WHAT THE EU TREATY OF LISBON DOES(legally accurate).

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Minister Martin misleads the people on Lisbon and health care
http://www.caeuc.org/index.php?q=node/222
*Press statement – 18/5/2008 – immediate release*

Michael Martin asserts on the Dept of Foreign Affairs website that under Lisbon, health, education and social services will remain under the control of the Member States. This is a misleading statement.

Art 188c of the Lisbon Treaty (the text we will be voting upon) is explicit. A veto on trade in social, health and education services would only be available in exceptional and undefined circumstances. Otherwise QMV would apply – as is currently the case for agriculture. A veto on the entire contents of the present deal being negotiated by Mandelson at the WTO is only possible because vetoes remain in areas of trade other than agriculture – and almost all of those would disappear under Lisbon.

Trade in services means removing regulations so that for-profit multinationals can bid to deliver the service. Public providers, over which we have some control, must then compete with the cherry-picking multinationals and a creeping privatisation is set in train. The right of private health-industries to encroach further into our health system would be triple-locked by Lisbon: the privatisation policy of this government would be locked in by EU policy, which promotes international trade agreements in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) – which in turn would lock the privatisation of health care into international agreements.

We can vote out this government and reverse its policies. But we cannot change EU treaties or GATS agreements once they are in place.

The only reason to remove the unrestricted veto on trade in healthcare is to make it easier to push through agreements which lead to privatisation and might therefore meet opposition. With QMV, such opposition could be outvoted. The question Michael Martin and the trade unionists who support Lisbon must answer is this: if you don't want trade and privatisation of our healthcare, why give away the veto? The veto on trade in agriculture was given away 10 years ago in Amsterdam.

There are many who now rue that day.

Michael Martin's government is privatising our health system, giving contracts to fraud-mired American multinationals like Triad and Quest. IBEC has declared that Lisbon would create opportunities to profit from our health services because the Treaty would liberalise trade in health, education and other public services. This is why Minister Martin and IBEC support it.

But as Prof John Crown has said, giving parts of our services to overseas contractors is not good for patient care. And this is what Lisbon would promote.

As to the supposed protection for health in the Protocol on public services attached to the Treaty, the European Court of Justice has already ruled that Member States are free to decide their health policies. But when it comes to the actual delivery of services, other

provisions in the EU Treaties apply – including the freedom to provide (cross-border) services.(European Commission 2006).

The Court has also ruled that in any instance where remuneration is involved, these services must be regarded as 'economic activities' like any other and so come under the EU rules on competition, freedom to provide services, etc.(European Commission 2007) Increasingly, member states will be required to let private contractors bid to provide the services, initially from within the EU but also by non-EU multinationals as a result of deals in the GATS-WTO. Lisbon would promote this and neither the Protocol nor the Charter of Fundamental Rights would protect our health, education or social services from a creeping privatisation.

Finally, it is within the framework of the existing treaties and the case-law of the ECJ that Lisbon would allow the EU to set down the 'economic and financial conditions' under which public services, including health, should be run (Art 16). This framework includes Art 2 of Lisbon which puts 'price stability' as the fundamental from which all other policy flows; and Art 115 which gives the EU powers to issue guidelines for how governments should manage their budgets. In practice these articles would be used to restrict public spending. This dovetails with the promotion of privatisation in Lisbon, and mirrors our current government's policy of closing 40 regional and local public hospitals while giving incentives to build private-for-profit hospitals.

Lisbon would let private-for-profit multinationals cherry-pick the profitable parts of our health services. On this we agree with IBEC. So either Minister Martin and the trade union supporters of Lisbon do not understand – or are actively misleading people – on the Lisbon Treaty, the related case-law of the European Court of Justice, or the impact of GATS agreements on public services. Lisbon would lock in a policy of privatisation of healthcare. It should be opposed.

Ends

 

Further information and comment:

Brendan Young 085 713 1903

Barry Finnegan 085 142 3454

The Campaign Against the EU Constitution is an alliance of 13 organisations and many individuals who have come together to oppose the Lisbon Treaty on socially progressive grounds.

See our website www.sayno.ie

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Notes to Editors.

Treaty of Lisbon, Official Journal of the European Union C306, 17-12-1007.

Art 188c.4

“the Council shall act unanimously for the negotiation and conclusion of agreements in the field of trade in social, education and health services, where these agreements risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them”.

Citation ends.

-----

There is no definition of what is meant by 'seriously', 'disturbing', 'national organisation' or 'prejudicing the responsibility'. In any dispute, is is the ECJ that would decide on the meanings. In a context where a service is already part-privatised – like the Irish system – it would be very hard to sustain the argument that allowing the buying and selling of existing private healthcare businesses, or increasing their role in the overall service as long as the state retained regulatory powers, would 'seriously disturb the national organisation... etc.' See the ECJ ruling in relation to the existing Art 152 below. In practice, under Lisbon almost all decisions on trade agreements would be by QMV.

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European Commission 2006: paper on Community Health Services 1195/4

http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_overview/co_operation/mobility/docs/comm_health_services_comm2006_en.pdf_

According to 1195/4, two clarifications were provided by the/ /Watts ruling of 16 May 2006:

“First, some Member States with systems based on integrated public funding and provision of health services had argued that the Treaty provisions on the freedom to provide services [Art 49 TEC – BY] did not apply to them; the /Watts judgment/ confirmed that they do.

Second, some Member States have argued that the requirement in Article152, paragraph five of the Treaty to “/fully respect the responsibilities of the Member States for the organisation and delivery of health services and medical care/” prevented binding obligations under Community law regarding health systems. In the judgment, the Court stated that this provision does not exclude the possibility that the Member States may be required under other Treaty provisions, such as Article 49 EC, or Community measures adopted on the basis of other Treaty provisions, such as Article 22 of Regulation (EC) 1408/71, to make adjustments to their national systems of social security.”

Citation ends. [p.5 Commission paper]

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European Commission 2007: White Paper on Services of General Interest, Nov 2007

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2007:0725:FIN:EN:PDF

 'For a given service to qualify as an economic activity under the internal market rules (free movement of services and freedom of establishment), the essential characteristic of a service is that it must be provided for remuneration. The service does not, however, necessarily have to be paid by those benefiting from it. The economic nature of a service does not depend on the legal status of the service provider (such as a non-profit making body) or on the nature of service, but rather on the way a given activity is actually provided, organised and financed. *In practice, ... it follows that the vast majority of services can be considered as "economic activities" within the meaning of EC Treaty rules on the internal market *(Articles 43 and 49)'

Citation ends. [p.5 White Paper, my emphasis].

 ---

Prof John Crown, quoted in the Irish Independent, 17 May 2008.

Author: Anne-Marie Walshe.

---

IBEC submission to Forum on Europe, April 29, 2008.

"Through our membership of the EU many markets have been subject to liberalisation and through this process new business opportunities have been created for Irish companies. The Lisbon Reform Treaty creates the legal basis for the liberalisation of services of general economic interest (Art. 106). A yes vote for the Lisbon Treaty creates the potential for increased opportunities for Irish business particularly in areas subject to increasing liberalisation such as Health, Education, Transport, Energy and the Environment."

Full text of IBEC submission

http://www.forumoneurope.ie/index.asp?locID=113&docID=1650

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Pro-EU Charities get EU funds
http://www.lisbonvote.com/
18/5/2008

European integration? Without being paid to say so, I mean?


I ask the question perfectly seriously. When he introduced the Bill to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, made a song and dance about the fact that it wasn’t just Labour politicians who backed the wretched thing. A whole range of NGOs, he told MPs, had also come out in favour.


“The NSPCC pledged its support, as have One World Action, Action Aid and Oxfam,” he said, looking typically pleased with himself. “Environmental organisations support the treaty provisions on sustainable development and even the commission of bishops supports the treaty. This is a coalition, not of ideology, but integrity”.


Integrity, eh? Within a few hours, Eurosceptic blogs were pointing out that every single organisation he had cited received money from the EU (hat-tip EUReferendum.blogspot.com).


Most of them, it turned out, also got bungs from the British government. Hardly surprising, then, that they should dutifully endorse a treaty supported by their paymasters.


What is surprising is the extent of their financial dependency. When Miliband sat down, I fired off a written question asking the European Commission how much money it had paid these organisations. I have just had the answer. In 2007, ActionAid, the NSPCC, One World Action and Oxfam received, among them, £43,051,542.95. (I’ll come to the bishops in a moment.


Just think about that sum for a moment. Can organisations in receipt of such colossal subventions legitimately call themselves “non-governmental”? Can they claim to be independent? Can they even describe themselves as charities - at least in the sense that we commonly understand the word?


Why, after all, should any of us give money to a body that is already forcibly expropriating us through the tax system, and then using part of the revenue to lobby the government to do things that we oppose? The next time you get bumph from, say, Oxfam, bear in mind that it got £37,449,517.55 from Brussels last year. This is a minimum figure, by the way: the Commission is at pains to point out that its statistics don’t include “structural funds via calls for tender managed by Member States’ authorities or grants under indirect centralised management”.


The “commission of bishops“ was a little harder to identify, but patient googling revealed that its full name is the “Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community”. Far from being an episcopal body that just happens to back closer union, it is a Brussels-based outfit whose stated purpose is “to promote reflection, based on the [Roman Catholic] Church’s social teaching, on the challenges facing a united Europe”. That’s right: an organisation wholly dependent on the EU believes - get this - that the EU should have more power.


This, of course, is how the EU likes to work. Whenever it wants to extend its jurisdiction into a new field, it goes through the motions of “consulting civic society”. What it means by this is that it invites the opinions of a series of organisations that it has itself created, and which look to Brussels for their income: the European Women’s Lobby, the European Union of Journalists, the European Trade Union Congress and so on.

You see how the system works? The EU firehoses cash at these organisations to lobby it, they tell it what it wants to hear, and it then turns around and claims to have listened to The People. And here’s the clever bit: millions of people are thereby drawn into the system, their livelihoods becoming dependent on the European project.

Whenever the European Commission comes up with a proposal, it turns to NGOs and corporate affairs people on both sides. So, yes, you get the pharma giants and the oil lobby and the independent healthcare corporations and the rest. But you also get the greenies and the women’s groups and the assorted busybodies who claim to speak for “civil society”. What you don’t get is any direct input from voters. Public opinion is intermediated by quangoes.

You’ll often hear it said that the EU is undemocratic. Actually, it’s worse than that: it’s anti-democratic, run by and for people who fear the electorate.

Daniel Hannan is an MEP for the South East of England

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Arming Big Brother: the EU's security research programme
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=reports_militarism_bigbrosummary

Overview

This Statewatch-TNI report examines the development of the EU Security Research Programme (ESRP) and the growing security-industrial complex in Europe it is being set up to support. With the global market for technologies of repression more lucrative than ever in the wake of 11 September 2001, it is on a healthy expansion course.

The story of the ESRP is one of "Big Brother" meets market fundamentalism. It was personified by the establishment in 2003 of a "Group of Personalities" (GoP) comprised of EU officials and Europe's biggest arms and IT companies who argued that European multinationals are losing out to their US competitors because the US government is providing them with a billion dollars a year for security research.

The European Commission responded by giving these companies a seat at the EU table, a proposed budget of up to one billion euros for "security" research and all but full control over the development and implementation of the programme. In effect, the EU is funding the diversification of these companies into the more legitimate and highly lucrative "dual use" sector, allowing them to design future EU security policies according to corporate rather than public interests.

The ESRP raises important issues about EU policy-making and the future of Europe. Europe faces serious security challenges: not just terrorism, but disease, climate change, poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, resource depletion and other sources of insecurity. Rather than being part of a broader strategy to combat these challenges, the ESRP forms part of an EU counter-terrorism strategy focused almost exclusively on the use of military force and new law enforcement technologies. Freedom and democracy are being undermined by the very policies adopted in their name.

What is the "Security-industrial Complex"?

The idea of a "security-industrial complex" describes how the boundaries between internal and external security, policing and military operations, have been eroded. This process has been accelerated by the development of new technologies for the surveillance of public and private places, of communications, and of groups and individuals - a trend that has been accelerated by the "war on terror".

These technologies include myriad local and global surveillance systems; the introduction of biometric identifiers; RFID, electronic tagging and satellite monitoring; "less-lethal weapons"; paramilitary equipment for public order and crisis management; and the militarization of border controls.

Military organisations dominate research and development in these areas under the banners of "security research" and "dual-use" technology, avoiding both the constraints and controversies of the arms trade. Tomorrow's technologies of control quickly become today's political imperative; contentious policies appear increasingly irresistible. There are strong arguments for regulating, limiting and resisting the development of the security-industrial complex but as yet there has been precious little debate.

Europe's Strangeloves. The Group of Personalities

The EU remained a purely civilian organisation until the Amsterdam Treaty in June 1997, which first paved the way for an EU military capability. Since then, a new security agenda has developed rapidly, driven forward by corporate lobbying in Brussels and, in particular, the backroom role that the major arms companies have played in policymaking (for more details, see Frank Slijper, The Emerging EU Military-Industrial Complex. Arms Industry Lobbying in Brussels, TNI Briefing 1, May 2005.

The ESRP is the brainchild of the Group of Personalities (GoP), a 25-member advisory body of whom eight had direct roots in major arms-producing companies: BAe Systems, Diehl, EADS, Ericsson Finmeccanica, Indra, Siemens and Thales. Their report on Research for a Secure Europe, subsequently published in March 2004, highlighted the "synergies" between defence technologies and those required for "non-military security purposes". In its report, the GoP compared European security research spending with that of the US Department of Homeland Security, concluding that:

A Community-funded ESRP ensuring the involvement of all Member States should be launched as early as 2007. Its minimum funding should be € 1 billion per year, additional to existing funding. This spending level should be reached rapidly, with the possibility to progressively increase it further, if appropriate, to bring the combined EU (Community, national and intergovernmental) security research investment level close to that of the US.

The GoP's basic demand was that a European security-industrial complex should be developed to compete with that emerging in the USA. Instead of putting forward this and other policy options, the European Commission in its Communication of February 2004 ("Enhancement of the European industrial Potential in the Field of Security Research 2004-2006") [PDF document] simply announced that a 65 million euro budget line for "Preparatory Action for Security Research" (2004-06) had already been established, paving the way for a full European Security Research programme from 2007.

The Commission used Article 157 of the EC Treaty on the "competitiveness of the Community's industry" (rather than Article 163(3) on "research and technological development") to justify retrospectively the "Preparatory Action on Security Research" budget - a clear breach of the Treaty that was criticised by, amongst others, the European Scrutiny Committee in the UK House of Commons [PDF document].

European Security Research and the "FP7" Programme

The full European Securities Research Programme (ESRP) gets underway in 2007. The FP7 programme (the EU's seventh framework programme for research and technological development) currently being discussed in the European Parliament allocates € 570 million per year for "security and space" research (FP7). As ESRP is being developed outside of the normal EC decision-making process, it is so far unclear where the rest of the one billion demanded by the GoP will come from, but it is likely that additional FP7 money will be channelled into it via the ill-defined budget lines on "ideas", "people" and "capacities" (which account for € 26 billion of spending from 2007 to 2013). Finally, FP7 will also provide an additional € 1.8 billion for research by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), one of whose four priorities is "related to fighting terrorism, organised crime and fraud, border security and prevention of major risks, in relation with law enforcement agencies and relevant EU services". It is astonishing that the draft FP7 legislation makes no explicit mention of the ESRP despite the security and space budget line being designed precisely for this purpose.

European Security Research Advisory Board

The European Security Research Advisory Board (ESRAB) was formed from the nucleus of the Group of Personalities to advise the Commission on the strategic goals and priorities for security research (including FP7), the exchange of classified information and intellectual property rights, and the use of these publicly owned research/evaluation infrastructures.

Once again, the formation of this new body lacked any transparency whatsoever, with no consultation of the European or national parliaments. ESRAB's membership was quietly announced in the EU's Official Journal, but with no background information or related documentation explaining who the members represent or why they were selected. Nor is there any detailed information about ESRAB on the Commission's security research website.

According to Statewatch and TNI's research, industry is very well represented on ESRAB, occupying 14 of the 50 seats. Seven of the eight major European defence corporations on the GoP are now represented on ESRAB (BAE Systems is the surprising exclusion). The first ESRAB Chairman was Markus Hellenthal of EADS, followed by Tim Robinson of Thales. The EU, which has only two seats, is represented by the European Defence Agency (EDA) and Europol. There are no seats for either the European Commission or the European Parliament, meaning that ESRAP is only thinly accountable to the EU and not at all accountable to the people of Europe.

The composition of ESRAB means that, in effect, the same arms corporations that stand to benefit the most from ESRP funding are responsible for shaping the strategic priorities - and free to do so in their interests, with precious little democratic accountability.

Preparatory Action for Security Research. Paving the Way to a Militarised EU

The "Preparatory Action for Security Research" (PASR) represents only a fraction of the funding that the full ESRP is to receive, but already offers an insight into the technologies of control currently under development. For example, it has already awarded funding for a high-level strategic planning project called SeNTRE, led by the European Association of Aerospace and Defence Industries (ASD) - the largest defence industry lobby group. This effectively outsources a key policymaking role to a private interest group. The PASR budget line is also funding ESSTRT (European Security: Threats Responses and Relevant Technologies), a strategic planning project that is being led by the defence giant Thales.

Over two of its three rounds (2004 and 2005), PASR has so far funded 24 projects to the tune of € 30 million euros. Military organisations and defence sector contractors are leading 17 out of the 24 projects. Many have received "seed money", meaning that further, more substantial funding is likely in future. The "big four" European arms companies represented on the GoP have done particularly well - Thales is participating in at least five projects, with Thales UK leading three of them; the EADS group is also leading three projects; at least seven Finmeccanica companies are participating in three projects, leading two of them; while BAE is participating in at least three projects. TNO, the Dutch military R&D institute, has also done very well, participating in four projects and leading one of them. It is almost certain that these organisations are participating in more of the PASR projects funded so far but at the time of writing only half of the contracts have been published. (See Results of the First Call - list of funded activities and 13 new security research projects to combat terrorism .)

The projects funded by the PASR cover five objectives, which include "situation awareness" (a euphemism for surveillance), protecting against terrorism, network security, crisis management, and IT "interoperability" (including the cross-border sharing of personal data).

Some of the projects funded under the ESRP so far have a legitimate, civil objective - dealing with radio-nuclear fallout and protecting critical infrastructure, for example. The majority, however, deal with surveillance and the development of military technologies of political control that offer little guarantee as far as "security" is concerned.

10 of the first 24 projects funded by the EU concern surveillance of one kind or another, most of them using technologies that are in no way limited to counter-terrorism. For example, PROBANT, led by French aerospace and defence contractor Satimo, concerns the "visualisation and tracking of people inside buildings' including 'arrays of sensors, modulated scattering, pulsed signal techniques, advanced data processing, biometric measurements".

Two projects involve surveillance from space. These can be seen in tandem with the development of the EU's Galileo satellite system (the EU's first major "public-private partnership" in which the major financers are EADS, Finmeccanica, Thales and others), Galileo's planned uses include the monitoring of all road travel by satellite - the basis for the "road pricing scheme" proposed in the UK.

Another EU funded project will see Dassault Aviation, Europe's leading exporter of combat aircraft, funded to coordinate what is basically an EU feasibility study on the use of UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for "peacetime security" (and more specifically "border surveillance"). Dassault in fact launched Europe's first "stealth UAV" in 2000.

According to a report to the US Congress in 2005 the UAV accident rate is 100 times higher than that of manned aircraft. It will be interesting to see what the Dassault-consortium recommends.

Projects concerning "biometric" identification systems are also being funded, despite civil liberties and privacy concerns about the unregulated storage and circulation of personal data. ISCAPS, coordinated by fingerprint-identification company Sagem, will develop a system of biometric controls for restricted areas - the example given in the project brief is "an amusement park"!

The EU Joint Research Centre is also promoting biometrics, stressing the expected "commercial application" of their use following the introduction of biometric passports across the EU from 2007.

Arming Big Brother argues that the creation of a security-industrial complex in Europe must be seen in the context of EU security policies which have placed law enforcement demands ahead of civil liberties concerns.

Criticisms and Concerns

There has been precious little debate about the development of these programmes but TNI and Statewatch have serious concerns.

• No accountability in policy making
  The European Commission has taken extraordinary steps to prepare a budget line outside the normal framework for EC research. It is particularly disturbing that the establishment of the GoP went almost unchallenged, with no meaningful discussion in the Council, no consultation in the European Parliament, and policy making all but delegated to the unaccountable Group of Personalities - on which the military-industrial lobby was heavily over-represented.
  The expansion and formalisation of the GoP into the EU Security Research Advisory Board makes permanent this unprecedented polity, but still the idea that private companies, run for profit, should be accorded an official status in the EU goes unchallenged. The result is that the arms industry is shaping not just EU security research, but EU security policy. It must be hoped the European and national parliaments take seriously their obligation to challenge both the costs and the alleged benefits of security research and to review all military expenditure by the EU. The full security research programme is not yet underway and parliaments could still take meaningful action to restrict or at least bring the ESRP under some form of regulation or democratic control.
• Costs and priorities
  A proposed budget of one billion euros per year for security research is almost treble that being made available by the EU for research into the environment, including climate change, and the equivalent of 10 per cent of the entire EU research budget. But it is not just a question of priorities. European arms companies already enjoy healthy subsidies and competitive advantages at the national level. The big four European arms companies have combined annual revenue of around 84 billion dollars, not far off the total EU budget. Why should European citizens be footing the bill for their research?
• Technological determinism
  The European Commission has claimed that the EU must match US funding of security research to ensure the competitiveness of its industries in meeting global security threats. Whilst technology can undoubtedly assist in police investigations, there is no evidence to suggest that it prevents terrorism or crime because technology can do nothing to address the multifaceted 'root causes' of these social problems.
• The threat to civil liberties and privacy
  There is already clear evidence that new law enforcement technologies can have a damaging effect on civil liberties unless there are strict controls on their use and a clear regard for individual human rights. The rushed EU legislation on the introduction of biometrics into passports and travel documents raises serious privacy issues, not to mention concerns about the usefulness, reliability and accuracy of the underlying technology. It is now quite possible to envisage a Europe in which everybody is registered, fingerprinted and profiled; in which all communication and movement is monitored and recorded for law enforcement purposes; and in which we are increasingly policed by military force rather than civilian consent.

Conclusion

Arming Big Brother concludes with a call for civil society to resist the development of the security-industrial complex and the wider militarisation of the EU. Civil liberties groups and anti-militarist campaigners should challenge current developments and explain to the people of Europe what is being done in their name. It is hoped that this report contributes to a broader campaign against EU militarism and that it will be followed-up by systematic monitoring of the development and implementation of the ESRP by independent groups.

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Europe deserves much better than the Lisbon Treaty
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=18283&banner=banner2&keywords=
Author: Susan George
16 May 2008

We must avoid adopting an ill-conceived charter that places too much faith in the market and a US-led Nato, argues Susan George.


European history provides a showcase of human beings at their worst. Constant conflict, the two bloodiest wars ever waged, famine, brutal industrialisation, oppression of workers and women, religious strife, colonialism, fascism, communism - all these stain our past. But Europe also represents the best humankind has accomplished, giving the world the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, a constant struggle for emancipation, democracy and the separation of powers, the welfare state - not to mention universally recognised cultural contributions from Greek drama to Finnegans Wake , from the symphony orchestra to Irish folksong.

Born in the United States and a citizen of France, I am a fervent European. At this point in history, I believe only Europe can provide all its citizens with democratic government, dignified living standards, greater social equality, public services, universal healthcare and education. This small continent, with just 15 per cent of the world's people, can lead the way towards ecological sanity and a liveable planet and prove nations can overcome even the most tenacious hatreds and live together in peace. Europe can be a counter-model to the myriad brutalities, affinity for war and stupendous inequalities on display elsewhere.

For these and other reasons, I voted no to the deeply flawed, undemocratic European constitution in May 2005. Had the French government not confiscated the people's right to another referendum, I would have voted no again to the Lisbon ("Reform") Treaty - a clone of the rejected constitution, except for "cosmetic changes" making it "easier to swallow", as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, principal author of the constitution, said. No flag, no Beethoven hymn, but the rest is there as Angela Merkel, José Manuel Barroso, Bertie Ahern and other relieved European notables all agreed.

The treaty contains no substantive changes. It's just much harder to understand, worse even than the immensely complex constitution. Now we must deal with two European treaties (Rome, 1957, and Maastricht, 1992, with their subsequent revisions) to which Lisbon adds 145 pages of amendments plus 132 more pages of 12 protocols and 51 declarations, all legally binding, all superseding every law of the 27 member states.

There is no single text - you must cut, paste and collate the hundreds of pages for yourself. The very least one should require of a treaty that will dictate at least 80 per cent of all future legislation throughout Europe is that it be comprehensible. But complexity can be an effective weapon against democracy. Let us recall what commission vice-president Gunter Verheugen said after the French and Dutch No votes: "We must not give in to blackmail." So much for universal suffrage and popular sovereignty.

There are a few beneficial changes to the defunct constitution. The new treaty gives the European Parliament, the only elected body, marginally more power to co-decide on legislation, although it still cannot initiate legislation.

However, the unelected European Commission remains all-powerful, particularly in crucial areas such as trade. A new article specifies the European goal of "integration of all countries into the world economy through the suppression of barriers to international trade". Already trade commissioner Peter Mandelson is pushing for European corporate penetration in even the poorest countries, defining "barriers" as any government measure regulating foreign investment, public procurement, environmental or consumer protection.

The European Central Bank gets an even more iron-clad statute of independence from political supervision; its mandate remains control of inflation with no mention of full employment. The "market" (63 mentions in the text) remains the supreme good and "competition" (25 mentions) the overarching rule. Public services are specifically subjected to competition: government subsidies or other forms of support will become more precarious. European-wide social policies will require unanimous approval - this is a euphemism for a race to the bottom. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is inferior to most existing European constitutions.

Common security and defence policy places Europe firmly under the tutelage of Nato "which remains the foundation of the collective defence of its members". We are signing on blindfolded for whatever Nato's future policies may be - we only know for sure the US will remain in command. The treaty also obliges members to "progressively increase their military capacities".

This Lisbon Treaty is a model of failed neo-liberal economic nostrums and misplaced confidence in the market and competition as universal panaceas. Europeans deserve better, beginning with an elected convention for drafting a constitution, time for full debate and a popular ratification process.

Europe has now surpassed the US as the wealthiest political entity. We can afford to retain and perfect the European social model, provide a decent livelihood for all and undertake a swift conversion to an ecological economy; we can afford to embody the ideal of the common good. Not to demand all this and more is a betrayal of whatever is best in our history. This may be Europe's last chance.

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Susan George is a Fellow and Chair of the Board of the Transnational Institute. Her latest books are La Pensée enchaînée: Comment les droites laïque et religieuse se sont emparées de l'Amérique [Fayard, 2007], to be published in English as: Hijacking America: How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think [Forthcoming, Polity Press 2008], and We the peoples of Europe [Pluto Press, 2008]

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EU treaty opponents eye Irish vote
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/18/ireland.eu
May 18 2008

Peter Mandelson has become the secret weapon of Irish campaigners hoping to vote down the Lisbon EU reform treaty next month, an outcome that would throw the entire European project into crisis.

The image of New Labour's original spin doctor is plastered on billboards, posters, websites and newspaper advertisements across the Republic of Ireland as a loose alliance of treaty opponents campaign for a No vote. Even Ireland's normally pro-European farmers look ready to vote No, and according to their leaders it is all down to Mandelson, whom they blame for trying to wreck the country's agricultural industry.

Ireland is scheduled to vote on the Lisbon EU deal on 12 June, three days after the opening of a High Court review, won by Tory millionaire Stuart Wheeler, into whether the UK government should hold a referendum on the treaty. Gordon Brown has ruled out a public vote on the treaty, saying that it does not alter the UK constitution, but opponents say a vote was promised on the EU constitution and that the Lisbon treaty is virtually identical.

The bill - which is now in the Lords - will ratify the Lisbon treaty, which was drawn up to replace the EU constitution after that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. Ireland is obliged by its own constitution to hold a vote on the treaty. All of Ireland's four main parties are in favour of a Yes vote, but this weekend the powerful Irish Farmers' Association warned that most of its 85,000 members are likely to say No to the Lisbon document.

Padraig Walshe's family has been farming in Co. Laois since the Forties, but now the IFA's current president has claimed he may be the last of his line to work on the land. Walshe, like so many of his members, has blamed the EU's Trade Commissioner for all the doom and gloom surrounding Irish agriculture.

'If the EU doesn't rein in Mandelson, then half of all the farms in Ireland will be sold. If he gets his way and opens up our markets to Brazil and other countries, the dairy and beef industry in Ireland is finished. It's that bloody serious,' said an angry Walshe.

The IFA is a highly influential lobby in Ireland and over four decades has used the EU to garner billions of euros to assist Irish agriculture. It is concerned that Mandelson's proposals to free world trade and open the EU's markets could result in 50,000 job losses in farming, agribusinesses and other jobs reliant on farmers. Mandelson has vehemently denied his plans to liberate markets - resulting in an increase in imports of beef and dairy products from South America and other parts of the world entering Europe - will cost Irish jobs.

Walshe, a dairy and beef farmer himself, pointed out that since the Sixties the IFA has been in favour of the European ideal. Now all that has changed, he said and added: 'I don't like making predictions, but if there is no change in EU trade policy then I can't see our members voting Yes.'

The Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), the Irish equivalent of the CBI, has warned that a No vote would be a disaster for Irish jobs. 'It would create uncertainty for business and throw the EU into a crisis. It could ultimately lead to a more fragmented Europe. So it is important that the EU concludes the debate about the institutions and gets back to what it does best: creating jobs and new opportunities for its citizens,' said Brendan Butler, IBEC's director of EU and international affairs.

One of the most tenacious of the No forces to emerge out of Ireland's latest referendum on Europe has been the pro-free-market ginger group Libertas. The organisation, founded by the Watford-born multimillionaire Declan Ganley, opposes the treaty on the grounds that it is undemocratic. The son of Irish parents who returned to settle with them in the west of Ireland, Ganley is arguably one of the Yes campaign's most dangerous foes. Libertas was the first to deploy the Mandelson imagery.

'I am not a Eurosceptic, I want Ireland to stay in the EU, but having lived and worked in the old Soviet Union I have seen how rotten and dangerous unrepresentative government is. That is exactly the place where the EU is planning to take us via the Lisbon treaty,' he said.

The polls indicate that the public is evenly split, although many voters are undecided. Defeat for the Irish government would be a body blow to Ireland's new Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, who only took up office earlier this month.

The Observer has also learnt that, if Ireland votes No, Libertas, which is well funded, intends to extend its campaign across the EU, including Britain, where it will support and intensify demands for a UK referendum.

[Sub-X]

SF accuses Yes campaign of scaremongering
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0519/eulisbon.html
19 May 2008

The Sinn Féin President has said that the Lisbon Treaty is not as complex a document as has been claimed, and said that the Yes campaign is scaremongering by exaggerating the consequences of its rejection.

The comments made by Gerry Adams at the launch of the party's campaign against the treaty have been rejected by Labour.

Sinn Féin say that those in favour of the Lisbon Treaty would like the electorate to think that rejection would mean the end of the world.

AdvertisementSpeaking in Dublin, the party's leader said that the document was not 'rocket science' as he put it and that what was needed was a rational debate on the issues.

The party's MEP, Mary Lou McDonald, told the launch that rejection would lead to the negotation of a better alternative, claiming that the current document was dangerous for the Irish economy and for the agricultural sector.

But that view was rejected by Labour's Eamon Gilmore, who insisted that the voters would have to decide next month on the treaty before them and not some vague alternative that had yet to be framed.

Separately, Fine Gael front bench spokesman Leo Varadkar has claimed that John Gormley has risked disenfranchising thousands of voters by waiting two days before the postal vote deadline to advertise the register.

Mr Varadkar said up to 50,000 people could be affected by the fact that advertisements asking people to apply for postal votes were placed last Monday while the register closed the following Wednesday.

But a spokesman for the Environment Minister said this evening that the advertisements were placed at the earliest possible opportunity in what was a very tight legal deadline.

He confirmed that the situation regarding applications for postal votes would be addressed in the context of the planned electoral commission, which would be taking responsibility for a range of matters.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rock the Vote reaches out to young voters

Earlier, a campaign was launched to encourage young people to make their voices heard in the Lisbon Treaty Referendum.

Rock The Vote aims to promote political engagement among first time voters and those in their 20s.

Last year, Ireland got its first taste of the initiative in the months leading up the General Election but similar voter recruitment drives have been happening in the US for years.

The people behind the campaign say they want to make the issues contained in the Lisbon Treaty crystal clear for young voters and connect with them, in a way that other groups may not be able to.

As well as working with youth groups and student unions around the country, the Internet will be a cornerstone of the effort to increase turnout on 12 June.

[Sub-X]

Kenny being dishonest re abortion and the Lisbon Treaty
http://www.lisbonvote.com/
19/5/2008

PRESS RELEASE-ABORTION LAWS



Cóir has accused the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, of a being “fundamentally dishonest” in stating that the Lisbon Treaty would not endanger Ireland’s protection of unborn children. And it challenged Mr Kenny to a debate on the issue, at anytime, in anyplace.

The Cóir statement came following Mr Kenny’s call for the Catholic Church to make a clarifying statement on its position on the Lisbon Treaty. Spokesman Richard Greene said that the Fine Gael leader was being “politically devious” in “pretending to be outraged at revelations that the passage of the Treaty could lead to our social laws being decided by the EU, when he knows well that this is, in fact, the case”.

“Lisbon makes us citizens of an EU state for the first time,” said Mr Greene. “The Charter of Rights then gives all the citizens of this EU state the same rights and the Charter is legally binding across the EU member states under the Lisbon Treaty.

“If the EU Court of Justice decides that abortion is a right under the equality laws over which the EU has competency, or a dignity clause in the Charter, or a healthcare directive, then, combined with Declaration 17 on Primacy, EU law will simply be held superior to Irish law and to the wishes of the Irish people,” he went on.

Mr Greene said that Mr Kenny was “perfectly well aware that this was the case and that not only our abortion laws but our laws protecting marriage and the family could be overruled by the EU Court of Justice is Lisbon was passed.”

Cóir has distributed 700,000 leaflets nationwide so far warning of the need to retain our right to decide our values and will print another half a million before voting day.

“Flat denial is Mr Kenny’s only argument,” said the Cóir spokesman, “but facts are stubborn things and the fact is that this Treaty will give the EU the right to decide our values.”

[Sub-X]

Government and Commission lying over WTO veto
http://www.libertas.org/content/view/281/1/
20 May 2008

The Government and the European Commission are "wilfully misleading and telling outright lies" on the issue of Ireland's right to veto any future World Trade Agreements, it was said this morning.

Speaking at a Press Conference in Buswells Hotel, Libertas Chairman Declan Ganley said that it was "imperative" that the Government outline the specific area in the Treaty which it believes it could invoke to veto a world trade deal.

Mr. Ganley said that the Treaty made it very clear under the Common Commercial Policy that all WTO Deals would be agreed subject to Qualified Majority Voting, and in the overwhelming majority of areas where unanimity had previously been required, those sections have now moved to QMV.

Mr. Ganley said that the only areas which remained subject to QMV were those that would affect the Government's ability to provide Healthcare and Education to the Irish people, along with Audiovisual Services. No provision of the current round of talks includes these measures, and Mr. Ganley said that it was "highly unlikely" that any future round would.

He said that it was "obvious that the Government did not have an answer", and that it was refusing to commit to using the veto for that reason.

He also revealed that Libertas had received confirmation from the EU Direct Contact Centre in Brussels that confirmed its position.

"The Government says it is opposed to the current Mandelson proposals, but refuses to say that it would veto them in their current form. This is because they will not have that tool after Lisbon. Despite a lot of argument on this issue, nobody has conclusively pointed to where the veto on Trade agreements lies. It does not lie in either transport, or intellectual property, as claimed recently, and it certainly does not lie anywhere else.

Why is the EUDCC confirming our position, when the EU Commission in Dublin and the Irish Government denies it? Brian Cowen hasn't even read the Treaty, but he denies it. All we are asking is for somebody to point out, in the text of the Treaty, where the veto lies, because they will not be able to do so.

This is an absolutely critical issue for rural Ireland and the broader Irish economy. It must be addressed, and it must be addressed immediately."

Libertas Executive Director Naoise Nunn said that the organisation had "Painstakingly researched" the issue of the veto.

"Ireland has long had an effective veto on WTO talks. Even those who have claimed that we still have one admit that the grounds on which it can be invoked are drastically reduced. In itself, this is a tremendous failure of negotiation, given the importance of those talks to a small open economy like Ireland. The fact is that it's actually worse than that. Our veto is effectively abolished under Lisbon. Others are entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

If you put that fact in the context of proposals that would see 700,000 extra tonnes of beef imported into the EU, and every second steak eaten in Europe being of South American origin, you will see that a "Yes" vote would be a colossal error of judgement".


From: cc_citizen_reply@edcc.ec.europa.euThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [mailto: cc_citizen_reply@edcc.ec.europa.euThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ]
Sent: 19 May 2008 14:19
To: naoise@libertas.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Subject: [Case_ID: 0021450 / 0000000] - (New interaction)

Dear Sir,

Following our phone conversation please find the answer of your question regarding the Lisbon Treaty and WTO below:

Negotiations at WTO are currently governed by article 133 EC which provides for qualified majority voting as a general rule. Unanimity remains by way of derogation for e.g. domains subject to unanimity internally, but also agreements relating to trade in cultural and audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health services.

This means that there is no veto at present for Ireland in WTO negotiations, unless the negotiations relate to the internal rules of the European Union or trade in cultural and audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health services, in which case each Member State has a veto.

This position would remain basically unchanged under the Lisbon Treaty (see article 188C LT or 207 FEU of the consolidated version), also, unlike today, as regards audiovisual services the unanimity would only apply "if an international agreement would "risk prejudicing the Union's cultural and linguistic diversity" and the unanimity would apply in the case of trade in social, education and health services only where an international agreement would "risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them".

You may also visit the following website concerning the way it currenty works:

http://ec.opa.eu/trade/issues/newround/index_en.htm


We hope that this information will be of use to you.

With kind regards,

EUROPE DIRECT Contact Centre

Treaty of Lisbon – Taking Europe into the 21st century http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/index_en.htm

Voice your opinion on the EU http://europa.eu/debateeurope/index_en.htm

Disclaimer

Please note: We will try to ensure that you receive the information requested, or to direct you to an appropriate source. However, we are unable to comment on specific issues pertaining to EU policy, and information provided by EUROPE DIRECT may not be considered as legally binding.

From: cc_citizen_reply@edcc.ec.europa.euThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [mailto: cc_citizen_reply@edcc.ec.europa.euThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ]
Sent: 19 May 2008 14:19
To: naoise@libertas.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Subject: [Case_ID: 0021450 / 0000000] - (New interaction)

Dear Sir,

Following our phone conversation please find the answer of your question regarding the Lisbon Treaty and WTO below:

Negotiations at WTO are currently governed by article 133 EC which provides for qualified majority voting as a general rule. Unanimity remains by way of derogation for e.g. domains subject to unanimity internally, but also agreements relating to trade in cultural and audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health services.

This means that there is no veto at present for Ireland in WTO negotiations, unless the negotiations relate to the internal rules of the European Union or trade in cultural and audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health services, in which case each Member State has a veto.

This position would remain basically unchanged under the Lisbon Treaty (see article 188C LT or 207 FEU of the consolidated version), also, unlike today, as regards audiovisual services the unanimity would only apply "if an international agreement would "risk prejudicing the Union's cultural and linguistic diversity" and the unanimity would apply in the case of trade in social, education and health services only where an international agreement would "risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them".

You may also visit the following website concerning the way it currenty works:

http://ec.opa.eu/trade/issues/newround/index_en.htm


We hope that this information will be of use to you.

With kind regards,

EUROPE DIRECT Contact Centre

Treaty of Lisbon – Taking Europe into the 21st century http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/index_en.htm

Voice your opinion on the EU http://europa.eu/debateeurope/index_en.htm

Disclaimer

Please note: We will try to ensure that you receive the information requested, or to direct you to an appropriate source. However, we are unable to comment on specific issues pertaining to EU policy, and information provided by EUROPE DIRECT may not be considered as legally binding.

[Sub-X]

Campaigners call for Lisbon 'No' vote
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0520/breaking49.htm
20/05/2008

An alliance of groups campaigning for a No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum has claimed there is “no truth” in the assertion by senior trade union figures that a Yes vote will give more rights to Irish workers.

The Campaign Against the EU Constitution, an alliance of 13 groups and individuals including Sinn Fén and the Socialist Party, today opened its campaign claiming Lisbon “offers nothing” to the Irish people.

It called on Ictu general secretary David Begg and Blair Horan of the CPSU to state how the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which would be made binding under Lisbon, would protect workers.

Spokesman for the campaign group Brendan Young said: “David Begg and Blair Horan are leading people to believe that the Charter of Fundamental Rights would give us more rights and that it would prevent another Laval ruling by the European Court of Justice. We are of the opinion, supported by legal advice, that there is no truth in these claims. We call on Mr Begg and Mr Horan to say precisely how the Charter would prevent another Laval ruling.”

The Laval case accepted that the right to strike is a fundamental right, but not as fundamental a right as that of businesses to supply cross-border services.

The group also claimed Article 188c of the Lisbon Treaty would remove the veto on international trade agreements in health, education and social services “in all but exceptional, undefined circumstances”.

“Trade in public services leads to privatisation, service charges and two-tier services – especially in health and education,” the group said.

The campaigners also claimed Lisbon would accelerate the “militarisation of the EU”.

“Article 28 commits the EU to a ‘common defence’, even if by unanimous agreement. But if we vote for this treaty, we are tied into a commitment to increase military spending. We could also be pressed to give military support to another Member State, or to a non-EU state, in what EU leaders call the fight against terrorism.”

“Lisbon would allow a group of well-armed states to form a military alliance within the EU in cooperation with US-dominated Nato. The remaining states would have no say in the workings of this group, but its actions would inevitably affect us all. Lisbon reinforces EU-Nato links and gives the US more influence over European foreign policy. Yet the Treaty would not require a UN mandate for EU military action."

It was also claimed that additional powers given to the European Parliament under the Lisbon Treaty “do not redress the lack of accountability of the Commission, nor the enshrinement of neoliberal and militarising policies in treaties we cannot change”.

“If we don’t like our government, we can vote them out. But we can’t change EU treaties once they’re in place. Lisbon offers nothing to ordinary people and would give us less control.”

Those affiliated to the group are: Communist Party of Ireland; Community & Workers Action Group, Crumlin; Éirígí; Irish Anti-war Movement; Irish Republican Socialist Party; Irish Socialist Network; Peace and Neutrality Alliance; People Before Profit Alliance; People’s Movement; Sinn Fein; Socialist Party; Socialist Workers Party and the Workers Party.

[Sub-X]

How can we trust ministers who don't understand the EU?
http://www.libertas.org/content/view/284/1/
21 May 2008

Fundamental questions have to be asked about the Government's ability to negotiate the Lisbon Treaty following revelations that two senior members of the cabinet do not understand how the EU commission works, Libertas Chairman Declan Ganley said this afternoon.

Speaking at a European Movement Debate in Allied Irish Bank headquarters, Mr. Ganley said that statements by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan and Social Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin that larger countries currently had more commissioners than Ireland were "very disturbing".

Mr. Ganley told the audience of over 200 AIB employees that in the context of Mrs. Coughlan's recent responsibilities in terms of representing Ireland's interests in critical WTO talks, the remarks were particularly offensive.

"Mary Coughlan says that Lisbon is "good for Ireland, and good for Europe". How is she fit to make that judgement when she does not understand how Europe works. How can you judge changes, and their effects, when you don't know the status quo?

The Tánaiste was until recently responsible for keeping Peter Mandelson in check. She has now made the same error twice in less than five days. Once is a slip of the tongue, twice is glaring incompetence. She has mislead the public on the issue of the WTO Veto, and now she is misleading them on her own understanding of the EU itself.

She lectures the people of Ireland on the Lisbon treaty, but has she read it? If she had, she would not make the mistake she did. We know that the Taoiseach has not read it, now it seems his deputy has not done so either. They are also denying the public the opportunity to read it.

Mary Hanafin made the same error at a Fianna Fáil meeting in Crumlin last night. She also has no excuse.

If ever there were evidence that we are being lied to, this is it. I challenge the honesty of somebody who insists to the public that changes to an institution are good, when that person does not understand the institution that those changes are being applied to.

If they do not understand it, they are lying to the Irish people, and should be held accountable on June 12th".

[Sub-X]

Trade Union Leaders comments on Lisbon are Misleading
http://www.voteno.ie/html/press.htm#horan
21.05.2008

VoteNo.ie rejects recent claims by Trade Union leader, Blair Horan (General Secretary of the CPSU) that the Lisbon treaty will protect the values of social Europe.


Blair Horan has argued that "important social values" have been added to internal market rules and that the commitment to "undistorted competition" has been removed.


Mr Horan is clearly ignoring the protocol, attached to the Treaty, that states: "Considering that the internal market as set out in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union includes a system ensuring that competition is not distorted�" In other words undistorted competition continues to be one of the defining features of the EU.


Mr Horan also claimed that the treaty does not affect the ability of member states to provide public services. But here, he is, again, ignoring the actual substance of the Treaty. Lisbon explicitly states (Article 188C(4)) that the veto in relation to international trade agreements will be removed for social, health and education. This will make it easier to open up health and education to competition via international trade agreements in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).


It will only be possible to veto a trade deal in very exceptional and undefined circumstances. Otherwise qualified majority voting would apply, as is currently the case for agriculture.


Trade in public services involves means allowing private corporations to bid to deliver public services . Public providers would then be obliged to compete with for profit providers.


The important question for Yes campaigners here is If you do not want trade in public services why surrender the veto? The only reason to remove the veto on trade in healthcare or education is to make it easier to push through privatisation.


Voteno.ie is calling on voters, if they want the real story on Lisbon, to look at the treaty for themselves and ignore the spin.

[Sub-X]

Irish Times article: Lisbon would turn Ireland into a province
http://www.nationalplatform.org/wordpress/
May 21st, 2008
by Anthony Coughlan

VOTE NO TO LISBON AND REJECT EUROPEAN FEDERAL STATE

Lisbon would turn Ireland into a province or region of an EU superstate and make us citizens of it first rather than of the Irish Republic.
 
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 Š 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 ands 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 ofthe 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.

[oshea.declan]

[Sub-X]

Excellent stuff Declan,I seen that poster the other day and forgot to post it 

Proclamation Poster

[Sub-X]

WTO Veto - Cowen again refuses to acknowledge it exists
http://www.libertas.org/content/view/285/1/
22 May 2008

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has again refused to confirm whether Ireland will have the ability to veto the final package that emerges from the World Trade Talks, despite being asked to do so by Libertas, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein, the IFA, the ICMSA, and Labour at today's Forum on Europe.

The right to veto the WTO agreement is a critical tool in the Government's armoury, and its loss would be a devastating blow to Irish farmers.

Libertas has received, and made available to the public, a document from the EU commission which confirms its position that the veto has been abolished under Lisbon.

Commenting on this latest development, Libertas Chairman Declan Ganley said:

"What is clear here is that the Government is not answering this question. This strikes us as being strange, given how quickly they have moved to attack other claims about the Treaty.

The fact is that there is no veto. They have given it away under Lisbon. The EU commission in Dublin and the Government have been misleading the Irish people on this key issue.

The veto is a vital tool, particularly in the context of Peter Mandelson's current proposals which would destroy Irish agriculture.

Lisbon already gives more power to unaccountable elite in Brussels, and now Brian Cowen is refusing to deny that it gives them absolute power over the future of Ireland's rural economy.

The Government now appear to be guilty of a massive failure of negotiation. In that context, I cannot see how the Irish rural community can support this treaty".

[Sub-X]

A Lawyer’s look at the Lisbon Treaty
http://www.people.ie/contreaty/noonan.pdf
By Joe Noonan.

[Joe Noonan is a partner in Noonan Linehan Carroll Coffey, Solicitors, Cork. He was an expert witness on foreign and security policy in the landmark Crotty case (1987) in which the Supreme Court decided that the Single European Act should be put to the Irish people by way of referendum.The Crotty judgement is the reason Ireland is holding a referendum on the Lisbon treaty on June 12th.]

Introduction

The Treaty of Lisbon if ratified by all member states will transform the legal structure and operation of the European Union. At present there are two bodies, the European Community and the European Union. After Lisbon only one body will remain. Lisbon consolidates and
amends the existing treaties – we will be left with two linked treaties, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the Union.

Lisbon contains over 90 percent of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Following further negotiations the Lisbon treaty emerged in December 2007. None of the member states, except Ireland, now seek approval for ratification by referendum. This has attracted some comment.

"The most striking change [between the Lisbon treaty and the Constitution treaty] is perhaps that in order to enable some governments to reassure their electorates that the changes will have no constitutional implications, the idea of a new and simpler treaty containing all the provisions governing the Union has now been dropped in favour of a huge series of individual amendments to two existing treaties. Virtual incomprehensibility has thus replaced simplicity as the key approach to EU reform. As for the changes now proposed to be made to the constitutional treaty, most are presentational changes that have no practical effect. They have simply been designed to enable certain heads of government to sell to their people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action rather than by referendum."
[Dr Garret FitzGerald, Irish Times, 30 June 2007.]

Given the implications of Lisbon for our legal landscape, the lack of public debate among Irish lawyers is remarkable. In this article it is possible only to sketch some of the proposed changes. Nothing is a substitute for reading the treaty text. On its own it is virtually
impenetrable. Fortunately, an excellent document showing the effect of the Lisbon changes on the existing treaties has been compiled by Peadar Ó Broin (google ‘peadar o broin annotated treaties’). The changes are colour coded, with new text shown in yellow or blue.
Deleted text remains, struck through in red.

Scope of the Union

The Lisbon treaty is an important legal document. It proposes the abolition of the European Community and the reconstruction of the European Union as a new single body with its own legal identity separate from its member states. Lisbon will change the legal relationship
between this new Union and the member states. Some changes have attracted public interest,such as the reduced number of Commissioners, changes in qualified majority voting, and the removal of various national vetoes. Of particular constitutional significance in Ireland however will be the changes to the objectives of the Union and its increased scope.

At present, the stated Tasks of the European Community focus on the promotion of economic development, social progress and economic and social cohesion and solidarity among member states (Article 2, Treaty establishing the European Community). The stated Task of the present European Union is the organisation of relations between the member states and
between their peoples:

The Union shall be founded on the European Communities, supplemented by the policies and forms of cooperation established by this Treaty. Its task shall be to organise, in a manner demonstrating consistency and solidarity, relations between the Member states and between their peoples. (Article 1, TEU pre Lisbon)

These tasks render the present European Community and European Union the servants of the member states and of their citizens. This will change under Lisbon which removes these tasks, and provides no equivalent replacement tasks. Lisbon abolishes the European
Community, folding its operations into the new Union. Instead of organising relations between member states and between their peoples, the new Union's aims and objectives will focus on identifying and asserting the Union’s own interests and the ‘wellbeing of its peoples’
(Article 3, TEU post Lisbon).

The aims and objectives of the new Union are elaborated in that Article 3.This should be read in full as it is too long to reproduce here. Article 3 reflects the fact that the new Union will have more scope than the existing bodies. For example, Lisbon gives the Union greater
competence in the justice and home affairs area. Ireland, along with the UK has opted out of this part of the treaty but will review the opt-out in three years. If Lisbon is ratified by Ireland, despite their intial opt-out, the government will have authority to opt in to these areas if and when it sees fit in the future.

Citizenship

Under Lisbon we are no longer referred to as ‘the peoples of the member states’ and are instead referred to for the first time as 'its peoples', ie the peoples of the new Union.Similarly, post Lisbon the Union will refer to us as ‘its citizens’; a subtle change from present
references to us as citizens of member states. EU citizenship as a concept came into existence with Maastricht, which provided that EU citizenship‘shall complement national citizenship and not replace it’.This changes with Lisbon which says that EU citizenship shall be ‘additional’ to national citizenship but shall not replace it. The full implications of this change for Irish citizens remain to be seen.

Similarly Members of the European Parliament, currently described as ‘representatives of the peoples of the member states brought together in the Community’, will become ‘representatives of the Union's citizens’ in the new Union.

Charter of Fundamental Rights

Article 6 of the new TEU makes reference to a Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU,which it says ‘shall have the same legal value as the Treaties’. The Guide to the Treaty issued through the Government Publications Office by the National Forum on Europe says
that the Treaty status conferred on the Charter will ‘significantly increase the jurisdiction’ of the European Court of Justice.

The practical consequences for human rights law in Ireland are unclear. Gerard Hogan SC suggests that the Charter could amount to‘the most profound change’ in relation to judicial review and the protection of fundamental rights since the adoption of the Constitution. [Irish
Times. 24 April 2008. Charter ‘could eclipse’ Supreme Court. Dr Carol Coulter]

Ireland and the Wider World

The freedom to manage relations with other countries is a hallmark of statehood. That wasat the heart of the Crotty judgement. The Supreme Court found that the Single European Act would be unconstitutional without a referendum, because it would commit the government to endeavour to coordinate foreign policy with other member states. Even though the commitments were expressed in soft language, the Court found that as a matter of international law, these commitments would bind the government. Lisbon similarly is a
treaty written in the language of international law. It is important to remember this when considering the Lisbon Articles which impose new commitments on Ireland in the areas of EU common foreign and security policy (CFSP), including common security and defence policy
(CSDP).

Commission President Barroso has acknowledged the significance of these changes: ‘The new Treaty will turn the European Union into a full external political actor by giving the Union legal personality……….It will allow the emergence of a true common European
defence. It will introduce a mutual defence clause and a solidarity clause.’ (4 December 2007 speaking at the European Parliament)

Military and Security Commitments

Among the new commitments are Art 28A.7 of the TEU (post Lisbon) which is a mutual defence clause, obliging all member states to come to the aid of any member state that is the victim of armed aggression in its territory. This resembles the defence pact in Article V of the NATO treaty. In the NATO pact, as in the new Lisbon defence clause, each country reserves a discretion as to the precise manner in which it may respond. Some have argued that the existence of a reservation of this kind in Lisbon allows Ireland to deny that it is a defence pact. By that logic NATO itself would not be a defence pact either.

Lisbon will also give proper treaty status to the European Defence Agency. The Agency was established by the EU Heads in 2004. Ireland was among the first to join when the government committed us to Agency membership which includes financial commitments.
The Agency has a range of military and security goals that are not confined to the territory of the EU. Article 14 of the existing TEU, which relates to CFSP, allows the European Council to adopt ‘joint actions which shall address specific situations where operational
action by the Union is deeemed to be required’. A citizen would be unlikely to have understood Article 14 as providing for the establishment of the Agency, but this became the purported treaty authority for the Agency in 2004.

Lisbon will oblige member states for the first time to ‘progressively improve’ their military capabilities. The Agency will monitor whether countries are making the necessary improvements.

Lisbon weakens the current limitation on EU military action, which in general terms confines such actions to humanitarian or peacekeeping operations. Lisbon will give the Union scope to deploy military force for such purposes, at such locations and in such circumstances as it sees fit. There is no obligation at present on the EU to seek UN sanction before deploying EU
forces outside the Union. This will not change.

Law is ultimately about power and how it is to be exercised. The Lisbon referendum is about the redistribution of power between Irish citizen and the Irish government, between big and small states in the EU, and between member states and the EU. Lisbon will reshape the European Union with implications that will last for a long time. We cannot afford to underestimate the significance of this referendum.

[Sub-X]

Lisbon Treaty Not An Easy Sell, Admits Irish EU Commissioner
http://euobserver.com/9/26193
22.05.2008

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – With just three weeks to go before Ireland's highly anticipated referendum on the Lisbon treaty, the country's European commissioner has admitted that the document is hard to sell because it does not bring tangible benefits to the population.

"One of the difficulties this time in getting out the vote is seeing how you can energise voters," said Charlie McCreevy in an interview with EUobserver, with pundits widely predicting that a low voter turnout would result in a "No" vote on 12 June.

He noted that arguments such as the treaty "improving the situation" or giving Ireland "a bigger say in a better organisational structure" are not as grabbing as "we're going to get a whole lot of money through the Common Agricultural Policy or we're going to get a whole lot of money from structural funds."

In the past, Ireland has been a major beneficiary of the EU's generous farm policy as well as picking up aid for its poor rural areas. This, coupled with access to the EU's internal market, has turned the country into one of the richest member states.

Now it finds itself in an uncomfortable spotlight as the only country to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - the new set of institutional rules bashed out last year after the shock rejection of the EU constitution by France and the Netherlands in 2005.

The Lisbon Treaty's main innovations include an EU foreign minister, a permanent president of the EU and freeing up the decision-making process in several areas.

A "No" vote is likely to scupper the whole process, as all member states need to ratify the document for it to kick into place.

Mr McCreevy, in charge of the EU's internal market portfolio, says: "Looking at it from an Irish perspective," it would be better to have a Europe-wide referendum to ease the burden on the electorate.

"What this is doing is that the whole concentration of the whole of Europe is solely on us. We're under total scrutiny."

"People feel under a fair degree of pressure about this, whereas if everyone was voting you wouldn't feel under the same pressure."

In addition, the treaty – an amalgamation of existing treaties, plus a series of innovations, protocols and opt-outs – is not the easiest read.

Mr McCreevy has himself not read it. "I have a document that puts together what it would look like and I have read most of that," he says.

"I would predict that there won't be 250 people in the whole of the 4.2 million population of Ireland that have read the treaties cover-to-cover. I further predict that there is not 10 percent of that 250 that will understand every section and subsection.

"But is there anything different about that?" said the commissioner, adding: "Does anyone read the finance act?" referring to the lengthy, yearly documents he drew up when he was finance minister in Ireland.

Turnout threat

He conceded that the high percentage of people who remain undecided (47% in the latest opinion poll) could lead to a lower turnout.

"When there is a high number of undecideds in a very complex debate … you'd be very much afraid that it would lead to a lower turnout."

Riding high in political memory is Ireland's "No" to the Nice Treaty in 2000 (voter turnout was 34.8%), which was turned into a "Yes" the following year with a turnout of 48.5 percent.

He refused to be drawn on what would it would mean for Europe if Ireland votes "No" this time round, with some analysts suggesting it would plunge the bloc into a protracted political crisis.

"We have to live with that too," he said, referring to a possible rejection of the treaty. "Having debated the issues thoroughly, months of everyone having their say, all types of issues being dragged into it, the Irish people go to the polls and they must say 'Yes' or 'No.' After it's over, you shouldn't complain about it."

But he did plead for a "Yes" to the treaty.

"On the balance of everything, it is in Ireland's interest to vote 'Yes.' It is better for Europe to move ahead on this new basis and it is better for Ireland to be part of this," he says.

[Sub-X]

There Is No Irish Veto On Global Agricultural Trade Deals.
http://www.caeuc.org/index.php?q=node/251

There Is No Irish Veto On Global Agricultural Trade Deals.

During the current Lisbon referendum campaign, numerous politicians, business and think-tank leaders and spokespersons have repeatedly asserted that EU Member States, including Ireland, have a veto on whether or not the EU signs up to a WTO free-trade deal on agricultural goods. This is not true. An international free-trade agreement that consists exclusively of agricultural and other 'manufactured' goods, cannot be vetoed. It can only be decided on by a 'qualified majority' vote by the EU Council of Ministers. Additionally, the automatic veto on free-trade agreements in essential public services, which Member States currently enjoy, is removed under the proposed Lisbon treaty.
Barry Finnegan makes a watertight case in this new publication of the CAEUC.

[Sub-X]

No vote increases because of hard work and voters' intelligence
http://www.lisbonvote.com/
25/5/2008

Campaigners for a No vote on the Lisbon Treaty have welcomed the results of the Red C poll which shows a significant increase in the No vote with just 18 days left to polling day. Cóir spokesman Richard Greene said the upwards shift in voters opposing the treaty was due to 'the hard work of volunteers campaigning hard on the No side, and the intelligence of the Irish voter who were able to discern the fatal flaws in the Lisbon Treaty'.

Mr Greene said that the poll in the Sunday Business Post must have caused dismay in the ranks of Yes campaigners since they had poured literally millions of euros into an expensive advertising blitz they hoped would sell the treaty. 'This poll shows that the Irish people don't like to be taken for granted,' said Mr Greene. 'The Yes campaign has given them nothing but empty slogans but we're finding at the doors that people want to know about the treaty and they don't like the patronizing tone and the bullying being used by the Yes campaign.'

The Cóir spokesman said that the Labour party and Fine Gael had only themselves to blame for this poor showing. 'They've used their referendum posters as an electioneering tool, and made no attempt to address the issues,' he said. 'It's indicative of their contempt for their electorate.' He pointed to the success of the Cóir 'No'posters saying that political commentators had acknowledged that while they might have been outnumbered, they were far ahead of the 'yes' posters in terms of 'design and visual impact'. 

Mr Greene said that new adverts, a youtube feature and a fresh flood of Cóir posters would boost the No campaign again in the days to come and that volunteers would be meeting voters at doorsteps, on the way to work, in shopping areas and 'anywhere we can grab the opportunity to talk to people about the key flaws in this treaty'. He said that the work of volunteers had been key to the success of the campaign to date and that it had not been matched by any parties on the Yes side. 'We know from our canvass that the parties' grassroots have not been active in this campaign,' said the Cóir spokesman. 'We're not meeting them anywhere; at houses, shopping centres or churches. And we can see the results of that in the poll today.'

[Sub-X]

Germany is 14th state to ratify Lisbon Treaty
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0523/eulisbon.html

Germany has become the 14th EU state to approve the Lisbon Treaty.

The German President approved Germany's ratification of the treaty this morning, following votes in the two houses of parliament.

The ratification process is proceeding in the 13 other states. Ireland is the only state where a referendum is being held on ratification.

AdvertisementMeanwhile, the European Commission has said the treaty does allow states to veto complex trade agreements such as World Trade Organisation agreements.

The anti-Lisbon campaign group Libertas has said the treaty will abolish the Government's veto over international trade deals, and said the Government and the Commission have been misleading the people.

Sinn Fein has also claimed the Government will lose its veto over trade agreements under the Lisbon Treaty.

The Government has denied the claim, and insists it retains a veto right. Tonight the EC has published a detailed interpretation of the treaty provision on foreign trade which it says categorically proves that governments retain veto rights over trade deals.

Libertas chairman Declan Ganley says his organisation has received legal advice that the treaty does not allow governments to veto trade deals, but declined to show that legal advice to RTÉ News.


McCreevy has not read full treaty

European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has admitted that he has not read the Lisbon Treaty from cover to cover, and said he would not expect any sane person to do so.

Speaking in Dublin, Mr McCreevy said the Treaty was a series of amendments to other amendments, and was unreadable to the ordinary person.

However, he said there was enough information and interpretation of it available to allow people to make up their minds.

He said there was a lot of interest in Brussels in the Irish referendum, but said there was no alternative to the current Treaty.

The Commissioner said the defeated EU Constitution was Plan A, Lisbon was Plan B, and there was no Plan C.

He said the No side were getting their message across well, and it was up to the Yes side to do likewise.

'Let the best team win', he added.

[Sub-X]

Austrians back Libertas with No vote letters
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=33182-qqqx=1.asp
25 May 2008

Austrian activists are urging Irish voters to reject the Lisbon Treaty in a letter-writing campaign backed by Declan Ganley’s Libertas.

An Austrian group which is campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty is supplying names and addresses of Irish voters to activists through its website. It is asking them to write looking for a No vote in the forthcoming Lisbon Treaty referendum.

Rettet Österreich (Save Austria) has consulted Libertas, the group led by entrepreneur Declan Ganley, on its campaign. Ganley travelled to Vienna a fortnight ago to meet the group and accompanied them to present a petition urging a No vote to the Irish embassy.

Rettet Österreich has been described as a far-right group in some media reports, a label it disputes. It has lodged an official complaint with the state broadcaster.

However, a rally held by Rettet Österreich in Vienna on March 12 was attended by members of the National People’s Party, a group that espouses Nazi-style race theory. It also advocates Austrian exit from the EU. It is campaigning against the construction of a mosque in the city of Linz, which it describes as a ‘‘pig mosque’’.

A Libertas spokesman confirmed to The Sunday Business Post that the group had been consulted by Rettet Österreich, but said there were ‘‘no formal links between the two groups’’. The Austrian group has also produced the ‘‘three monkeys’’ image that has been used by Coir, another anti-Lisbon group.
 

[Sub-X]

Lisbon too close to call as race tightens
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=33184-qqqx=1.asp
25 May 2008

 

Neither side has secured a decisive lead in the Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign and with just over a fortnight until polling day, the fate of the treaty hangs in the balance.

The campaign against the treaty has closed the gap with the Yes side slightly in the past two weeks, and the pro-treaty side now leads by eight points, according to the latest Sunday Business Post/Red C tracking poll. Turnout on polling day will be crucial if the government wants to secure the passing of the treaty.

Support for both the Yes and No side has increased in the past two weeks, as the number of undecided voters declines. However, as the campaigns intensify, the No side has fared better recently, gaining five points since the last poll. The Yes side gained three points.

Some 41 per cent of voters say they will support the treaty, while 33 per cent say they will vote against it. Undecided voters now account for 26 per cent, a fall of eight points.

With the gap between the two sides narrowing, a late swing either way - as happened in previous referenda - would be decisive. Previously, No voters have proved more likely to turn out to vote on polling day, though Yes voters now say they are as likely to vote.

Despite the IFA’s demands that the government promise to veto a world trade deal, significantly more farmers say they will vote for than against Lisbon. However, Fine Gael voters are evenly divided on the treaty.

On party support, Fianna Fáil gains two points from last month, and support for the party stands at 40 per cent. The finding confirms the boost the party has enjoyed since Brian Cowen became Taoiseach. Fine Gael slips back marginally - its fourth one point drop in the last four months. Support for the Green Party also falls back, by three points.

STATE OF THE REFERENDUM

Yes 41% (+3)

No 33% (+5)

Don’t Know 26% (-8)


STATE OF THE PARTIES

Fianna Fáil 40% (+2)

Fine Gael 28% (-1)

Labour 10% (no change)

Greens 5% (-3)

Sinn Féin 9% (+2)

PDs 2% (no change)

Inds 6% (no change)

[Sub-X]

Richard Boyd Barrett challenges Former Taoiseach on Lisbon Treaty
http://peoplebeforeprofitdse.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/richard-boyd-barrett-challenges-former-taoiseach-on-lisbon-treaty/

Watch Here

Richard Boyd Barrett, from the People Before Profit Alliance in a debate with former Taoiseach Dr. Gareth Fitzgerald on RTE’s Six One News this evening called on people to read the Lisbon treaty for themselves and not to rely on the spin.

Richard Boyd Barrett commented: “All the evidence you need is in the Treaty itself. Lisbon accelerates the militarization of the EU. In contrast to all other areas of public policy, Lisbon Article 28 requires member states to increase their military spending and make their facilities available for EU military activity”

“Most worrying all”, Boyd Barrett commented, “is the manner in which Lisbon allows for the privatization of public services. Since the 1980s the EU has moved to restructure essential public services such as water and sanitation, public transport, energy, post and telecoms as private business. Now, with the Lisbon Treaty, our health, education and social care systems are in their sights.”

Boyd Barrett accused Yes campaigners of “clearly ignoring the fact that the Lisbon Treaty explicitly states (Article 188C(4)) that the veto in relation to international trade agreements will be removed for social, health and education.

“This will make it easier to open up health and education to competition via WTO trade agreements in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).”

“If Lisbon is ratified it will only be possible to veto a trade deal in very exceptional and undefined circumstances If you do not want trade in public services, then why surrender the veto? The only reason to remove the veto on trade in healthcare or education is to make it easier to push through privatisation.”

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Notice towards the end our national broadcasters unbiased coverage,when Sharon Ni Bheolain trys to discredit Richard Boyd Barrett by calling him a failed Dail candidate,and why should people believe him over Dr.Gareth Fitzgerald a respect ex Taoiseach(Mr.Bilderburg himself) 

[Sub-X]

Will Europe's spoilt children put us to shame by saying No to the EU empire?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021710/Will-Europes-spoilt-children-shame-saying-No-EU-empire.html
24th May 2008

To the secret horror of the real rulers of Europe, one tiny country is letting its people vote on whether it should give up its independence for ever.

The other 26 members of the Franco-German Empire have meekly agreed to accept their new status as provinces.

But Ireland, which fought so hard to break away from Britain less than a century ago, is obliged by its cunningly-drawn constitution to put the issue to a referendum. The Irish government hates this but must allow it.

Since the 2001 Nice rebellion, the rules of referendums in Ireland have changed, making it far harder for the No side.

That is the nature of ‘democracy’ in the EU. You can vote for anything you like, but it will always be difficult to oppose them - and in any case the result won’t count unless the authorities agree with you.

Yet it is also wonderfully gallant, and a bitter reminder to the passive, wilfully ignorant people of Britain - who have never really thought about the EU, who dumbly allowed themselves to be bamboozled into voting for it the one time they had a real chance to escape - that resistance is both possible and thinkable.

And how enjoyable it is that the one challenge to Europe’s most dishonest and greedy seizure of power should be happening in Ireland, the spoiled child of Brussels, soothed with flattery and sprayed with subsidies.

For the EU, like every other continental great power in history, knew all too well how to play on the old rivalry and hostility between our two amazingly different islands.

What joy there has been in EU headquarters to have one Englishspeaking country that happily embraces the Euro, that flies the Euro flag with enthusiasm, scraps miles for kilometres on its signposts and generally lies back and enjoys being ravished by the new superpower.

Most Irish people believe their new prosperity has come from Europe. They are partly right, though much has also come from Ireland’s very low business taxes.

Doubters will point out that it is hard to work out a balance between forfeiting £150billion in lost fisheries and gaining nearly £50billion in subsidies for new roads.

But the roads, and the flashy new wealth, are easier to see than the vanished fishing fleets.

As a result, the EU has a kind of cargo cult status here. It is the source of great gifts from above, and the idea that Ireland might be better off out of it (which it would be) is never spoken out loud even by those who believe it.

That will change because the cash has already stopped. Ireland is now a net contributor to the EU by most calculations, and certainly will be once great slabs of ‘peace money’ have run out, as they soon will.

Ireland is also suffering from the same raging increase in the cost of living as Britain.

When I apologised to a Dublin cafe owner for paying for my €10 breakfast with a
€50 note, worth almost £40, he said: ‘Don’t worry. Inflation’s so bad that’s becoming the most common note in use.’

But right now the pro-EU consensus is as bad as it was in Britain 30 years ago. Every major political party is united in favour of the Lisbon Treaty (formerly known as the Constitution).

There are various rather noble but tiny organisations producing clever anti-EU posters. The best shows three unhelpful EU monkeys - ‘They won’t see you, they won’t hear you, they won’t speak for you’.

The fiercest pictures the 1916 independence proclamation made during the Easter Rising, which is Ireland’s combined Trafalgar, Dunkirk and Battle of Britain.

It points out uncomfortably that: ‘People died for your freedom. Don’t throw it away.’ Another, aiming lower, simply warns: ‘It’ll cost you.’

These are hopelessly outnumbered by the bland and smiley Yes placards that decorate every Dublin street in their hundreds.

With impeccable logic, Sinn Fein (’Ourselves Alone’) is the only remotely significant party prepared to say No.

Which would mean a pretty unbalanced battle if it weren’t for the slightly mysterious multimillionaire, Declan Ganley, who has flung his great energy and wealth behind a one-man No campaign that has obviously infuriated the Dublin establishment.

I watched Mr Ganley debating with the spokesmen of the two main parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.

They didn’t have a chance. Most people don’t have a clue what the Lisbon Treaty is about so Mr Ganley, who does have a clue, tells them in fierce, forceful English that the government is lying.

And when I say English, I mean English. Mr Ganley was born deep in Galway but he speaks in the unromantic accent of Watford, where his parents emigrated to find work in the hard times.

I’m not sure this helps him, but he insists it signifies nothing.

Time and again, Irish unemployment forced him to live and work in England, until he made his fortune trading aluminium in the collapsing Soviet Union. Now he sells communications equipment to the US National Guard.

Last week a pro-EU Dublin newspaper tried to suggest there was something bad about this, trumpeting portentously that Mr Ganley’s Libertas group has ‘ military links’.

This sort of stuff is easier than taking him on. EU documents are notoriously tangled, but I think time will prove him right and Lisbon will leave Ireland even more powerless, isolated and vulnerable than it will leave Britain.

Like us, Dublin will lose its permanent member on the Commission and, with its tiny voting strength, this is a much graver loss than it will be to Britain.

The new powers of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg could one day be used to override Ireland’s unique laws.

Nobody really knows how the Charter of Rights and Freedoms could be interpreted.

And Ireland’s crucial 12.5 per cent tax rate on company profits (compared with Britain’s 28 per cent) could be vulnerable to new rules on ‘distortion of competition’.

Ireland was told in the past that its fishing and sugar industries were safe from the EU, and then saw both devastated anyway.

Ganley’s rhetoric is tough and he takes meetings by storm. In the debate I watched, the chairman couldn’t stop him, and when Ganley decided his Sinn Fein ally on the panel wasn’t up to much, he simply took over, leaving the man opening and closing his mouth silently like a fish.

His rhetoric has a directness you don’t often find in crabwise Irish politics. For example, he has described the Common Agricultural Policy as ‘a weapon of mass destruction’.

He declared that ‘after Lisbon there will be nothing left of our benefits from the EU except a piece of dental floss’.

His sharpest opponent, Fine Gael’s Michael Creed, meanly suggested Ganley was ‘the West Wing of British Euroscepticism’, a sly attack that may do damage since any link with British conservatism is poison here.

The Fianna Fail government simply denies all Ganley’s claims. But what does it know?

You sense that many of these people simply take the EU on trust, regarding it as an unstoppable natural force, and enjoy the prospect of having more power and less responsibility.

I watched the Deputy Prime Minister, Mary Coughlan, floundering helplessly as she revealed her own ignorance of the thing she was defending. She claimed that the bigger EU countries still each had two Commissioners, which hasn’t been so for years.

Even so, the pro-EU politicians have fear on their side. They often speak of how Ireland will lose the ‘goodwill’ - that is, the special favour it has been shown - if it votes No.

And there has been talk of ‘reaping the whirlwind’ if one small country falls out of step with the other 26.

The best riposte to that, surprisingly enough, came from Killian Forde, a bright and witty Dublin councillor who is a prominent member of Sinn Fein.

I asked him why people who had fought so hard for independence, and gone to war over the wording of a treaty, now seemed ready to give that same independence away again and leave a far more important treaty unread.

He says people don’t realise how much the EU menaces their liberties because it has crept up on them. ‘They started on the soft stuff and only now are they getting to the sovereignty issues.’

He points out sarcastically that the mainstream parties all go on about how much the EU has done for equality. ‘Why could we not have done that ourselves if we wanted it?

Were we so stupid and backward that we needed the enlightened Europeans to tell us what to do?’

Forde also suspects that many Irish leaders have deliberately courted the EU to annoy Britain and rejects the idea that Ireland should be grateful for what it has got. What about the future?

‘If it doesn’t work out and we end up as an economic backwater on the edge of Europe, our children are not going to thank me for voting Yes.’

I don’t know how this vote will go. The polls say that the Yes campaign is winning, but they said the same thing at this stage in the campaign over the Nice treaty and that went the other way.

Declan Ganley’s intervention has upset a lot of calculations, and as another No campaigner said to me: ‘When all the fat-cat politicians are agreed on something, surely you’d think that people would smell a rat?’

Well, I hope they do because if Ireland votes No it will hurl a small but dangerous spanner into the whirling, roaring innards of the European project, possibly causing an uncontrolled explosion of bile, rage and frustration that will not make it any easier to persuade Ireland to do as it is told.

What concessions can the EU bosses give that will make a difference? In reality, none.

Can they abandon the treaty? Not without abandoning the whole scheme for ‘ever greater union’.

Can they allow others to do the same? I don’t think so.

It would be pleasing to think that the courageous, resourceful and determined Irish people, whose unembarrassed love of their country puts us to shame, could unhorse the mighty European empire, as they once humbled ours.

But, since the last thing the No campaigners need is a British voice on their side, I wouldn’t dream of saying so.

[Sub-X]

'Yes' side fears large swing among undecided voters
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/lisbon-treaty/yes-side-fears-large-swing-among-undecided-voters-1387014.html
May 26 2008

THE 'Yes' campaign yesterday appeared to be facing a battle to capture more than a quarter of voters who are undecided on the Lisbon Treaty, with fears that the 'No' campaign would benefit from a low turnout at the polls.

Although the 'Yes' side is still ahead at 41pc, the 'No' campaign has gained five points to 33pc. Crucially there are still 26pc of voters undecided with less than three weeks to go -- many who may not bother to vote at all.

This is remarkably similar to an opinion poll shortly before the first Nice Treaty referendum Treaty in 2001 -- when 27pc of voters had no opinion.

Ultimately, only 35pc turned out to vote and this low figure was blamed for the 'Yes' side's embarrassing defeat.

Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin admitted yesterday that a "lot of people" still had to make up their minds on how they would vote.

He insisted the 'Yes' campaign would be taking nothing for granted, with Fianna Fail determined to avoid embarrassment for new leader Mr Cowen.

Battle

Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who canvassed supporters attending the Laois vs Offaly hurling championship match in Portlaoise yesterday, is due to campaign on his party's "battle bus" in Blanchardstown, Dublin today as the 'Yes' campaign prepares for an intense appeal to voters' hearts and minds.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who climbed up onto a lorry to launch his party's latest pro-Lisbon billboard yesterday, said he was encouraged that the Red C poll showed support for the Lisbon Treaty hardening.

But he admitted that "there has been a slight narrowing in the gap".

"A number have gravitated to the 'No' camp. So the clear lessons is that we have to redouble our efforts between now and referendum day," he said.

Former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald and Minister for Europe Dick Roche have both warned during the campaign that a low turnout is the greatest threat to a 'Yes' vote on June 12. The 'No' vote remained almost the same in the second Nice Treaty referendum in 2002 but the 'Yes' vote was boosted when the turnout rose to 49pc and the treaty was passed.

However, Sinn Fein Dublin MEP Mary Lou McDonald said despite campaigning for a 'No' vote, her party was looking to maximise voter turnout in the referendum, and she called for more public debate on the content of the treaty and its implications for Ireland.

"Today's Red C poll results are encouraging for the 'No' campaign, but clearly neither side of this debate can be complacent with a significant percentage of the electorate remaining undecided," she said.

Despite criticisms by Minister Lenihan of the "nonsensical slogans" of the 'No' camp, anti-treaty group Coir said that Luas adverts, a YouTube feature and a fresh flood of posters would appear this week.

It said that volunteers would be meeting voters "anywhere we can grab the opportunity to talk to people about the key flaws in this treaty".

Labour launched the latest phase of its Lisbon campaign yesterday by sticking a 'Yes' sticker on the bronze statue of Countess Markievicz, who served as Minister for Labour in the first Dail in 1919. Its deputy leader Joan Burton said that women should realise that they had already benefited from the EU in areas such as equal pay and would benefit more under the Lisbon Treaty.

According to the poll, Fine Gael voters are almost evenly divided between the 'Yes' and 'No' sides.

The party's Dublin MEP Gay Mitchell said: "By voting 'No' we would put any prospects of a common defence agreement in danger. If a common defence goes ahead without Ireland influencing its design we would then have to provide properly for our own defence here at home, and that would mean spending a higher proportion of our GDP on defence."

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The Lisbon Treaty is no friend of Palestine
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87722
May 26, 2008

The Treaty : "An incomprehensible maze by design" (Cathy Sinnott)

For the past two weeks the focus of the Free Palestine Campaign group in Galway has been harvesting signatures for our petition calling on the EU (and the Irish government to work towards effecting it) to suspend or terminate the Euro-Med Agreement, which economically privileges Israel with access to the EU market, due to that country's gross and willful trampling of Palestinian human rights, International Law, Geneva Conventions and Part 2 of the Agreement .

When it comes to Palestine, the moral rot of the EU in refusing to suspend the Agreement does'nt stop there, it's deep and pernicious and with the passing of the Lisbon Treaty will deleteriously effect and infect Palestine further?.

Besides bolstering the economy and legitimising the criminality of a rogue state, the EU has further priviledged Israel with a veto over the opening of the international crossing at Rafah from Gaza into Egypt : "The EU, which has provided a small force (EU BAM Rafah) to monitor the operation of the crossing, has consistently refused to send its personnel to open the crossing when Israel doesn’t want it open. The EU BAM website states that the crossing “can only be opened by agreement between the Parties”, in other words, the EU accords Israel a veto over its opening - this is in flat contradiction to the promise made by (EU honcho), Javier Solana, that the crossing is “not controlled by the Israelis'”.
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/ipsc/displayRe...ID=74

With the unholy alliance of the EU, Israel and the US now punishing the Palestinians for democratically electing Hamas to political power, Gaza is the concentration camp, the West Bank the open prison where: "The obliteration of an entire people by slow systematic methods of suffocation, outright murder and the stifling of everyday life" (Edward Said) is happening.

If this is how the EU is behaving now, what will its form be towards Palestine and the World, if and when the self-amending and self-serving Lisbon Treaty is passed?. "One of the more disturbing aspects of the Lisbon Treaty is the way it creates new openings for involvement in military adventures. The Treaty would increase the militarisation of the EU, as all states would have to increase their military spending. The Treaty commits the EU to working with US dominated NATO and therefore closely ties Europe to US foreign policy." The Lisbon Treaty also gives the EU the power ‘to fight terrorism, including supporting third countries in combating terrorism," with the Foreign Secretary; David Miliband, of a country that criminally attacked a country five years ago and allowed Israel to devastate Lebanon two years ago as the proposed EU foreign minister, it's no quantum leap into febrile surmise that the "third country" will be Israel and the "terrorists" will be Hamas, Hezbollah or any group opposing its imperial hubris.?


Related Link: http://voteno.ie/html/militarisation.htm

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EU Charter Sanctions The Right to Be Executed in Time of War
http://www.voteno.ie/html/EU-Sanctions-The-Right-to-Be-Executed-in-Time-of-War.htm
26.5.2008

EXPLANATIONS (*) RELATING TO THE CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS

Much has been made by Yes supporters of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and it is claimed that this is such a progressive document that it out-weights other provisions of the Treaty which will introduce more privatisation and militarization.

However the dishonesty of this argument is neatly illustrated by the fact that the charter actually sanctions the execution of dissidents in time of war.

Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights states simply that

"1. Everyone has the right to life.

2. No one shall be condemned to the death penalty or executed"

However, the difficulty with much EU speak is that all sorts of qualifications are hidden away in the small print. 

Many people are not aware that the EU has produced an additional document entitled Explanations Relating to the Charter of Fundamental Rights (2007/c 303/02) which has full legal status. These "explanations" amount to qualifications of  "fundamental " rights and in some cases introduce even more draconian clauses.

The death penalty is a case in point. The Explanations allow for executions in a number of important instances.

One is "in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection".

The other important qualification is even more dangerous and deserves quotation at length.

It states that: 

"A State may make provision in its law for the death penalty in respect of acts committed in time of war or of imminent threat of war; such penalty shall be applied only in the instances laid down in the law and in accordance with its provisions�"

This clearly sanctions the executions of people during war time. 

Moreover, as the definition of war becomes more elastic due to the nebulous concept of a "war on terror", it can become quite an open ended clause.

The retention by the EU of a state"s right of execution during war shows that behind the progressive gloss, an old fashioned jackboot is alive and well.

It also neatly illustrates how the Yes side are not giving the full story when they claim that the Charter of Fundamental Rights will give the EU a soul.

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Free enterprise in Europe hangs on Ireland's EU vote
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/26/ccview126.xml
27/05/2008

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, now the Telegraph's International Business Editor, was the Telegraph's EU Correspondent in Brussels from 2000 to 2005. He covered the original drafting of the EU Constitution.


For 700 years Ireland was Britain's outer defence - nolens volens - against the great powers of continental Europe.

By a twist of fate, the Irish must now cast the ballot on the EU constitution for both islands, since Labour has defaulted on its pledge for a British referendum.

Our shared Anglo-Celtic culture has long been a well-spring of free enterprise (with Dutch, Swedish, and Hanseatic help in fighting European absolutism along the way), and that is what is so threatened by the Lisbon Treaty, the treaty to end all EU treaties.

The text strikes the words "free and undistorted competition" from the core objectives of the Union. Corporatist aims will enjoy a higher legal status at the European Court (ECJ) and must prevail if the two clash. The Rhineland Model has locked in a permanent advantage.

Euro-creep is already eviscerating the Common Law that underpins the British and Irish way of doing business. Lisbon quickens the pace. It upgrades the ECJ to a de facto supreme court, with broader jurisdiction. It will have the last say on a raft of new economic and social rights. Who can stop them imposing a Colbertist agenda by court rulings, if they so choose? The ECJ is beyond appeal.

Euro-judges will decide how and when to enforce the Charter of Fundamental Rights, now made legally-binding. Article 52 allows the "limitation" of all liberties in the "general interest" of the Union. This is the old Reich clause. Such justifications for state coercion have been illegal in Europe for 60 years. Now they return, by the back door.

Ireland is the only state to hold a vote. Lisbon gives Europe the paraphernalia of a proto-state: a full-time EU president and foreign minister; a justice department; an energy department; "legal personality" so it can negotiate treaties; etc, etc.

The other 26 EU members have ducked a referendum, their leaders hiding behind each other in an anti-democratic pact. Some 3m Irish voters carry the lonely burden.

They have been through this before, shocking themselves with a No to Nice in 2001. This time stakes are higher. The Celtic Tiger is flagging.

Brussels is turning hostile to Ireland's buccaneering capitalism, and its 12.5pc "fiscal dumping" taxes. Paris let slip that France's incoming EU presidency would push for "harmonised" business taxes. "Untimely," muttered Dublin.

The Anglo-Celts are the targets of last week's open letter by a roster of EU statesmen calling for a new "European Crisis Committee" to take the markets in hand.

"The financial world has accumulated a massive amount of fictitious capital, with very little improvement for humanity. The financial market is not capable of self-regulation," they thundered.

Who can stop the regulatory squeeze in Europe once Ireland's free marketeer, Charlie McCreevy, is unseated as EU single market commissioner next year?

For now, the "Yes" side is ahead in the polls, 35pc to 18pc (47pc undecided). They have the money and all the parties, except Sinn Fein. Even so, Premier Brian Cowen is lucky this vote will be over by June 12, for the economy is turning bleaker by the day. Allegations have begun to fly that the Finance Ministry is massaging figures to disguise the violent plunge in growth. I doubt it. That way lies perdition.

Ireland deserves great praise. The Tiger has achieved miracles. But that will not prevent the swing from boom to bust as monetary union works its perverse effects.

Waterford Crystal is battling for its life after producing fine glass for royalty since 1783. It is facing currency asphyxiation. Almost 70pc of sales go to the dollar zone. As such it is a metaphor for all Ireland. The country is more deeply intertwined with the dollar and sterling zones than any other euro-zone state. The crash of those two currencies could not have come at a worse moment. Welcome to EMU's first "asymmetric shock".

EMU monetary policy was too loose early in the decade. Now it is tightening at the wrong time. House prices have fallen 8.9pc over the last year. Mortgage rates have been rising into the slump. Three-month Euribor is at 4.86pc, up 65 basis points since August.

Ireland's central bank cannot come to the rescue. Rates are set in Frankfurt for the needs of core-Europe. The Bundesbank is even lobbying for rates to go higher. This is starting to feel like the ERM crisis in 1992 but without the escape valve.

By the time this EMU denouement plays out, Ireland will have voted. Lisbon will probably be law. The euro-elites will have prevailed. But history will not be kind to the venture.

It is one thing to nudge the European Project forward by stealth - the "Monnet Method" of fait accompli. It is another to impose a treaty that has already been rejected by people in a direct vote, as the French and Dutch did by emphatic margins in 2005.

We are witnessing Europe's Prague Spring - as my colleague Daniel Hannan puts it - the moment the EU loses its legitimacy. Yes, the system endures. The tribes acquiesce. But the idealism is draining away.

Can anyone really claim that the Lisbon Treaty is rooted in the democratic assent of the French, Dutch, British, Danes, Swedes, Finns, Poles, and Czechs?

We have the spectacle of Gordon Brown refusing to sign the treaty in public because of the potent danger it poses to his Government.

A British prime minister slinks away to a private room to commit Britain to an arrangement that alienates the powers of Parliament - in perpetuity and perhaps illegally - knowing that his people would vote 'no' by crushing margins if given a chance.

How on earth did we arrive at such a sorry state of affairs?

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Lisbon Treaty — dumping social Europe
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/752/38859

The Irish referendum on the European Union Lisbon Treaty will take place on June 12. The Dublin government, media and all the major political parties, with the exception of Sinn Fein, are calling for a “Yes” vote for “jobs, the economy and Ireland’s future in Europe”.

The Lisbon Treaty is virtually identical to the proposed EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, containing 96% of its articles. The treaty, if ratified, would consolidate and centralise the power of unelected EU institutions, further the militarisation of Europe in the framework of the NATO alliance and open the way for the accelerated privatisation of Europe’s public services.

The process of the drafting and ratification of the renamed constitution demonstrates its thoroughly undemocratic nature. The 500 million citizens of the EU have been excluded from having input into the content of the constitution, as well as being denied their right to approve or reject it through referenda.

Treaty’s fate in Irish hands

The southern Irish state is constitutionally bound to hold a referendum on the treaty — so those Irish people living in the 26 counties making up the Republic of Ireland are now in the ridiculous situation of having their vote count for all the people of Europe.

The treaty must be endorsed unanimously by all member states in order to come into effect in 2009. The EU’s other 26 member states plan to ratify the treaty by votes in their respective national parliaments.

On May 21, the executive council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which represents more than 600,000 workers, voted to support the campaign for a “Yes” vote, claiming that the treaty will be a step forward for workers’ rights as the “Charter of Fundamental Rights” seemingly enshrines the right to strike.

However, some of the individual unions affiliated to the ICTU are calling for a “No” vote, including Unite, one of the ICTU’s largest affiliates. The Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union is recommending its 45,000 members vote no, and the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union — representing more than 200,000 workers — has yet to make a decision.

It is unclear which way the vote will go, as a recent poll found only 6% of respondents indicated they understood what the referendum was about, with 30% “vaguely aware” of its contents. Around 35% say will vote “Yes”, 18% “No” with 47% undecided.

The claim that the treaty provides new protection for workers’ rights is false. While article 28 states that workers may “take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action”, it immediately qualifies this “fundamental right” by explaining that “the limits for the exercise of collective action, including strike action, come under national laws and practices”.

The British Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution pamphlet, The Big EU Con Trick, quotes a British foreign office spokesperson as saying explicitly: “The Charter doesn’t create any new rights. We spent a very long time looking at this, in particular the disputed article. It does not create the right to strike.”

Lisbon pits the “fundamental right” of workers to take collective action against the apparently more fundamental right of capital to unrestricted movement, unbound by national industrial laws and agreements.

Race to the bottom

Conflicts between employers and workers will be ruled on by a strengthened European Court of Justice. The European Trade Union Confederation has described several recent ECJ rulings as an “open invitation to social dumping”, launching a race to the bottom for workers’ wages, conditions and rights.

Some of the recent ECJ rulings on disputes include the case of the German company Objekt und Bauregie, which employed a Polish subcontractor to employ Polish building workers posted to Germany, on less than half the minimum wage agreed by German trade unions and employer associations.

On April 3, the ECJ ruled that O&B should not be bound by the local law that states public building contractors must abide by the existing collective agreements. The court found that while member states may impose minimum pay on foreign companies posting workers in their state, the Lower Saxony law restricted the “freedom to provide services”.

In essence, this ruling outlaws a minimum wage and base conditions being included in public tender contracts.

In 2004, Latvian firm Laval posted Latvian construction workers to Sweden and refused to acknowledge the existing collective agreement with the Swedish Building Workers’ Union. Laval claimed that it was not obliged to pay the rates collectively agreed on in the building sector.

The union took collective action and Laval claimed to the ECJ that it was being discriminated against on the grounds of nationality, with the Swedish union infringing upon its right to provide services. The court found that while “service providers” from another EU state are obliged to abide by the host agreement, collective action must be “proportional”.

This means that the ECJ believes workers have the right to take industrial action only when the minimum wage or conditions of the host country, or the minimum working conditions set out in the EU’s Posting of Workers Directive, are being breached by the employer.

In order to cut costs, the Finnish shipping company, Viking Line, attempted to re-flag its ships as Estonian and operate out of Estonia. When two Finnish maritime unions organised a blockade of Viking Line, it took its case to the ECJ.

Again, the claim was that the company’s right to freedom of movement was being restricted by the industrial action of the workers. And again, in December, the court ruled that the unions had restricted Viking Line’s right of establishment.

‘Rights’ of capital

Three things are clear from these cases and from the text of the Lisbon Treaty. Firstly, the universal right to take collective industrial action is not guaranteed as it is subject to member states’ national laws.

Secondly, the right to take collective action to prevent the exploitation of posted workers by foreign service-providers is subject to the company’s right to freedom of movement and establishment under the EU Services Directive — a right that the ECJ has consistently upheld as being superior to workers’ rights.

Thirdly, the collective action of workers and unions taken against foreign service-providers is only deemed legitimate if it is in defence of the most basic minimum conditions agreed on by EU bodies or set in law by the host country. What happens if workers want to take collective action in order to improve their conditions?

These ECJ rulings, combined with the provisions for privatisation and the removal of “distortions” from the market contained in Lisbon, are a recipe for the “equalisation” downwards of the conditions for working people of Europe — while the corporations that played a key role in drafting the treaty increase their profit-making capacity.

The result will be the growing severe exploitation of eastern European workers, increased job displacement, de-unionisation and falling conditions in the West — with public services fought for and won through generations of struggle being put up for sale across the continent. It’s in the interests of all the working people of Europe for the “No” vote to win in the Irish referendum.

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End Corporate Interference in Irish Politics
http://www.voteno.ie/html/press.htm#spending
27.05.2008

A report in the Irish Times that the Yes campaign will be spending in the region of €2.3 million during the Lisbon Treaty Referendum raises important questions about the level of corporate interference in Irish democracy


Corporate Ireland has launched a spending spree to ensure that their interests are protected from Declan Ganley's Libertas on the No side, to IBEC and the Alliance for Europe on the Yes side. And it seems to be working; the media have crowned Declan Ganley the face of the No campaign and the dominant presence of employers agency IBEC and the corporate backed Alliance for Europe in the debate has gone un remarked and unchallenged.


In a rare moment of honesty IBEC revealed their real agendas in campaigning for a No vote when they told the Forum on Europe that: "A yes vote for the Lisbon Treaty creates the potential for increased opportunities for Irish business particularly in areas subject to increasing liberalization such as health [and] education . . ."

The Alliance for Europe, for example, is supported by Construction Industry Federation (CIF), Irish Banking Federation and American Chamber of Commerce all groups have everything to gain from the neo-liberal policy that the Lisbon Treaty will impose on the people of Europe.

At a bare minimum, voteno.ie is calling for spending limits to be imposed on referendum campaigns and a ban on all corporate donations. Failure to achieve this will see Ireland rapidly follow American down the path of blatant corporate lobbying where those with the most money end up influencing and determining how a country is run.

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A Critical Commentary on the National Forum on Europe's "Summary Guide to the Treaty of Lisbon
http://www.pana.ie/idn/280508.html
May 2008

This commentary is offered to the public by the People's Movement and the National Platform, organisations that form part of the Special Observer Pillar of the National Forum on Europe.

It has been compiled in consultation with individuals belonging to a number of other organisations in the same "Pillar".

Enquiries should be made to Patricia McKenna, Frank Keoghan or Anthony Coughlan.

Anthony Coughlan is solely responsible for the specific comments made. See also the web-sites: www.peoplesmovement.org and www.nationalplatform.org

*

A Critical Commentary on the National Forum on Europe's "Summary Guide to the Treaty of Lisbon"

A SUMMARY GUIDE TO THE TREATY OF LISBON
- EU Reform Treaty -
National Forum on Europe - January 2008

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

FOREWORD

BACKGROUND TO THE TREATY

SUMMARY GUIDE
- Introduction
- Structure of the Treaty
- Values and Objectives
- EU institutions
- EU Powers and Decisionmaking
- Decisionmaking
- Enhanced Cooperation
- Common Foreign and Security Policy
- Freedom, Security and Justice
- Charter of Fundamental Rights
- Changes in Economic Governance Field
- Procedure for Future Amendments
- Clauses of General Application
- Adoption, Ratification and Entry into Force of of the Treaty of Lisbon

GLOSSARY OF TREATY TERMS

SUMMARY LIST OF NEW AREAS FOR QUALIFIED MAJORITY VOTING (QMV)

COMPARISION WITH THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION

EARLIER EU TREATIES

EU TREATY AND ENLARGEMENT HISTORY (TIMELINE)

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CÓIR : Lisbon Treaty: Kofi Annan tells the Irish how to vote
http://www.lisbonvote.com/
27/5/2008

PRESS RELEASE

The former UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, has called on Ireland to not reject the Lisbon Treaty.

As had been made clear in the McKenna case: "The role of the People in amending the Constitution cannot be over-emphasized...The decision is theirs and theirs alone."

In "calling" for the People to vote in a particular way, Mr Annan's comments can be seen as blatant political interference. Coming from this particular source, it is also bullying.

Mr Annan has, himself, left the UN under a particular cloud, and is not in a position to speak in any political situation. He is asking us to become real citizens, for the first time, of the EU - an organisation that is rife with corruption, and has not signed off on its own accounts for some 13 years, apart from several other dubious aspects.

According to a report by a Stephen Castle in the International Herald Tribune, quoted in Referendum Digest (IT, 27 May), the EU's meeting of heads of government in March was very quiet. However, the heads of government will have a packed agenda seven days after the referendum, discussing such issues as increased European defence co-operation, the review of the EU budget, the bid to harmonise corporate taxation, and no doubt the plan for new EU embassies.

According to Castle, the possibility of the Treaty being rejected has sent "unfamiliar tremors of fear through the ranks of Europe's top bureaucrats, who rarely have to trouble with voters". The Irish voters have a heavy responsibility to defend democracy, not just for Ireland but for the whole of Europe.

One cannot exclude the possibility that others will also be asked, regardless of decisions of the Irish Supreme Court, to emulate the headline set by Annan, Barruso, and Merkle, to ensure that we do not vote no to the Treaty.

Further calls, similar to Annan's, may be anticipated from such luminaries as Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, from our own Mary Robinson, et al.

In the meantime, it behoves Irish voters not to be bullied by big names.

A forthcoming poster campaign by Cóir emphasises this point.

[Sub-X]

CÓIR responds to Micheál Martin
http://www.lisbonvote.com/
28/5/2008

PRESS RELEASE

Mr Micheál Martin, TD, is said to have made remarks that are derogatory of Cóir. These ill-advised remarks are an attempt to divert the voters' attention from the issue at hand: that where such an important issue as abortion is concerned, the Lisbon Treaty could take the decision away from the people of Ireland and give it to an unelected, unrepresentative, and largely anti-life bench of EU Court judges to decide the fate of our unborn children.

As such, Mr Martin's bluster should be taken for what it is: a mere diversion from the real issues the Fianna Fáil party are having difficulty with. In fact, Cóir believe that many FF supporters would be appalled to learn of the part they were playing in advancing the cause of abortion as a "right" through their support of the Lisbon Treaty.

In the first instance, the Lisbon Treaty is the EU Constitution in another guise“ and will, for the first time, give legal personality to the EU, making us all real EU citizens. In the second instance, Declaration 17 on primacy states, for the first time, that EU law supersedes Bunreach na hÉireann. Coupled with that, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, attached to the Treaty, will be legally binding across all EU member states, and, as such, it will be left to the European Court of Justice to interpret for Ireland what the right to life (as enshrined in the EU Charter) will actually mean.

Given the probability that the EU Court could rule, on some specious ground, that our protocol protecting our abortion laws doesn't apply, and given the EU's track-record of utter contempt for the unborn, Cóir believe that it is much too great a risk to allow the EU's Courts to have any say over our abortion laws.

Some will say that this is conjecture “ that we don't know what will happen. But why, then, has the pre-eminent constitutional lawyer in Ireland, Gerard Hogan, stated that national Supreme Courts could, in time, "be eclipsed" by the Charter of Fundamental Rights?

On issues of such importance to the Irish people, Cóir stands with the people and with our unborn children against the probability of abortion being imposed on us from the EU, and, therefore, stands 100% over our analysis.

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European Parliament to ban Eurosceptic groups
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/2038813/European-Parliament-to-ban-Eurosceptic-groups.html
27/05/2008

Plans to eliminate Eurosceptics as an organised opposition within the European Parliament are expected to be agreed by a majority of MEPs this summer.

The European Union assembly’s political establishment is pushing through changes that will silence dissidents by changing the rules allowing Euro-MPs to form political groupings.

Richard Corbett, a British Labour MEP, is leading the charge to cut the number of party political tendencies in the Parliament next year, a move that would dissolve UKIP’s pan-European Eurosceptic “Independence and Democracy” grouping.

Under the rule change, the largest and most pro-EU groups would tighten their grip on the Parliament’s political agenda and keep control of lavish funding.

”It would prevent single issue politicians from being given undue support from the public purse,” said Mr Corbett.

”We want to avoid the formation of a fragmented Parliament, deeply divided into many small groups and unable to work effectively.”

Mr Corbett’s proposals will also give the President of the Parliament sweeping powers to approve or reject parliamentary questions.

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, claimed that the move goes hand in hand with the denial of popular votes on the new EU Treaty.

”Welcome to your future. This shows an EU mindset that is arrogant, anti-democratic and frankly scary,” he said.

”These people are so scared of public opinion they are willing to set in stone the right to ignore it. Freedom requires the governing elite to be held to account. They must be getting very worried if they are enacting such dictatorial powers for themselves.”

Current rules allow 20 MEPs from a fifth of the EU’s member states to form groupings, giving them a say in the Parliament’s administration and power structure.

Under the changes, the threshold would become 30 MEPs from one quarter of the EU’s member states.

The Liberal Democrats, Greens, the far Left, Eurosceptics and other groupings have vowed to oppose the plans during a vote scheduled for July 9. Andrew Duff, leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrat Euro-MPs and a committed EU Federalist, has opposed the silencing of UKIP on the basis of democratic principle.

”Whatever one’s views about their politics it cannot be argued that these small groups do not represent a strand of European public opinion,” he said.

”If the European Parliament is to be the legitimate forum for post-national democracy, all sorts of minority opinions have to be given effective, if proportionate representation.”

But the proposals are expected to be passed with the backing of the Parliament’s centre-Left and Right groupings, which account for 64 per cent of MEPs, including British Conservative and Labour deputies.

The row over the new EU Treaty meanwhile took a new turn yesterday after José Manuel Barroso, the Commission President, warned Irish voters that they will “pay” if they reject the document in a referendum next month.

Speaking in Brussels on Monday night, Mr Barroso attempted to head off growing opposition to the Treaty by threatening outcast status for Ireland.

”If there was a ‘No’ in Ireland or in another country, it would have a very negative effect for the EU. We will all pay a price for it, Ireland included, if this is not done in a proper way,” he said.

Officials fear that advanced plans to create a new EU President, Foreign Minister and European diplomatic service will be sunk by an Irish referendum rejection on June 12.

The new Lisbon Treaty replaces the old EU Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters three years ago. While the other EU member states, such as Britain, have successfully evaded popular votes, Ireland is constitutionally required to hold a referendum and Brussels dreads a repeat of the 2001 Irish rejection of the Nice Treaty.

Yesterday, Paddy Power Plc, Ireland’s biggest bookmaker, rung alarm bells by following the opinion polls to cut the odds of a referendum rejection by half – from 4-1 to 2-1.

Superstitious EU officials are also keenly aware that the referendum result will be announced on an inauspicious date, Friday the 13th of June.

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Berlin refuses to say Yes to Lisbon Treaty
http://international.sp.nl/bericht/25824/080526-berlin_refuses_to_say_yes_to_lisbon_treaty.html
May 2008

The refusal of the German federal state of Berlin to vote in favour of the European reform treaty – the Lisbon Treaty – sends a message to voters in the Netherlands and France who three years ago rejected the - to all intents and purposes identical - European Constitution. Yet their governments nevertheless chose to approve the new treaty, said Oskar Lafontaine in an address this weekend delivered in Cottbus at the congress of his party, Die Linke (The Left).

In Germany too, said Lafontaine, voters have been denied the opportunity to express their views of the European Constitution's successor. The refusal of representatives from the German capital in the Bundesrat, the German Federal Senate, to give their approval to the new treaty demonstrated, Lafontaine argued, that in Germany, just as elsewhere, there were many people who supported European cooperation but opposed the way in which this was now being carried out.

Other parties clearly saw Berlin's refusal to say 'yes' to the new treaty as evidence of the growing influence of Die Linke, the German capital being governed by a coalition of The Left and the pro-Lisbon social democrats, the SPD.

Lafontaine declared that his party was now able to put important themes on to the political agenda at national level, offering as examples the need for a general minimum wage, improved pensions and a change of direction in foreign policy. On all of these points Die Linke enjoyed the support of a majority of the voters.

Following a number of electoral successes at state and local level, Die Linke, measured by the number of elected representatives, was now Germany's third biggest party.

SP Senator Tiny Kox, present in Cottbus in his capacity as Chair of the European United Left group (GUE) in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, expressed the hope that Die Linke would develop further as a social party of the people. “It is important for us in the Netherlands too to have good neighbours involved in politics. Developments in Germany show that the need for a significant left party, a social party of the people, is not only true of the Netherlands, but also of other European countries. This gives us hope.”

[Sub-X]

A plea to the Irish People: Vote No!
http://international.sp.nl/bericht/25849/080528-a_plea_to_the_irish_people_vote_no.html
May 28th, 2008

Three years ago, an overwhelming majority of the electorates of two of the European Community's founding member states voted to reject the European Constitutional Treaty. In France and the Netherlands, despite solid backing from mainstream political parties and organisations representing both sides of industry, this latest step in the top-down integration of Europe failed to win support. The only democratic course would have been to consign it to history and, after widespread consultation, present the peoples of Europe with a real alternative vision of the Union of our nations.

Instead, a virtually identical treaty is to be imposed on us, with only the Irish being allowed to vote to accept or reject it. In France and most likely the Netherlands there will be no new referendum. Nor will there be a vote in the United Kingdom, despite the governing Labour Party's manifesto pledge. In these three countries, ruling elites insist that the Treaty of Lisbon is very different from the Constitutional Treaty, and that lacking the rejected measure's constitutional implications it need not be put to a vote.

Elsewhere, those who support the new treaty are more honest. In Germany, where a referendum has never been on the cards, Chancellor Merkel has said that “the substance of the Constitution is preserved.” Jose Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain, whose voters – though on a very low turn out – backed the Constitutional Treaty in a referendum, assured the Spanish people that "We have not let a single substantial point of the Constitutional Treaty go,”, adding that the new treaty was “a project of foundational character, a treaty for a new Europe.” Even Bertie Ahern noted that there had been no “dramatic change to the substance of what was agreed back in 2004."

The similarity between the two texts is disguised by a structural sleight-of-hand. Instead of a single document to replace the existing treaties, Lisbon is a series of amendments to those treaties. A study by the British think-tank Open Europe has shown that only ten of 250 proposals in the "new" treaty differ from those in the text rejected three years ago, and that these are of no great significance.

Left intact is an assault on democracy and on national sovereignty which will represent a major step towards the creation of a superstate. In a democracy, sovereignty belongs to the people. It cannot be given away without their informed consent. Yet this is precisely what is happening.

The loss of sovereignty is best illustrated by the handing over of veto rights. Only recently, the Dutch have been able to block an EU directive that would have had a very negative influence on their pension system. In the new treaty, veto rights in important areas such as justice and home affairs, asylum and migration will be surrendered, while the EU will gain more powers, free once more of any national veto, over such matters as energy and climate change policy.

Clearly, these are all matters which require international cooperation. Yet national cultures and attitudes vary so greatly that an attempt to impose a 'one-size-fits-all' policy on the Twenty-Seven will prove counterproductive, further undermining popular support for the whole European project.

Under this treaty, moreover, the already dominant influence of multinational corporations will be reinforced. Privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation will cease to be matters which may be voted for or against at national elections, becoming instead articles of constitutional writ. Social ownership, even of essential services, will come under ever-increasing pressure.

There is an idea, completely false, that the new treaty will address the problem of the democratic deficit. The vaunted increase in powers for the European Parliament provides no effective substitute for those lost by national parliaments. Most of these powers have not been transferred to the European Parliament at all, but have, along with those of other institutions directly or indirectly answerable to the people, been placed in the hands of centralised, undemocratic, bureaucratic institutions. In addition, there is no real European public or political space, and no European public media. There are no European political parties, the bodies bearing that name having been created not by the people, as are real political parties from right to left, but by the European Commission. Indeed, a recent Eurobarometer survey shows that the majority of the Dutch people does not even know that Euro-MPs are directly elected. Under these circumstances, granting national parliaments the right to block EU legislation is a clear sop, especially as to do so they will need the support of either the European Council or European Parliament.

Under the Lisbon Treaty, the European security and defence policy will acquire expanded "aims and ambitions", in particular as regards Member States' military capabilities; an expansion in the list of "Petersberg tasks" - the humanitarian, crisis management and peace-building tasks which the EU may undertake; a reference for the first time to the European Defence Agency, a body aimed at encouraging greater and more co-ordinated defence capabilities; the possibility of "subcontracting" of security and defence tasks to “coalitions of the able and willing" among the member states; and the possibility of instituting special arrangements among a group of Member States possessing greater military capabilities.

The treaty directly undermines Ireland's neutrality, stating that “The Union and its member states shall act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a Member State is the object of a terrorist attack or victim of a natural or man-made disaster. The Union shall mobilise all the instruments at its disposal, including the military resourses made available by the member states....” 

In sum: this treaty does not differ significantly from its rejected predecessor. It is a treaty desired by the elite, not by the people. Ireland could play an important role since its citizens, uniquely, have the right to vote. This is a plea for you to seize this opportunity and vote for all of us.

This article was published in 'The Examiner', on May 22nd 2008. The plea was signed by Harry van Bommel MP, The Netherlands; Jeremy Corbyn MP, Britain; Jean-Paul Lecoq MP, France; Lars Ohly MP, Sweden; Paul Schäfer MP, Germany.

[HiQConsoul]

WTB (Willing to buy) entertaining massive multimedia explanation with many special effects, sodapops, cartoon break, special celeb appearances - ALL with SPECIAL EFFECTS! ZOMG SFX!! for the sheeple/sleeple...


what? might as well use their own weapons against them.. the motherfu...... sorry..

ps clicked in and saw 6 pages and my jaw kinda dropped - o well arbeit macht frei (yes it's got sickening bad associations but even tho it's been used by evil and as propaganda it's still kinda true..... guess that bit of occultism openmindedness is paying off... nothing is neither good nor evil by nature.. it's the way it's used that defines it effects)

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Gilmore should have read the charter
http://www.libertas.org/content/view/288/1/
29 May 2008

"Mr. Ganley is correct. The Charter specifically allows the detention of children for educational supervision. That is a fact"

Eamon Gilmore and the Labour Party have "a lot of explaining to do" in relation to the issue of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Libertas spokesperson Caroline Simons said this afternoon.

She was responding to comments made by the Labour Party leader on the issue of whether the Charter made provision for the detention of children for educational purposes.

Ms. Simons said that Mr Gilmore and his advisors had clearly not read the Explanatory Memorandum prepared by the Praesidium of the Convention which drafted the Charter and which was updated under the responsibility of the Praesidium of the European Convention.

This document (click here) is a valuable tool which will be used by the European Court of Justice to interpret the terms of the Charter.

This official explanatory memorandum of the Charter outlines the limitations placed on rights enumerated in the Charter.

In the case of the right to liberty, the Charter outlines the limitations placed on that right. Specifically, the explanation of article 6 (page 3 of the attached document) permits the following among other restrictions on the right to liberty:

"d) the detention of a minor by lawful order for the purpose of educational supervision;"

If Ireland votes to ratify Lisbon and accept the Charter, it also votes to accept the limitations or 'negative' definitions which form part of the terms of the Charter. (Ref Article 52.3 of the Charter)

For example, in the area of the right to life, member states may reintroduce the death penalty in certain circumstances "in respect of acts committed time of war, or imminent threat of war". This is contrary to the decision of the Irish people in a referendum to abolish the death penalty.

Spokesperson Caroline Simons said:

"Eamon Gilmore has not read the entire Lisbon package. There is much about the Charter that is very good. However, accepting the Treaty buys us the Charter, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and draws on a number of other human rights charters.

Irish people should be aware that the Charter places significant limitations on human rights, and could actually weaken rights which are enumerated in our own Constitution and in the decisions of our Irish courts.

Bunreacht na hEireann created a system of fundamental rights chosen by the Irish people for themselves, unalterable save with the express consent of the people in a referendum.

The requirement that rights under the Charter can only be invoked when a member state is "implementing Union law" does not insulate our Irish Constitution against the determinations on rights by the European Court of Justice. This has been pointed out by leading Constitutional experts, the difficulty being that the majority of our 'Irish' laws now have a European Union measure as their origin.

Mr. Ganley is correct. The Charter specifically allows the detention of children for educational supervision.

Can Eamon Gilmore explain to us why he has not read the Charter and the related documents? Can he explain why he is not calling for it to be sent to every home? Can he explain why the Charter and its explanatory memorandum are not even included with the Treaty in the first place?

This is alarming, and as public awareness of it grows, people will begin to view the Treaty in an entirely new light."

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Lisbon puts public services under threat and removes no-quibble veto on trade deals
http://www.caeuc.org/index.php?q=node/269
29 May 2008

What is ‘good for Ireland’ about diluting our veto on “key services” going into the WTO?

There is no Irish veto on global trade agreements in exclusively agricultural goods. The no-quibble veto on international trade agreements in essential public services is removed under the proposed Lisbon treaty, writes Barry Finnegan.

An international free-trade agreement consisting exclusively of agricultural and other goods cannot be vetoed by EU Member States. In their Constitutional Law of the European Union, 2nd Edition of 2005, Koen Lenaerts and Piet Van Nuffel clearly state the current pre-Lisbon legal position:
 
“The Council [of Ministers] is entitled to adopt autonomous and contractual commercial policy measures by a qualified majority vote. What is more, the common commercial policy, at least as regards goods, constitutes an area of competence which is vested exclusively in the Community.” i.e. agricultural products are goods; so there is no Member State veto on new agricultural trade deals. That position was created by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997.
 
In 2001, changes in the Treaty of Nice meant “the commercial aspects of intellectual property” and all but five ‘key services’ were moved to being on a par with goods. Lenaerts and Van Nuffel say: “provisions relating to the common commercial policy are also [now] applicable to the negotiation and conclusion of agreements in the fields of trade in services and the commercial aspects of intellectual property.” i.e. no vetoes, and into qualified majority voting.
 
However, to advance 'social Europe',  the Treaty of Nice made special provisions for ‘key services’, namely: educational, health, social, cultural and audiovisual services.

To quote from Nice, the current legal situation is that international trade “agreements relating to trade in cultural and audiovisual services, educational services, and social and human health services, shall fall within the shared competence of the Community and its Member States” and “the negotiation of such agreements shall require the common accord of the Member States” and “be concluded jointly by the Community and the Member States.”
 
Thus in 2001 it was felt that EU governments should have legal protection covering all aspects of “key services” from entering the WTO free-trade system. This is the where the strength the current Irish veto on trade deals resides.

The proposed Lisbon treaty removes this no-quibble legal protection. The Dublin office of the European Commission confirmed this last Friday saying that unanimity in “key services (e.g. cultural and audiovisual, social, education and health)” will only “remain in certain circumstances”.

The Yes side must outline in detail: 1. What is ‘good for Ireland’ about diluting our veto on “key services” going into the WTO? 2. Which of these “key services” are in the current WTO deal?

Should the government wish to reject part of the package at the WTO (e.g. agriculture), then they have to reject the whole deal (i.e. involving both goods and services). That was also confirmed by the Dublin Commission office last Friday. The only reason they could be guaranteed to be able to reject the whole deal, is because of these guaranteed no-quibble veto rights - which Lisbon removes.
 
My research leads me to believe the “certain circumstances” the government claims would keep their services-veto in place, will not stand up at the ECJ. Lisbon’s Article 188c.4(b) says the veto stays “in social, education and health services where, these [international trade] agreements risk seriously disturbing the national organisation of such services and prejudicing the responsibility of Member States to deliver them”. Because of the Watts case at the ECJ, that clause won’t protect the services-veto.

There the ECJ found that despite Art. 152 where “responsibilities ... for the organisation and delivery of health and medical care” is reserved for Member States, EU market rules (A. 43 & 49) should still apply. As former Minister for Health in Tony Blair's government, Labour MP Frank Dobson, said: “I think that there are very powerful forces at work behind the proposition [lisbon Treaty]. Those forces are the US health corporations. I am very dubious about supporting a treaty that has not done something to set aside the Watts decision.”

Furthermore, the so called ‘protections’ of the services protocol, certain articles of Lisbon (188c.4 (2nd para), 188.4(b) and (c), 188c.6, the updated 152), and the existing Articles 149 and 152, will not help an Irish ECJ case should the state demand its services’ veto.

Finally, the Commission claims veto rights stay at the Member State level in four other areas. True, but: Investment: the removal of ‘investment’ related barriers to trade becomes EU commercial policy for the first time and only “measures which constitute a backward step in Union law as regards the liberalisation of the movement of capital” shall be dealt with by unanimity. Intellectual Property: only non-commercial aspects of these stays at unanimity voting. Transport: unanimity stays only if the issue “would be liable to have a serious effect on the standard of living and on employment in certain areas”. The ECJ would decide this. Police and Justice: stays at unanimity.

If one wishes to protect the government's right to veto WTO trade packages involving both agriculture and services, and if one wishes to protect the no-quibble veto on entering “key services” into the WTO, then vote No.
 
Barry Finnegan is Senior Course Tutor and lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism & Media Communications, Griffith College Dublin. He holds an MA in International Relations from Dublin City University.

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Bishops’ Statement warns of danger from EU Courts
http://www.lisbonvote.com/
29/5/2008

PRESS RELEASE

Cóir welcomes the Bishops’ strong condemnation of campaigners who use misinformation during the campaign on the Lisbon Treaty.

The Governments campaign threatening economic ruin has been an attempt to bully voters and has no basis in fact, and does not deal with the issues arising in the Lisbon Treaty,

Cóir spokesman Richard Greene said “we are pleased that the Bishops have made an appeal to the EU courts to respect the ethical values of human dignity.  Coir sent a submission to all Bishops outlining our concerns with regard to the danger of the EU courts in interfering with social issues such as abortion”.

Cóir are encouraged that the Bishops listened to the sensu fidei (sense of the faithful) who are calling for a NO vote in the upcoming referendum. 

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Lisbon Roadshow continues
http://www.lisbonvote.com/
29/5/2008

Cóir, the largest and most active of the No side campaigners, is continuing its No to Lisbon Roadshow for a second successful week, visiting Longford, Athlone and Mullingar. This is the second of three weeks of interacting with the public on this most important of issues. Next week will take the Roadshow to the sunny Southeast.

A typical day will begin at 11am on a main thoroughfare for a street session where Cóir volunteers from each area will be on hand to answer questions about the Treaty and provide the information which the public has been asking for. Then, in the evening, Cóir volunteers will canvass and leaflet drop each area.

We welcome the public to come out and ask questions and or get involved in the campaign. With only three weeks left, we need everyone to spread the word about the real danger that the Lisbon Treaty poses to Irish sovereignty, to Irish business and to Irish values.