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                 Media statement

Thursday 12 June 2008

                            TODAY'S LISBON TREATY VOTE

Whether people vote Yes or No to the Lisbon Treaty today, Ireland’s national interest and the best interests of future generations here and across Europe undoubtedly call for a No vote, for the reasons set out in the article below.

The Lisbon Treaty would endow the legally new European Union which it would establish with a revamped version of the EU Constitution that was rejected by the French and Dutch peoples in 2005.

This post-Lisbon EU would, inter alia, have the constitutional form of a supranational EU Federation, in which Ireland would be reduced to the status of a provincial state from being a sovereign one hitherto. Irish citizens in turn would be constitutionally transformed into real rather than symbolical citizens of a Federal European Union, rather as American citizens are citizens also of their local American states, or Federal Germany’s citizens are citizens of Germany’s Länder. Regrettably, this constitutional revolution which Lisbon would bring about in the EU itself, its Member States and in the civic status of four million Irish and nearly 500 million Europeans has scarcely been referred to in Ireland’s referendum debate.

The main reason for this is the failure of the statutory Referendum Commission to carry out its function of explaining the “subject matter of the proposal” in the Constitutional Amendment, “and its text”, which is what people have been voting on today.

The 1998 Referendum Act lays down that this is the prime task of the Referendum Commission. Yet the Commission has done absolutely nothing to explain to Irish voters how “the European Union established by virtue of the Lisbon Treaty” - which the Constitutional Amendment would allow the State to be a member of, and which is referred to in the first sentence of the Amendment - would differ from the present EU, which was established by the 1993 Maastricht Treaty.

The Referendum Commission has made no attempt to explain the implications for Irish citizens of being endowed with a citizenship of this post-Lisbon Union which is “additional to” their national citizenship, despite its obvious constitutional importance; for one can only be a citizen of a State and all States must have citizens.

Having failed to carry out its essential duty as laid down in the Referendum Act, the Referendum Commission through its chairman, Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O’Neill, engaged instead in partisan “clarifications” of disputed matters which were wholly geared to benefiting one side. The Commission and its Chairman have behaved absolutely disgracefully.

Never in modern European history can €5 million of public money been spent to such potentially damaging national effect. It is not so much what Mr Justice O’Neill and his Commission did that was delinquent, but what they failed to do. The failure of the Referendum Commission to carry out its statutory mandate was compounded by the failure of RTE to abide by its obligation under the Broadcasting Acts to cover the issues of the referendum fairly, impartially and objectively. RTE too has behaved disgracefully.

Even if the Yes-side wins this referendum through bullying and bamboozling Ireland’s voters, the undersigned will at least be glad to have been significantly responsible for giving the Irish people the chance of voting on this hugely important Treaty, even though most voters, unfortunately, will be casting their ballots without appreciating the radical constitutional changes which Lisbon would bring about.

The Lisbon referendum stems from the 1986-7 Crotty case on the proper mode of ratification of a previous European Treaty, the Single European Act: whether that should be ratified by Oireachtas majority or by referendum. The undersigned was responsible for bringing together the lawyers who initiated this case, Mr Paul Callan SC and Mr Seamus O Tuathail SC. It was he who had the honour of asking his friend, the late Raymond Crotty the economist, would he act as plaintiff in it, who courageously and generously agreed. It is a tribute to Raymond Crotty and the others involved, in particular Cork solicitor Joe Noonan who advanced the key argument which won the case, that Irish voters, uniquely in Europe, have a chance of voting on the Lisbon Treaty today.

The undersigned has opposed on democratic grounds all EC/EU treaties over the years, for he saw them as part of a sustained push towards establishing an EU Federation under the hegemony of the Big States, in particular Germany and France. The Lisbon Treaty, which gives the EU the constitutional form of that Federation, is the culmination of this process.

It is to be hoped that Irish voters will vote wisely and say No to the monstrous assault on democracy in Ireland and across Europe which the Lisbon Treaty’s key provisions will entail if they are ratified.

But if, as looks probable, the majority follow a purblind Irish political class which, with honourable exceptions, is urging them to vote Yes, it will be left to future generations in Ireland and across our continent to undo this political disaster as they struggle to regain the national democracy and independence which Ireland’s Yes-side voters will unwittingly have thrown away, for themselves and everyone else in the EU.

Anthony Coughlan
Secretary

Establishing a new European Union with the constitutional form of a supranational Federal State

The push to turn the European Union into a superpower with many of the features of a Federal State goes back to World War 2, 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 USA and USSR.
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. This is not the full story of European integration, but it is perhaps the most important part of the story.

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 9 May 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 CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT WE WILL VOTE ON

The first sentence of the Amendment which the Government is asking 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 [Lisbon] 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 [Irish] Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by membership of the European Union referred to 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 (Art.1 TEU).

Thirdly, it would give the new Union a unified constitutional stucture so that all areas of government would come within its aegis either actually or potentially(Art.4 TEU, Arts.1-6 TFEU). 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.

SUBORDINATING THE IRISH CONSTITUTION TO THE EU CONSTITUTION

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(Art.9 TEU).

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 the Irish Constitution and laws.

We would still retain our national Irish citizenship, but our new dual citizenship post-Lisbon would not be citizenship of two different States, but rather of the federal and regional/provincial levels of one state, as is normal in such classical Federations as the USA, Federal Germany, Switzerland and Canada.

The Irish Constitution would remain - just as the various states of the Federal USA still retain their constitutions - but it would be subordinate to the EU Constitution in any case of conflict between the two.

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(Art.14.2 TEU).

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(Art.13 TEU).

Couple these constitutional changes with the power-political changes which Lisbon would bring about and it is clear that the Lisbon referendum confronts the Irish people with a momentous choice.

The most important power-political change is that Lisbon would base law-making 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% to 17%. It would increase the voting weight of France, Britain and Italy from their present 8% to 12% each and it would halve Ireland’s weight from 2% to 0.8%.(Art.16.4 TEU)

As well as our 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 our turn to have an Irish 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(Art.17.7 TEU).

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 for the Irish people is to vote No to Lisbon on 12 June, as the French and Dutch did to its virtually identical predecessor, for their own sakes and for Europe’s.