This week’s vote in Ireland whether to accept or reject the conditions of the European Union Fiscal Compact, a treaty meant to promote financial stability and responsibility through punitive measures and supranational controls, was a stirring of an issue that goes dormant as member states shuttle in queue and declare what they expect their prerogatives to be.
All countries, with the exception of the UK and the Czech Republic, have now assented and one can expect the process to lurch quietly towards enforcement next year. Ireland, uniquely contrary and potentially ruinous, had a pivotal decision, not so much for deigning to participate, but for letting the voters of Ireland make that mandate—being the only EU member to put the Fiscal Compact up to a plebiscite. Public engagement results in education and a better understanding of the expectations and consequences. The Irish constitution has to now be amended in order to conform to the terms of the compact, which demands that signatories stay just under budget or face fines and surrender trade and tariff matters to the EU government. States still retain control over tax regimes and public projects but it is a legitimate question how meaningful that exercise of prerogative and priorities are still when tethered within the latitude of treaty rules and whether the conditions of this pact are going beyond the reserved rights of individual sovereignty as put out in the language of the Lisbon Treaty (Vertrag von Lissabon). Rejection would mean that Ireland or any other dissenter would be ineligible to receive emergency aid and rescue funds. The EU has the bully pulpit, along with the deportment of its top performers, but also has a sloshing budget of billions with only nominal and ethereal accountability and negatively reinforced, and it seems to me that this poses more of a danger than a deterrent, like keeping a standing army in times of peace. 
