Saturday
17May2008
IRELAND TO ENDORSE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION...
Saturday, May 17, 2008 at 12:51PM
According to the latest poll, the Republic of Ireland electorate will do as the EU requires and produce a definitive "YES" vote in favour of the European Constitution Treaty. It was found that 47% of respondents said they do not yet know whether they will cast their ballot for or against the proposed EU document, with 35% in favour and 18% against. I reckon that although that undecided number seems large, it will break down 50:50 between the camps so resulting in the YES lobby easily carrying the day. The reality is that the political establishment in the Republic act like pimps, selling the Euro-ideals. It's ironic that a referendum is being held in the one country in the EU which is slavishly pro-EU, quite happy to sell its sovereignty for a mess of euro baubles.
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Reader Comments (12)
I think the "don't knows" will break more towards the anti side. I still have high hopes we will defeat this. Most of the people I know are voting against and they are not all traditional sceptics.
I agree, Henry. This survey doesn't reflect what I hear from what are otherwise pro-EU people.
But who knows.
And is anything more slavish than letting Gordon Brown renege on the referendum he promised? We might vote away our sovereignty but yours will be just as gone and you won't even get to vote.
Remember, Henry, before the Nice Treaty referendum, when it looked like the entire Conservative Monday Club and the staff of the Daily Telegraph had decamped towards Erin's shores to fight the good fight for freedom with, inter alia, Republican Sinn Fein!
May ye live in farsical times!
Wt your permission David, I would like to post an article by Anthony Coughlan which describes the effect of the new treaty
Lisbon: a major historical moment
It is surely a major historical moment by any standard: this attempt to turn four million Irish people and nearly 500 million Europeans into real citizens of a real EU federation, without most of them being aware of it, and without any but us Irish being allowed to have a direct say on itLisbon would turn Ireland into a province or region of an EU superstate and make us citizens of it first rather than of our Republic.
THE PUSH to turn the European Union into a superpower with many of the features of a federal state goes back to the second World War, when the continental imperial powers - France, Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium - experienced the trauma of defeat and occupation. After 1945 they found themselves much diminished in a world dominated by the US and the Soviet Union.
One response of their political elites was to decide that if they could no longer be big powers individually on their own, they would seek to be a big power collectively.
The Lisbon Treaty is the constitutional culmination of the federalist project which has been the political dynamic of European integration ever since the Schumann Declaration of 1950 proclaimed the European Coal and Steel Community to be "the first step in the federation of Europe".
The EU commemorates that declaration on May 9th each year - Europe Day. Fifty years later, in 2004, Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt proclaimed the EU constitution to be "the capstone of a European federal state".
When the French and Dutch rejected the EU constitution in their 2005 referendums, the prime ministers and presidents decided to give the EU the constitutional form of a federation indirectly rather than directly. This the Lisbon Treaty does by amending the two existing European treaties instead of replacing them entirely by a formally titled constitution. But the legal-political effect is the same.
The first sentence of the amendment which the Government is asking us to insert into the Irish Constitution provides that the State may ratify the Treaty of Lisbon and "may be a member of the European Union established by virtue of that treaty".
This sentence shows that the European Union which would be established by the Lisbon Treaty, although having the same name, is constitutionally and politically a different union from that which we are currently members of, which was established by the 1993 Maastricht Treaty.
The second sentence of the constitutional amendment would then give the constitution of this post-Lisbon union supremacy over the Irish Constitution: "No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by membership of the European Union referred to in subsection 10° of this section, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the said European Union or by institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the treaties referred to in this section, from having the force of law in the State."
This post-Lisbon EU would have the constitutional form of a supranational European federation - in effect a state - in which Ireland and the other member states would have the constitutional status of provincial or regional states. From the inside the union would look like something based on treaties between states. From the outside it would look like a state itself. This constitutional revolution in both the union and its member states would be brought about by four legal steps which are set out in the treaty, as they were in the previous EU constitution.
Firstly, Lisbon would give the post-Lisbon union full legal personality separate from and superior to its member states, so that it could act as a state in the international community of states, sign treaties with other states in all areas of its powers, have its own political president, foreign minister (high representative), diplomatic service, embassies and public prosecutor, and make most of our laws.
Secondly, Lisbon would abolish the European Community which we joined in 1973 and which still exists as part of the present EU, and replace it by the new union. Thirdly, it would give the new union a unified constitutional structure so that all areas of government would come within its aegis either actually or potentially. The only major feature of a fully developed federation which the EU would then lack would be the power to force its member states to go to war against their will.
Finally, Lisbon would make us all real citizens for the first time of this post-Lisbon union, rather than our being notional or honorary EU "citizens" as at present. One can only be a citizen of a state and all states must have citizens. As real EU citizens we would owe it the duty of obedience to its laws and loyalty to its authority over and above our obedience and loyalty to Ireland and its Constitution and laws.
We would retain our national Irish citizenship, but our new dual citizenship post-Lisbon would not be citizenship of two different states, but of the federal and regional/provincial levels of one state, as is normal in such classical federations as the US, federal Germany, Switzerland and Canada. The Irish Constitution would remain - just as the various states of the federal US still retain their constitutions - but it would be subordinate to the EU constitution.
One indicator of the constitutional change which Lisbon would bring about is that Members of the European Parliament, who under the present treaties are "representatives of the peoples of the member states brought together in the Community", would become "representatives of the union's citizens" in the post-Lisbon EU.
Another is that the European Council, the summit meetings of prime ministers and presidents, would become an EU institution for the first time, legally bound to forward the interests of the union, not of the national governments or electorates concerned, so that its acts or its failing to act would be subject to judicial review by the EU Court of Justice.
Couple these constitutional changes with the power-political changes which Lisbon would bring about and it is clear that the Lisbon referendum confronts us with a momentous choice. The most important power-political change is that Lisbon would base lawmaking in the post-Lisbon union primarily on population size. This would double Germany's relative voting strength on the Council of Ministers from its present 8 per cent to 17 per cent. It would increase the voting weight of France, Britain and Italy from their present 8 per cent to 12 per cent each and it would halve Ireland's weight from 2 per cent to 0.8 per cent.
As well as being deprived of a voice on the EU Commission, the body which proposes all EU laws, for five years out of every 15, a little noticed feature of Lisbon's provisions is that when it comes to Ireland's turn to have a commissioner, we would lose the right to decide who he or she would be. Henceforth Ireland would be able to make "suggestions" only, for the new commission president to decide.
It is surely a major historical moment by any standard: this attempt to turn four million Irish people and nearly 500 million Europeans into real citizens of a real EU federation, without most of them being aware of it, and without any but us Irish being allowed to have a direct say on it.
If Lisbon is ratified it is bound to lead to major democratic reactions across Europe when people discover that their national independence and democracy have been filched from them. That is why the best course is for us to vote No for our own sakes and for Europe's.
Strong stuff Henry, but I think unless people see significant changes to their daily lives, most people will not really care. Only when people see genuine fearful oppression do they become activated.
Henry94 -
Thanks for the article. It explains the actual significance of the EU constitution precisely.
Ah well, at least the legitimacy of civil disobedience will soon be beyond question.
Pete
Soon ?. Surely it was beyond question from 1972 ?
I would probably vote against Lisbon, but this article is sensationalist and misleading.
>>One response of their political elites was to decide that if (the continental imperial powers) could no longer be big powers individually on their own, they would seek to be a big power collectively.<<
This is total nonsense dreamed up by the writer; there is no historical basis for such a claim. The original motivation was to prevent the political situation that led to WWII - by forming a fixed economic alliance.
Great post Henry.
Let's stay optimistic. The people of Europe have never wanted the end of their nation states. When they realise what has happened they will take revenge on the politicians who conned them and the EU will reverse into a free-trade area. This will happen by 2015 at latest.
Colm -
It was for me, but clearly not beyond question for others.
Noel Cunningham -
That's the one part of the article which is off-beam, but it doesn't detract from the point being made as to the significance of the document.
The actual origins of the EU lie at Verdun. The French almost lost because their field guns were much inferior to those of the Huns. Louis Loucheur was an industrialist who had been made the armaments minister in Paris. He witnessed Verdun and found that a shortage of steel was severely affecting their ability to wage war. He saw then that military skill was no more important than industrial capacity in modern warfare.
It was he who promoted the idea of a joint Franco-Hun steel and coal capability which would hamper their ability to wage war on each other. From this we had the European Steel and Coal Community of 1950, pre-curser of both the EU and certain future despotism.
Hmmmm, very interesting and (for me) new idea, Pete.
I often wonder, though, where the drive for this increasing political unification comes from. Politicians seem to give the impression that there's no going back, that the status quo is also untenable and without further political and economic convergence our goose is truly cooked.
I'm sure someone has traced the development of this superstate theory. I'd like to see it.
Much as I like the EU, or rather liked the EC, I hope the people of Ireland now blow the whistle.