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Originally Posted by eurosceptic  The question before the supreme court in 1987 was whether the european club of SEA was substantially different from the european club of TOR. Ray crotty outlined a number of reasons why he thought it was, the court agreed with him on one point. One point is enough.
Even stephen collins admitted TCOFR and the common defence pact were new.
The charter radically changes the EU as for the first time the ECJ will be able to strike down legislation based on conflict with vague "fundamental rights". This gives radical new powers to the ECJ which surely changes the scope of our membership. |
If it gave the power to strike down Irish domestic legislation, that might indeed be the case. However, the Charter doesn't.
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Originally Posted by eurosceptic Still no-one will address my initial post on this thread. If the czech senate says no and declares the treaty dead do we blow 25 million on a pointless referendum. |
That may be because nobody here is in a position to make that decision...and perhaps also because, just like us, the Czechs don't have the power to "declare the treaty dead". They have only the same power as us, which is to choose not to ratify on any given occasion. Whether we went ahead with a referendum probably depends on whether they were likely to change their minds.
Again, people seem to miss a point here - the treaty can only be "declared dead" by a consensus of the signatories. It's not up to any one signatory to say "not only will we not ratify it, but any attempt to do so must be abandoned". At most a signatory can say "not only have we not ratified it, but we will never do so, and cannot ever be persuaded to do so" - it's then a question of who said that, and whether everyone else thinks it's true, and how likely the circumstances are to change.