On the other hand, as this mentioned article states and Cosmix writes, organisational issues are harming the EU.

I’m quite positive that the Irish didn’t had a clue about the Lisbon Treaty, same goes (imho) for France and Netherlands in 2004. The voters in every case did vote in the strain of expansion fears and internal affairs. The EU is a *very* positive thing we should embrace that. Free market doesn’t mean no rules.

I don’t know what the future will bring but this one was bad. Let’s hope that European leaders learned the lesson.

As I said before, I am not one of those that argue against enlargement; many europhiles have considered enlargement to be an anglosaxon lever against the ‘european project’; i.e. a way to prevent a stronger Union from happening through the dissonance more voices would bring. I disagree with that opinion and I’d love to see an enlarged EU that works. Nevertheless, I cannot ignore the fact that today we’re at the worst possible point in the history of the Union, both in terms of organisational and political will and public opinion of its fundamental institutions throughout the continent.

I’ve written about this (see here [in Hellenic]) in 2006, expressing my concerns regarding the institutional and organisational well-functioning of the EU post enlargement.

Given that I do believe enlargement should have been part of the strategic EU policy, I draw the exact opposite conclusions from the facts: in my view, the European Union should have agreed upon a well-specified plan to bolster both the economic, but also the democratic institutions of candidate members, through the controlled and audited provision of economic assistance and through the provision of clear and rigid formal requirements with regards to corruption, freedom of speech, the democratic processes etc.

This should have been followed by the organisational/normative reform necessary in a 27 member Union. The whole process should have been transparent and involving for every European citizen.

After all this had been done, countries should be admitted to the Union, not before; as full members enjoying the benefits of the citizens of France, Germany, Spain or Hellas; that is, without the hypocritical restrictions people from Poland, the Baltic states and others faced in 2004-2005. And of course without the embarrassing corruption that the EU now has to tolerate from countries like Bulgaria (it’s not like the Eurocrats in Brussels had no idea), or indeed the embarrassing and dangerous deadlocks possible under the existing Treaties.

I’m pretty confident that the enlargement of the EU should not have happened in the way it did. Moreover, had it been planned properly it would probably not have happened as soon as it did. And that’d be good. But to argue that xenophobia and immigration are the reasons we should be done with enlargement as quickly as possible indicates complete ignorance of the reasons immigration and xenophobia exist, ignores the realities of organising a 27-member quasi-political and economic bloc and suggests no longterm solutions to the issues at hand. I won’t go on as this is slightly off-topic and I’ve already written some more on this matter on this blog before.

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11436623

You seem to argue that the Irish debated the ins and outs of the treaty and finally decided on whether they wanted to adopt it.

On the contrary. What I’m arguing is that the Irish didn’t really know (let alone debate) before casting their votes — be it ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. (see second and fourth paragraphs). Most of the comments I read from Irish people on the BBC indicated that the ‘Yes’ votes were cast only on the basis that ‘the EU has done us good, we should repay them by voting Yes’ and the ‘No’ votes largely were cast by people that had no clue whatsoever what the treaty would actually achieve and were misguided by misleading campaigns against it.

Anti-EU feeling is to be expected throughout Europe by specific social groups and parts of the political spectrum. Ireland is probably one of the few places in Europe where anti-EU feelings should be minimal; it’s a country that has benefited immensely from the EU and is now more prosperous than ever, in part due to its EU membership. Nevertheless, the problem I’m highlighting is not that the Irish rejected the Treaty per se. The problem is that post the 2004 expansion, the EU has i) lost track of its direction, ii) evolved its geopolitical structure without adjusting its institutional, normative and legislative frameworks to cope with it. And to top it all off, it did all this without — at any point — engaging with European citizens directly (or in some cases even adequately informing them of what’s at stake and what’s happening).