LISBON TREATY WOULD MAKE LAWS OF EUROPEAN UNION SUPERIOR TO THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF IRELAND

“The Treaty of Lisbon if ratified would create a new Federal European Union which would be politically and constitutionally profoundly different from the EU which we are members of today.” the Deputy Mayor of Sligo, Cllr Declan Bree, told a meeting organised by the Forum on Europe in Sligo this week.

“While the same name, "The European Union", would be used before and after the referendum the fact is that if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, the new European Union would be a fundamentally different constitutional/political entity from the European Union that we are currently members of.

“The European Union we are members of today is generally a descriptive term for the various areas of co-operation between its 27 member states.

“If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified it would give the new Union which it would establish the constitutional form of a supranational European Federation. That Federation would have all the powers of a fully-developed State apart from the power to force its member states to go to war against their will.

“If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified it would make us citizens of this new European Union for the first time, as against our being notional or honorary EU "citizens" at present.

“The Constitutional amendment to ratify the Lisbon Treaty would then make the laws, acts and decisions of the new European Union superior to the Constitution and laws of Ireland and would effectively turn Ireland into a province of this new EU Federation, which would be run on the most undemocratic lines.

“Ireland would become a province, not a nation, once again, in the precise and literal meaning of the word "province". said Cllr Bree

“In essence it has to be said that the Treaty is a revamped version of the European Constitution which was rejected in referendums in 2005. It is now repackaged and described as the Lisbon Treaty.

“Instead of accepting that 2005 decision, the EU Prime Ministers and Presidents decided to give the EU a Constitution indirectly rather than directly, but they decided not to call it a Constitution for fear people would reject it again.

“And as I said the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty would then make the laws, acts and decisions of the new European Union superior to the Irish Constitution and laws and would effectively turn Ireland into a province of the new EU Federation.

“The Irish Constitution would still remain, but “Declaration 17 concerning Primacy”

which is attached to the Lisbon Treaty, makes clear that the law of the new European Union would have primacy over and be superior to the Irish Constitution and laws in any case of conflict between the two. This has not been stated in any previous European Treaty.

“Like every other State this new European Union would sign Treaties with other States in all areas of its powers. It would have its own political President who would receive ambassadors to the EU and sign Treaties and important laws in its name. He/she would effectively be head of state of the European Union, superior to the heads of state of the member states and would be selected for a term of two and a half years, renewable once.

“The new EU would have its own Foreign Minister and foreign and security policy, its own diplomatic service and its own voice at the United Nations. It would also have its own Public Prosecutor. It would make most of our laws and would decide what our basic rights are in all areas of EU law. It would have all the main features of a sovereign State in the international community of States, apart from the ability to make its Member States go to war against their will.

“The Lisbon Treaty also proposes to reduce the number of EU Commissioners from the present 27 to 18. Ireland would therefore have no member on the Commission, the body which has the monopoly of proposing all EU laws, for one out of every three Commission terms.” Cllr Bree said.

“This means that for five years out of every fifteen, laws affecting all our lives would be put forward entirely by a committee of EU officials on which there would be no Irish voice. The big EU States would lose their right to a permanent Commissioner too, but their size and political weight give them other means of exerting influence on this key body.

“The Commission President could ask a Commissioner to resign at any time, just as a Taoiseach may do with his cabinet, so the Commissioners would be fully under the control of the Commission President.

“The new Commission would be very like an EU Government, with the Commission President having powers like a national Prime Minister, except that this government would not be elected by the citizens

“If the Treaty is ratified it would replace the voting system for making EU laws that has existed since the 1957 Rome Treaty. The new system would be primarily a population-based system which would give most influence to the member states with big populations and reduce the influence of smaller States like Ireland.

“Putting EU law-making and decision-taking on a primarily population basis would fundamentally change the consensus culture on the EU Council of Ministers. The smaller member states would be less needed by the big states than before, and their interests would therefore be less likely to be taken into account.

“I would also point out that the Lisbon Treaty provides that if one-third of National Parliaments object to the Commission's proposal for an EU law, the Commission must reconsider it, but not necessarily abandon it. It might reword the draft law, or if it considered the objection was not justified, it might ignore it. This right to complain, for that is what it is, is not an increase in the powers of national Parliaments, as it has been widely misrepresented as being, but is symbolic rather of their loss of real power.

“In effect t he Lisbon Treaty is a bad deal for Ireland. It gives the EU too much power and reduces our ability to stop decisions that are not in Ireland’s interests.

“The fact is that the Lisbon Treaty will involve the most substantial transfer of powers from member states to the European Council and Commission to date. The influence of smaller states will be reduced as the dominance of the larger states is consolidated.

“The militarization of the EU will be accelerated and an economic agenda based on a race to the bottom for wages and workers rights will be greatly advanced. At EU level we see the incremental development of an EU Army, in all but name.

“The Lisbon Treaty is the most serious challenge facing anyone who cares about social justice. It will lock Europe into a straitjacket of privatisation and makes little provision for a social Europe.

“The Services Directives and other directives coming out of the EU are part of a sustained attack on the social gains, struggled for and secured by Irish and European workers over many decades.

“It is very clear that the Lisbon Treaty will further consolidate the power of capital and concentrate power in the hands of an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels.

“This treaty provides for a massive shift of power from the nation states of the EU to Brussels and will effectively make us revert to being a province of mainland Europe...the northwest corner.” Cllr Bree concluded.