Make your voice heard on EU treaty
Wednesday March 05 2008
The US primary elections are creating unprecedented interest and enthusiasm in an Irish audience that normally does not take attention until the general election in November.
This year's wide-open primary season, filled with charismatic personalities, has produced a keen audience that suddenly knows its Obama from its Huckabee. Americans should be congratulated for participating so passionately in their democracy they hold so dear.
However, I ask the question: have we lost our voice on the issue of promoting Irish democracy?
In a few months' time, Ireland will be asked to vote on the Lisbon Treaty.
The treaty seeks to establish the European Union on an entirely new legal basis.
In effect, its amendments to the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the Treaty Establishing the European Community (TEC) create a de facto constitution, comprising more than 90pc of the substance of the EU Constitutional Treaty rejected by the people of the Netherlands and France in 2005.
Under the treaty, more than 60 areas of legislation transfer from unanimous voting to qualified majority voting, which uses population as its principle criterion. Some of the areas where Ireland's veto is lost, for example, energy, foreign and security policy, border controls and immigration.
There will be a new "president" of Europe and, quoting from the Lisbon Treaty, he/she will "ensure the external representation of the Union".
The most alarming part of the treaty is Article 48. Article 48 makes the treaty self-amending in that it allows the European Council to broaden the areas in which the EU can legislate and make major changes to the functioning of the union by majority vote, without the need for a new treaty and, therefore, without the need for referendums in Ireland or elsewhere.
Why aren't other countries voting on the treaty? The answer is their governments know that they would reject it.
These are just a sample of the changes the Lisbon Treaty will bring about and I encourage the Irish people to research the treaty themselves.
As Mahatma Gandhi famously said: "The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within."
Marie Nestor
Lakeshore Drive,
Galway City
- Galway City
