What did the EU contribute to the Northern Ireland peace process?

Analysis: The EU played a subtle but important backstage role in building peace in Northern Ireland 

By Giada Laganá, Cardiff University.

The European Union has generally been viewed as having had little influence on the Northern Ireland peace process. For example, the EU never played a frontstage role in mediating and discussing with paramilitary groups. Furthermore, it did not sit around the negotiation tables when the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was drawn up. Moreover, it is true that only a minority in Northern Ireland - notably those supporting John Hume's SDLP - believed that Brussels could offer a neutral arena in which Northern Ireland’s communal and political differences could be overcome.

The EU role, then, has always been reduced to one of mainly providing financial packages to Northern Ireland, particularly in the form of the PEACE programmes. This view has rarely been challenged, at least not before the 2016 Brexit referendum’s results.  

However, the EU essentially contributed to building peace in Northern Ireland by playing a subtle backstage role. In my new book The European Union and the Northern Ireland peace process, I explain how common EU membership and regular meetings in Brussels at the beginning of the 1980s fostered positive Anglo-Irish relations.

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From RTÉ Archives, David Davin-Power reports for RTÉ News on the historic Good Friday Agreement in 1998 

The organisation of the European Parliament into political groups instead of nationalities contributed to bringing Nationalists and Unionists closer. Political discourses and policies at the EU level translated into a more co-operative approach to resolving the conflict at the local and national level. They paved the way to cross-border cooperation with the Republic of Ireland, peace initiatives aimed at cross-community reconciliation, and new power-sharing institutions reoriented from conflict to peace.

All these mechanisms had been perfectly understood and mastered by Hume, who was also able to make a united front with the DUP's Ian Paisley and UUP's Jim Nicholson to involve the EU in the Northern Ireland situation. The preparations of what would be later known as the EU PEACE financial package for Northern Ireland were done in close cooperation with the three Northern Irish MEPs, who later paid a joint visit to the then president of the EU Commission, Jacques Delors. That the EU PEACE package has survived the challenge of Brexit is proof of its positive impact and general appreciation.

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From RTÉ Archives, Michael Lally reports for RTÉ News on the visit of EEC president Jacques Delors to Ireland in 1988

The EU had to be a backstage player. First, subtlety was essential for the EU role to be tolerated by the UK and Irish governments, as well as by the unionist community. Second, the EU approach was aimed at co-existing with differing political perspectives not at changing them. Dialogue and mutual understanding - gained through a greater engagement of people with the EU programmes and financial resources made available - were considered as having a much more positive effect on peacebuilding in the long term. The well-being of Northern Irish people was at the core of the EU approach to ameliorate the Northern Ireland conflict and the community’s firm belief was that peace had to be rooted within Northern Irish society and then filtered through the power sharing institutions.

This new understanding of the historical role played by the EU in the Irish peace process speaks to the history of the EU as a global actor that promotes prevention and resolution of conflicts as a mean to support peace and prosperity around the world. Numerous political actors have indeed called for a more defined EU strategy to build peace and to improve the coordination and effectiveness of its instruments across peacebuilding activities in Northern Ireland and around the world.

In this regard, there are certainly lessons to be drawn from the Northern Ireland that have been so far overlooked. The EU was able to continuously adapt to the ever-changing context in Northern Ireland. It modified and reinvented its initiatives to involve the many new actors and institutions that grew up around the peace process. This suggests that a continuous wider historical and contextual reflection is needed to achieve a long-term peace that includes all people and all political views.

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From EURACTIV, Gina McIntyre from the Special EU Programmes Body on what the EU has done to promote the peace process in Northern Ireland

EU peacebuilding initiatives, and the PEACE programmes in particular, focused on the creation and nurturing of constructive human relationships, rather than instrumental and technical responses to the conflict. The PEACE programmes are a unique instrument that has engaged with the most, as well as the least, marginalised people in a post-violent Northern Ireland. This shows how the EU seeks to engage with difference, rather than relying on universal blueprints.

Most importantly, the example of the EU’s engagement in Northern Ireland shows how building peace is an on-going historical practice that needs to be incorporated into any renewed agenda for peace. As with the search for a sustainable peace in Bosnia, Timor-Leste, or Colombia, this is a reason not to announce failure after so much effort, but to try even harder for its renewal and success. To quote the former EU commission president José Manuel Barroso, building peace is a "marathon not a sprint".

This new knowledge on the EU’s role in the Northern Ireland peace process shows that the EU was a much more significant actor in the peace process than it has ever been suggested. It also shows that any attempt to develop peace in post-conflict societies must remember that its roots lie in the lives and consent of real people, who have the capacity to make choices within their own context and aspire to it.

Dr Giada Laganá is a Research Assistant at the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data at Cardiff University. She is the author of The European Union and the Northern Ireland Peace Process (Palgrave McMillan)

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ