Last week Anthony Coughlan, director of the Irish National Platform wrote an "Open letter" to Irish Times Editor Geraldine Kennedy re Ireland's Lisbon Treaty referendum re-run, protesting at the extreme bias of that paper's coverage of the referendum campaigns.
The letter is itself remarkable but the appendix attached to it even more so! It lists the essential elements of the Lisbon Treaty in the most succinct summary I have yet read. It will remind people who are just vaguely "anti-EU" what it is that makes us all that way ! Read this, do what you can to help the Irish - for we are all fighting the same enemy - and remember that that WE have not been allowed the referendum WE were promised.
This shows what's in store for us if this treaty cannot be stopped.
Christina
National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, Dublin 30.8.09
The Lisbon Treaty Re-run S 13 Facts
On Friday 2 October we will be voting on exactly the same Lisbon Treaty as Irish voters rejected last year. Not a dot or comma of it will be changed.
LISBON S [Lisbon Same]:
1) Would radically shift control of the EU towards the Big States by basing EU law-making post-Lisbon primarily on population size, just as in any State. At present EU laws are made on the basis of a double majority' system - a simple majority of the 27 EU States (14 or more), as long as between them they have a qualified or weighted majority of 258 out of a total of 345 votes (Art.205 TEC*; Declaration on Enlargement).
Under this system the Big States have 29 votes each and Ireland has 7. Under Lisbon EU laws would be made by a majority of States (at least 55%, 15 or more), as long as they have 65% of the total EU population between them (Art.16 TEU). This change would double Germany's voting power in making EU laws from its present 8% to 17%, increase Britain's, France's and Italy's from 8% each to 12% each, while halving Ireland's vote to 0.8%. Instead of the Big States having 4 times Ireland's voting weight, as now, under Lisbon Germany would have 20 times Ireland's weight and France, Britain and Italy would each have15 times.
The Government White Paper tells an untruth when it speaks of the change to a double majority voting system in the Council' (p.44). A double majority of States and weighted votes already exists for EU laws. What Lisbon does is to replace the weighted votes by population size as the key criterion for future EU law-making - thereby hugely advantaging the Big EU States at the expense of the Small. Actual votes are not that frequent on the EU Council of Ministers, but a process of "shadow-voting" takes place all the time, whereby Ministers assess which States are for or against a proposed EU measure and whether it is worth pushing it to a vote or not. The tendency is to go along with the "consensus", without a vote, especially if the Big States favour the measure in question.
2) Would abolish our present right to 'propose' and decide who Ireland's Commissioner is (Art 214 TEC), by replacing it with a right to make 'suggestions' only for the incoming Commission President and the Big States to decide (Art.17.7 TEU). The EU Prime Ministers have promised each State a permanent Commissioner, but what is the point of us continuing to have an Irish Commissioner post-Lisbon when the Irish Government can no longer decide who that Commissioner would be? The Government White Paper makes no mention of this shift from a bottom-up to a top-down appointment process.
3) Would abolish the European Community which Ireland joined in 1973 and replace it with a legally new European Union in the constitutional form of an EU Federation. This post-Lisbon EU would for the first time be legally separate from and superior to its 27 Member States and would sign international treaties with other States in all areas of its powers (Arts.1 and 47 TEU; Declaration 17 concerning Primacy). In constitutional terms Lisbon would thereby turn Ireland into a regional or provincial state within this new Federal-style European Union, with the EU's Constitution and laws having legal primacy over the Irish Constitution and laws in any cases of conflict between the two. Ireland would thus formally cease to be a sovereign independent State in its own right in the international community of States, and become like a provincial state inside an EU Federation.
4) Would turn us into real citizens of the constitutionally Federal post-Lisbon European Union, owing obedience to its laws and loyalty to its authority over and above our obedience and loyalty to Ireland and the Irish Constitution and laws in the event of any conflict between the two. One can only be a citizen of a State and all States must have citizens. The Irish people were not that happy when they were citizens of the UK State.
Although as citizens of the post-Lisbon Federal EU we would still keep our Irish citizenship, this would be subordinate to our EU citizenship and to the rights and duties attaching to that in any cases of conflict between the two (Art.9 TEU, Declaration 17 concerning Primacy).
5) Would give the EU Court of Justice the power to decide our human rights by making the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding for the first time (Art.6 TEU). This would give power to the EU judges to lay down a uniform standard of rights for the 500 million citizens of the post-Lisbon Union in the name of their common EU citizenship in the years and decades to come. It would open the possibility of clashes with national human rights standards in sensitive areas where Member States differ from one another at present, e.g.inheritance and property rights, trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, legalising hard drugs, euthanasia, abortion, labour law, marriage law, children's rights etc. Ireland's Supreme Court and the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights would no longer have the final say on what our fundamental rights are.
6) Would abolish the national veto which Ireland has at present in over 30 new policy areas by handing over to the EU the power to make laws binding on us as regards public services, crime, justice, policing, immigration, energy, transport, tourism, sport, culture, public health, the EU budget, international moves on climate change etc.
7) Would reduce the power of National Parliaments to decide 49 policy areas or matters by shifting their powers to the EU, and increase the influence of the European Parliament in making EU laws in 19 new areas (See euabc.eu for the two lists).
8) Would be a self-amending Treaty in that it would permit the EU Prime Ministers and Presidents to shift most remaining EU policy areas where unanimity is required and a national veto still exists for example on tax harmonisation - to qualified majority voting on the EU Council of Ministers, without the need of further EU Treaties or referendums (Art.48 TEU). Lisbon would also extend the so-called 'Flexibility Clause', which allows the EU to take action and adopt measures to attain one of the EU's objectives even if the Treaties have not provided the necessary powers', to all areas of the Treaty and not just the internal market rules as at present (Art.352 TFEU). This would open the floodgates to more political integration, i.e. centralisation, by means of this article, which is already widely used.
9) Would permit the post-Lisbon EU to impose its own EU-wide taxes directly on us for the first time in order to raise its own resources for the EU itself, without the need of further EU Treaties or referendums (Art.311 TFEU).
10) Would copperfasten the Laval and related judgements of the EU Court of Justice, which put the competition rules of the EU market above the right of trade unions to enforce pay standards higher than the minimum for migrant workers. At the same time Lisbon would give the EU full control of immigration policy (Art.79 TFEU).
11) Would amend the existing treaties to give the EU exclusive power as regards rules on foreign direct investment(Arts.206-7 TFEU) and give the EU Court of Justice the power to order the harmonisation of national indirect taxes if it judges that these cause a 'distortion of competition' (Art.113 TFEU, Protocol 27 on the Internal Market and Competition). These steps could threaten Ireland's 12.5% company profits tax.
12) Would enable the 27 EU Prime Ministers to appoint an EU President for up to five years without allowing voters any say as to who he or she would be, thereby abolishing the present six-month rotating EU presidencies (Art.15 TEU).
13) Would militarize the EU further, requiring Member States progressively to improve their military capabilities' (Art.42.3 TEU) and to aid and assist other Member States experiencing armed attack 'by all the means in their power' (Art.42.7 TEU).
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*TEC= European Community Treaty; TEU = Treaty on European Union as amended by the Lisbon Treaty; TFEU = Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union as amended by the Lisbon Treaty. These two Treaties together would become the Constitution of the new post-Lisbon European Union.
For more detailed information see nationalplatform.org and euabc.eu
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