Freedom of Movement: the Common Travel Area between Ireland and Britain and the Treaty of Amsterdam

Ireland’s choice to give priority to the Common Travel Area (CTA) over lifting border checks on European Union (EU) routes under the free movement provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam is of interest in two strategic contexts. First, there is Northern Ireland, to which I shall return. The second is the resilience of Ireland’s independence, both in terms of its historical relationship with the UK and its use of the EU as a means of escaping from that relationship. On the one hand, the Common Travel Area itself is sometimes taken to be symptomatic of a neo-colonial link between the two islands, revealed as still there – despite Ireland’s success in the EU – in that Ireland’s freedom of manoeuvre over Amsterdam was conditioned by the UK’s stance. Moreover, questions have been raised about the possibility of a new double dependency – on future British decisions about the Common Travel Area and on the goodwill of European partners in not vetoing any desire to take part in some free movement developments.1 On the other hand, the public position is that Ireland succeeded in negotiating for itself the most reasonable of all possible worlds: freedom to continue to benefit from the Common Travel Area; freedom to ‘opt-in’ to Amsterdam when indicated by the national interest; clear statements of the distinctiveness of the Irish position from that of the British; and a unique method whereby Ireland may put an end to its ‘opt-outs’.2