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LIE No.1: That the 9 EU States still remaining to ratify the Lisbon Treaty have a right to do that and that Ireland could not stop them:
If Taoiseach Brian Cowen had said to his EU colleagues at last week's Brussels summit that the Irish people have given their verdict on the Treaty and that therefore Ireland could not and would not be ratifying it, the ratification process would have ceased and Lisbon would have had to be opened, although Germany, France and the EU Commission would have been furious at this, for Lisbon endows them with vast extra power.
This is what happened when the French and Dutch voted No to the previous EU Constitution in 2005. Their Governments respected their peoples' referendum votes by making clear after a pause that they did not intend to re-run those referendums. Further Treaty ratifications by the EU States still remaining to ratify became then clearly pointless. The other EU States respected the French and Dutch Governments' decisions by ceasing their ratifications. For an EU Treaty must be approved by all to be able to come into force for any.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the truth just after Ireland's referendum. He said that whether the Lisbon Treaty was alive or dead depended on Brian Cowen. It is therefore Taoiseach Cowen, and he alone, who has effectively decided to keep Lisbon alive, with Ministers Michael Martin and Dick Roche at his elbow and the Eurofanatical senior diplomats in Iveagh House giving him wrong advice.
Taoiseach Cowen will therefore be primarily responsible for the 26/1 situation which he is steering Ireland and the EU towards by the end of this year. Most No-side voters expected Lisbon to be opened and the EU States to draw up a better Treaty. It is Brian Cowen's responsibility that this has not occurred. He should be urged to represent the Irish people at the October-December EU summits and tell them what he had not the courage to tell them last week: namely, that the majority of Irish people have voted on the Lisbon Treaty and that they must respect the Irish No.
LIE No.2: That if we do not say Yes in a referendum re-run, Ireland will be "marginalised" or isolated or even expelled from the EU, or that the other EU States can somehow "go ahead" without us:
It is legal and political nonsense to say that the 26 other EU States can in some way "go ahead" without Ireland to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Or that the others can"leave Ireland behind" in some way. Or that they can expel Ireland from the EU or "marginalize" us.
Lisbon can only be ratified if all 27 agree. Any other Treaty too must be agreed by all 27. People who say otherwise are showing their ignorance of EU law or else just nursing their resentment at the 12 June vote and clutching at straws in the hope of reversing it.
There has also been much nonsense in the media to the effect that the other EU States can adopt various provisions of Lisbon under the current Nice Treaty rules governing "enhanced cooperation". But for that to happen they would have to abandon Lisbon first. The Nice Treaty rules governing "enhanced cooperation" require that closer integration by some States in certain areas must be compatible with the Nice Treaty provisions. These just cannot be applied to push through most of Lisbon. That is legal fantasy.
LIE No.3: That a Lisbon Two referendum would be different from Lisbon One
As a law-governed community, the EU operates currently under the rules of the Treaty of Nice, which require unanimity for all major Treaty change. The Lisbon Treaty can come into force for all only if Ireland ratifies it, and that cannot be done unless the Irish people vote Yes in another referendum to exactly the same Treaty they rejected on 12 June, without a jot or tittle of it being altered. To ask us to vote again on the same Treaty on which a majority of the Irish people have already voted once, would be an insult to any self-respecting nation. Yes-side as well as No-side people should be up in arms about any such suggestion.
New Declarations or political statements that might attached to Lisbon Two would be like trinkets for the giullible, without legal value. They would not alter the fact that Lisbon was unchanged. A commitment by the 27 Prime Ministers and Presidents that all EU States would retain their national Commissioner after 2014 can be made without opening the Lisbon Treaty, which allows for this being done by unanimous agreeement. A similar unanimous agreement can deal with the Nice Treaty provision that the number of Commissioners should be reduced by some unspecified number from 2009. That would be useful, but it can be done as things stand, while leaving the Nice and Lisbon Treaties unchanged.
LIE No.4: That Lisbon is a good Treaty for Ireland and for the EU.
By voting No on 12 June Ireland has saved itself and the EU from a thoroughly bad Treaty. Most people still do not know just how bad it is,for many aspects of Lisbon were either ignored or played down in our referendum debate - mostly by the Yes-side parties.
Remember that, as is made clear in the first sentence of the constitutional amendment the Irish people rejected on 12 June, Lisbon would establish a constitutionally new European Union which would be profoundly different from the EU that we are currently members of, which was established by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
This post-Lisbon EU would have the constitutional form of a supranational Federation - in effect a State - in which Ireland and the other Member States would have the constitutional status of regional or provincial states - like Massachussetts inside the USA or Bavaria inside Federal Germany. Lisbon would thus make Ireland a province once again and end its formal existence as a sovereign State. But most Irish voters were not told this. It was the Referendum Commission's statutory duty to tell them, but it was out to help the Government, not do its proper job.
This new post-Lisbon EU would act as a State in the international community of States. It would sign treaties with other States in all areas of its powers, have its own diplomatic service, embassies, and voice at the UN, and we would all be made real citizens of it for the first time, owing allegiance to its laws and loyalty to its authority, as against our being merely symbolical or notional EU "citizens" at present.
All States must have citizens and one can only be a citizen of a State. If Lisbon were to be ratified, our rights and duties as EU citizens would be superior to our rights and duties as Irish citizens in any case of conflict between the two. Such conflicts would be decided by the EU Court of Justice, not the Irish Constitution.
Giving the EU Court of Justice the power to decide all our rights as EU citizens under the Charter of Fundamental Rights opens up horrendous possibilities, for no one knows what this "Court with a mission", as one of its own judges once described it, might decide in the years and decades to come if it should acquire such power (The Court's "mission" is to expand the powers and competences of the EU to the utmost through its judgements).
This post-Lisbon EU would make some two-thirds of our laws each year and would do so on a primarily population-size basis, which means that the governments of the Big States would dominate EU policy-making. Lisbon is a power-grab by the Big States through shifting EU law-making on to a population basis. This might be appropriate in a Federal State governing one people, but it is totally unsuitable for sovereign States governing different peoples, although cooperating with one another.
And there is much else in Lisbon that even most No-side campaigners do not know about. Do you know that under Lisbon Ireland would lose its right to decide who its own Commissioner is, in the ten years out of every 15 when we would have a Commissioner? Or that the Lisbon would permit the death penalty under EU law in times of war or preparation for war, although its 27 Member States have outlawed the death penalty in all circumstances? These are accurate facts about the Treaty, but most Irish voters never heard of them.
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Originally Posted by mccafferty cat
