Belgian banks. The easy monetary policy of the ECB encouraged this orgy of lending. And the likes of Anglo Irish Bank head Sean Fitzpatrick pushed loans like a crack dealer. Working class people were hungry to buy their own homes because successive governments had run down public housing. The Irish banking crisis was part of an international capitalist crisis mediated by the policies of the Dáil. It was international, European and local. Ireland had given up control of monetary policy on the 1st of January 1999 when the euro became the currency. This meant that interest rates and the cost of credit were decided by the ECB. We had no local control over the rate of exchange.

The Lisbon Treaty no campaign had seen capitalists like millionaire Declan Ganley enter the fray. He was the head of a company called Broadnet holdings, but in the 1990s had made cash from Russian forests through Kipelova Forestry Enterprises which employed 6,000 people. His Rivada Networks had contracts with the Pentagon and was backed by Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palintir - another company with US intelligence and military contracts. Ganley was estimated to be worth $300 million. He started his political movement, Libertas, to campaign for a no vote on Lisbon.

Ganley went on to become the sponsor of the “America Week Ball”, an “elite” fundraising event all about pushing the Catholic Church as far to the right as possible. The directors of Rivada Networks included a former lieutenant general, two formal admirals and a former deputy-secretary of Homeland Security, who also sits on the board of LockHeed Martin, a defense contractor. Between 2004 and 2008, Rivada Pacific won contracts totaling $37.3 million from the U.S government. The idea that this conservative wing of the capitalist class is some kind of alternative to the EU is ridiculous. The debate between them and the EU bureaucrats is a matter of tactics - how best to exploit the working class and keep us down.

In 2012 the Fiscal Compact Treaty was put to the vote. This was another austerity treaty that outlawed any kind of expansionary economic policy, limiting budget deficits to 0.5% of GDP. John Douglas of the Mandate union said: “This Treaty has nothing to do with ‘good housekeeping’ or ‘managing the household budget’; it is about copper fastening into an internationally legally binding agreement, decades of austerity, social exclusion, mass long term unemployment and emigration – and a continuation of attacks on workers’ rights and the welfare system. It is not about what is good for Irish citizens, or the citizens of Europe, it is a treaty of the Right for the Right!” They got it through with 60.37% voting yes and 39.63% voting no.

The EU Water Framework Directive provoked the biggest social movement Ireland had seen since the bank bailout in 2008. Article 9 of the EU Water Framework Directive specifically required member states to take into account the principle of recovery of the costs of water services. They claimed their water pricing policies provided incentives for people to use water resources efficiently and that this would contribute to environmental objectives.

In reality they were preparing to hand water over to private companies and the environment was window dressing. There was a sub-clause which said the government could make up for charges by committing to saving water in other ways, the mass movement put them under so much pressure they needed a way out.

After a dozen marches over 100,000 strong, combined with direct action against meter installation and a huge boycott of bills, the government caved. The EU Commission said: “Ireland made a clear commitment to set up water charges to comply with the provisions of Article 9(1). Ireland subsequently applied water charges and the Commission considers that the Directive does not provide for a situation whereby it can revert to any previous practice.” Fianna Fáil, who were supporting Fine Gael from the opposition benches at the time, sought legal advice and produced a 33 page document that said Ireland could scrap the charge. The EU kept up the threats. In 2019 the government moved to reassure the European Commission that it was adhering to EU rules around water conservation through an excess charging regime.

The true nature of the EU was also evident in Greece where 32 general strikes had led to the rise of the left reformist party, Syriza. The party was led by so-called “Euro-Communists” who believed they could change Europe in a slow march through the institutions. Syriza - took 149 seats in the Greek parliament in early 2015. For the first time in more than 40 years, neither the Tory New Democracy Party nor the Labour-style PASOK, the two parties that had dominated Greek politics since the fall of a military junta in 1974, would be in power. The leader of the ECB, Mario Draghi, refused to extend credit to Greece without an austerity programme. Syriza signed an agreement with the EU that said that it would “refrain from any rollback” of austerity measures and would “honour Greece’s financial obligations to all their creditors.”

On July 5th 2015, Greek workers voted against further austerity measures which were being demanded by the European Union. Syriza responded by pushing through the cuts the workers of Greece had just rejected. European Council president Charles Michel, giving a speech 10 years later, said that “democracy and freedom also allow the people to say oxi! No!”. But argued that the EU was a “construction built through “Nos”’ that can, through discussion, be ‘turned into irreversible “Yeses””. It didn’t matter that the Greek people voted no. The EU would push ahead with what they wanted anyway. The Bank for International Settlements estimated that German banks loaned out $704 billion to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain before December 2009. The EU was there to punish the Greeks and the Irish to save German finance.

Of the €206.9 billion of the so-called “Greek bail-out” - €58.2 billion (28.13%) was used to recapitalise Greek banks while €101.331 billion (48.98%) went to the creditors of the Greek state. Greek and European bankers were bailed out, while the Greek people were hammered by the EU and the government they’d elected to fight the EU. The EU didn’t send riot cops to police Greek or Irish streets. National governments acted on their behalf. Public-sector employment was slashed by 30%. Greece lost more than 25% of its entire GDP. Unemployment climbed by 16% and youth unemployment peaked at 56%. Syriza gave the bankers €9 billion from 2016 to 2019 out of surpluses they’d taken out of the social welfare budget. This was a far cry from the radical 2014 Thessaloniki programme - which promised social transformation.

The Greek people suffered a decade of austerity with 3 bailout packages, the last of which was implemented by Syriza. The left government voted for all of the Troika’s ‘memorandums’ and introduced anti-worker laws, including restrictions on the right to strike. Syriza signed up to decades of austerity up to the year 2060. They had promised so much, but ended their term in office with 30% of people living in poverty. Voter turn-out fell to its lowest since 1974 as people turned away from politics in disgust, betrayal leading to deep bitterness. The fallout from the Syriza betrayal led to a fall in votes for the whole left. While the EU laid waste to Ireland and Greece through vicious austerity they then acted surprised when anti-EU sentiment in Britain was captured by the right and eventually led to their departure from the EU.

On the 23rd of June 2016 Britain voted to leave the EU. The vote was proposed by Tory leader David Cameron to placate the hard right in his party. The years following the bank bailouts had led to a further hollowing out of the sham democracy we get under capitalism. The growth of the hard right meant the Tories, as the traditional party of British capitalism, broke with their own class to maintain their political influence and capture voters. The City of London wanted to stay in the EU but the Tories couldn’t stay in power if they continued to lose voters, so then began a mad dash to the right.

All the major players in British capitalism were against Brexit. Nigel Farage’s gift to the world was to pull the political spectrum to the right as the Tories competed with his UK Independence Party (UKIP). Millionaire Farage, who had previously worked as a commodities trader, was a member of the Tory Party from 1978 until 1992. He founded UKIP a year later asking the infamous Tory racist Enoch Powell to join.

He was elected to the European Parliament a few times and elected leader of UKIP in 2006. He called the Tory Party “social-democratic” and criticized the EU from an anti-immigrant point of view, disguising its real nature as a capitalist machine because his party was fully committed to capitalism. UKIP benefited from a sense of political alienation felt by working class voters. All polls showed that the poorer people were the more likely they were to vote Leave. Most of the trade unions lined up with British capitalism and called for a Remain vote, leaving the field open to the right wing critique of the EU to be the only critique people heard. Even Jeremy Corbyn refused to come out against the EU, although he at least avoided sharing platforms with Tories.

The Remain establishment tried to make the whole debate about racism and not about the devastating consequences austerity had had on working class life. This was amplified in the wake of the terrible murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. Obviously racist rhetoric from the likes of Farage had an impact but while London voted to Remain, every other region and the whole of Wales voted to Leave. The very working class communities that had been attacked by Thatcherism. A 2017 study published in the journal Economic Policy showed that the Leave vote was greater in areas which had the lowest incomes and high unemployment, a strong tradition of past manufacturing employment, and in which the population had fewer qualifications.

The left was failing to articulate a clear class opposition to the neoliberal EU that could link opposition to the EU with real working class values. Without that voice the debate was dominated by two wings of the Tory Party, containing the debate within a capitalist framework. The racist line of attack on the EU from the likes of Farage was more popular among those who didn’t work than those who did. People who didn’t usually vote voted Leave. Older, demoralised, working class voters were more likely to vote Leave too. 33% of Asian voters and 27% of black voters chose Leave. 35% of Labour voters voted Leave.

That 35% could have been mobilised, along with others, to defend left values and stand against all wings of the capitalist class, including the EU. After an increasingly bitter debate the narrow vote saw 51.89% vote Leave while 48.11% voted Remain on a turnout over 70%. In the 6 counties of Ireland the vote was won by Remain with 55.78% to 44.22%. Some on the left echoed the EU by calling for a re-run of the vote.

The argument after the referendum was that the left were right to support Remain because most workers in places like London voted Remain. The problem with this was it suggested the victory for the hard right was inevitable and the only option was to side with the City of London and play down legitimate criticisms of the EU. This was indicative of a left that didn’t want to make hard arguments or go out and fight to win poor people. It was easier to make it all about racism (just as Farage wanted!).

The Brexit vote came at a turning point in international struggle. In the years immediately after the bank bailout the left had been in the driving seat of mass movements against austerity. There had been a rising arc of struggle for a number of years. Now the right were able to grab the initiative. There’s no point mourning that the far left was too small to launch an effective anti-EU campaign and that therefore supporting Remain was the only option. If we say “we don’t yet have a lever big enough to be decisive” and then support the City of London, David Cameron , the TUC, Labour and the EU, why not say the same thing on every issue and give up principles altogether? If left strategy just becomes about picking a camp from among our rulers then they will always win.

The social movements of 2008 to 2016 had been in the hands of the likes of Syriza and Jeremy Corbyn. Their reformist politics wasn’t capable of taking on the capitalist system. Their capitulation gave the initiative to the right, a tide that accelerated after the election of Donald Trump in the USA. But many on the left spoke about the vote as if the whole post vote process was one where the left couldn’t have intervened to fight to shape the exit, which was going to be on capitalist, Tory, terms. The TUC has 48 affiliated unions with a total of about 5.5 million members.

If those workers were mobilised during Brexit negotiations they could have had a decisive impact on the terms of the agreement and the policies of any British government, Tory or otherwise. The EU tried to make the process painful, punishing British workers for the vote.

In Belfast and Derry the Brexit debate created fear and uncertainty which Sinn Féin played on to attack the radical left, even calling the EU their “gallant partners”. But the idea that anything resembling sovereignty could be won within the EU was a pipedream at best and a masking of the authoritarian nature of the beast at worst. Just look at how the EU treated Greece or their attitude to the fight for independence in Catalonia. The EU sat back and allowed Spain to crush the movement. Ironically, the pro-EU stance taken by Sinn Féin allowed them to position themselves as champions of a United Ireland - under the wing of the EU. This is not real independence. We can’t just trade one Empire for another.

The Tories had no plan if they actually succeeded and won the vote. They tore themselves apart afterwards, with David Cameron resigning immediately, followed by Theresa May who was then replaced by Brexiteer and upper class clown Boris Johnson. This chaos from above had consequences below and workers were made to pay for the incompetence of the Tories. By 2022 British workers would be involved in the highest number of strikes for decades. Unfortunately, this led to the return of Labour to government and another round of betrayal which handed the initiative back to the right. The Brexit vote cracked the British state machine and led to the call for a second independence referendum in Scotland and renewed calls for a United Ireland. Britain finally left the EU on the 31st of January 2020, just before the pandemic hit. The EU had initially demanded Britain pay a £52 billion “divorce bill”.

When Labour won the general election in 2024 Keir Starmer proposed a “Brexit Reset” deal with the EU that involved a defence pact as the first step towards securing British access to a new €150 billion EU rearmament fund. Labour requested faster access for British travellers who will be able to use e-gates at airports in Europe. Labour pandered to the right asking for more cooperation on crime and immigration, including access to the EU facial recognition data, a key request made specially by Starmer.

The Brexit deal saw them have to grant EU fishers access to British waters for an additional 12 years. The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations said it was “very disappointed” with the deal. The EU’s Ursula Von der Leyen described the Brexit deal as “a historic moment … opening a new chapter in our unique relationship”.

War and imperialism

The Brexit debate was a battle between two imperialist powers - the declining British state and the EU. Both dominate Ireland. Sinn Féin’s position was to use the fear generated by Brexit to launch a pro-EU call for a United Ireland, but this simply exchanged subordination to one imperialism for another. There are many sides to the imperialism of the EU - there is the alliance with US imperialism and NATO. Secondly, there is the EU and its component nations as imperialist powers in their own right. Thirdly, there is the internal exploitation of the people of the peripheral EU countries by the core.

The Irish ruling class are linked economically to London, Boston and Berlin. This gives them some autonomy from the EU (like when they defend a US corporation from having to pay EU mandated taxes), but generally they are junior partners in this imperialist framework and work with the British, EU and US regimes to exploit Irish workers to the benefit of Irish and international capital. EU neoliberal policies help Irish billionaires like Denis O’Brien and Larry Goodman as much as they benefit French corporations buying up Irish nursing homes. Therefore, imperialism isn’t an excuse to abstain from the daily fight of Irish workers against Irish bosses and the state the bosses puppeteer. It’s the same fight.

This was evident when billionaire Denis O’Brien told the Valentia lecture, a conference on trans-atlantic undersea cables, that we should join NATO. “I would advocate that we need to be joining Nato. Given everything that’s going on in the world today, we’re better off being part of Nato and biting that chestnut than not being with them,” O’Brien said. The billionaire has millions invested in undersea cables and wants us to protect his investment. The Irish state is a machine that acts in his interests as well as those of US or EU corporations.

The US helped to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 and deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers across Europe to challenge the USSR. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc NATO wanted to show it could operate in Europe and did so in the 1990s in Yugoslavia. NATO troops then took part in the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. 23 EU states out of 27 are NATO members. Finland and Sweden, recently joining. The EU has its own mutual defence clause in Articles 42(7) and 222 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), respectively.

But as an EU factsheet explained: “EU Battlegroups strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy in military terms, thus also strengthening NATO”. EU Battlegroups, established in 2004, are multinational, military units, comprising 1500 personnel and can currently be deployed in a 6000km radius around Brussels.

The mutual defence clause states that: “If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States. Commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation.”

Commandant Liam McDonnell, an Irish army officer deployed in Hungary with the EU Battlegroup, said he and his fellow troops were part of the “European Union’s projection of military power”. While the battlegroup has never been deployed, Irish troops have joined EU missions in Chad, Mali and Somalia. Mali was a former French colony where EU troops trained Malian armed forces and members of the G5 Sahel, a counter-terrorism force. France wants the resources of the Sahel (the region from coast to coast South of the Sahara). They want oil and uranium, which the French energy company Areva has been extracting for decades in neighboring Niger.

The war on terror is an excuse to get boots on the ground under an EU flag. The French had to leave after a military coup. The EU’s new Rapid Deployment Capacity is now operational. The EU said: “This marks a significant step in the EU’s ability to act quickly and decisively whenever a crisis erupts. The EU RDC provides a robust, flexible and scalable military instrument of up to 5,000 troops that can be deployed in a swift manner.”

The Russian revolutionary Lenin once wrote on the idea of the United States of Europe, that: “A United States of Europe under capitalism is tantamount to an agreement on the partition of colonies.” He understood that the unity of imperialist powers like France, Germany and Britain would just see them cooperating to compete with US imperialism to carve out spheres of influence. The Germans in particular were intent on carving out economic power behind the military cover provided by the US and NATO but have recently been more brazen about massive remilitarisation. Lenin explained how corporate competition spills over into using military power to secure markets and capture resources:

“If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.”

The EU operates in the interests of the giant monopoly corporations that dominate Europe. This is why EU enlargement was coordinated with NATO expansion. As Perry Anderson noted: “Expansion to the East was piloted by Washington: in every case, the former Soviet satellites were incorporated into NATO, under US command, before they were admitted to the EU. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had joined NATO already in 1999, five years before entry into the Union; Bulgaria and Romania in 2004, three years before entry; even Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltics, a gratuitous month – just to rub in the symbolic point? – before entry (planning for the Baltics started in 1998).”

US President Donald Trump pulling US military support was an excuse the EU were waiting for. Ursula Von Der Leyen said: “Europe is ready to massively increase its defense spending.” She was speaking at the launch of the EU plan to “ReArm Europe”, at a cost of €800 billion. Workers across Europe were suffering a cost of living crisis and budget rules would be used to curb spending on social needs like on housing. But when it came to arms, they could spend. “If you want to be autonomous, if you want to give meaning to the word sovereignty, you need to be independent from third parties and be as self-sufficient as possible in this type of capability,” said Patrice Caine, CEO of arms manufacturer Thales.

The European Commission’s white paper on European Defense Readiness 2030 identified Europe’s “main production deficiencies” as air and missile defense, artillery systems, ammunition and missiles, drones and counter-drone systems, military mobility, AI, quantum, cyber, & electronic warfare. The arms companies are about to make a killing, in every possible way. It is in this context that the attacks on Irish neutrality coming from the Irish government are a disgrace.

They want to line us up with the EU as it emerges as a fully fledged imperialist power, ready to take to the world stage to use violence to leverage raw materials, resources and capital from rival powers. Yet many on the European left fall for the mildly “Social Democratic” veneer of the EU, quoting workers’ rights legislation, or moves to implement hate speech laws (which will be used against the left and wider workers’ movement).

“Liberal imperialism reigns in western Europe, and they are trying to force their worldview on countries that think differently. American Democrats and often international courts are also involved in this,” so said far right Hungarian leader Victor Orban. If the left fails to articulate a clear, principled and working class opposition to the EU then pro-capitalist authoritarians can posture as opposition.

His claim the EU is “liberal” is laughable. It’s a monstrous neoliberal machine, just look at Frontex for example. Frontex was created in 2004 and has been known to violate human rights - sending refugees back to Libya where human rights violations were taking place, they withdrew ships from areas where they knew people would drown, they also took people who had made it to land and cast them back out into the middle of the sea. Or just look at EU support for the Apartheid state of Israel, or the fact that 1.3 million people are homeless across the EU while they’re spending billions on arms.

By calling the EU “liberal” Orban helps the EU to disguise its true capitalist predatory nature. As someone who is pro-capitalist he wants to keep his critique to a superficial level in case he undermines his own capitalist intentions. Real sovereignty can’t be won by the likes of Nigel Farage or Victor Orban, they would just pull workers into a different kind of capitalist nightmare. Real sovereignty means kicking Britain and the EU out of Ireland. The Irish bourgeois class are tied to Boston, London and Berlin by a thousand economic threads. They have some autonomy within an imperialist framework they are happy to cooperate with.

Look at water charges - it started with an EU directive, then the Irish government moved to implement it, they gave the contract for water meters to a company owned by Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien. The Irish Gardaí batoned water protesters in Coolock and Jobstown in Dublin. The EU issues directives, the Irish state implements. That means elements of the left who use imperialism as an excuse to avoid hard work on day to day issues affecting working class people aren’t actually helping to build a lever that can overthrow the Dáil and Stormont. A real anti-imperialist strategy involves recognising the connection between the fight for housing, on the cost of living, on workers’ wages and the ultimate goal of workers’ revolution.

We have to overthrow the Irish state. In the North London issues directives and Stormont implements. Pull down the Dáil and Stormont and replace them with a 32 County Workers’ Republic. To win the argument on the EU we have to explain to other workers how their basic needs, on housing, healthcare or the cost of living, can’t be met within an EU framework. No piece of paper should stand before the needs of the working class in Ireland. If we have to choose between housing everyone and tearing up the EU’s treaties, then the piece of paper goes. A Sinn Féin left government operating within parameters set by Irish, EU and US capitalism will not deliver for working class people, not economically not in terms of real sovereignty. Real sovereignty can only be won by the working class and by overthrowing our own ruling class.

The Red Network wants to do the hard work necessary to build a fighting left that can win the argument on the EU within the wider working class. From union work to housing campaigns, from Palestine protests to standing in elections, we will use every means necessary to fight. A 32 County Workers’ Republic would tear up EU treaties and call on the workers of Greece, Spain and all European nations to rise in our defense. The EU is a prison house of nations, it’s time for a jail break.