How can Lisbon II be defeated.

[sarahj]

What was her reasoning, pray tell?

Of course, in Crotty the SC accepted that changing a unanimity requrement to QMV would not necessarily require a referendum, so if anything allows the veto to be relinquished without a referendum it's Crotty and not Lisbon.

You going to address my reply to your last comment???

[FutureTaoiseach]

Irish workers will be displaced a result of the Charter's provisions forcing us to allow asylum-seekers to work.

1. Everyone has the right to engage in work and to pursue a freely chosen or accepted occupation.

2. Every citizen of the Union has the freedom to seek employment, to work, to exercise the right of establishment and to provide services in any Member State.

3. Nationals of third countries who are authorised to work in the territories of the Member States are entitled to working conditions equivalent to those of citizens of the Union.

[evercloserunion]

Irish workers will be displaced a result of the Charter's provisions forcing us to allow asylum-seekers to work.

I meant regarding the tax veto.

Did MLM, member of the supposedly left-wing SF, play the "durty foreigners takin' our jobs" card?

[Arcadius]

Irish workers will be displaced a result of the Charter's provisions forcing us to allow asylum-seekers to work.

Article 23.1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

.1 is not new; it's been part of international law for 30 years.
.2 only applies to citizens of the Union.
.3 only applies to people who are authorised to work.

[evercloserunion]

Which nay-sayers?!

People who oppose the treaty, in particular the ones who have been posting in this thread.

Some people feel the referendum should incorporate our feelings on the govt. It is a fair point but is not the opinion of all of us. The popularity or lack thereof of the govt is completely relevant to the treaty, especially given they are the ones negotiating on our behalf.

No it's not, the contents of the treaty are relevant to the treaty. The main opposition parties also support Lisbon so why make it a referendum on FF and the Greens? Especially considering that the junior government coalition partners didn't even formally support the Treaty. It doesn't make sense to turn this into a referendum on the government.

Why not turn it into a referendum on the opposition parties who also supported Lisbon? Because that would produce a Yes vote and that's not what the nay-sayers want. The fact is that encouraging people to use their vote as a protest vote against the government is underhanded.

The fact that the govt seem impotent in dealing with this crisis is completely related to the EU and the fact that it has given all control of monetary policy and most of our fiscal policy to the EU. Local and national govts are now useless with the encompassing poer and influence of the EU. Even in decisions they don't have explicit control over, they exert underhanded influence (for example, they encourages the austerity measures taken in the last budgets).

That's because as an economic union we are in this together. A lot of this comes down to the question: do you support a common market? Because much of the EU's common regulatory provisions, senseless as they may seem, have their logical basis in the common market. If every nation was to go its own way economically it would be impossible to have a common market in which fair business practices are observed.

Of course, Ireland still has a lot of power over its own affairs, something which you acknowledge in your post. I don't think the influence exercised by the EU is "underhanded". The EU are our neighbours and trading partners, it's hardly scandalous that their concerns feature in our budgets.

We are entitled to differing opinions on why the treaty should be rejected. That's the sign of a healthy campaign - differing opinions are good!

You're entitled to have your opinion, but I'm entitled to criticize it.

[hiding behind a poster]

Bringing up EU membership itself is a distraction by the yes campaign. EU membership continues regardless. It's the gravy-train for politicians aspiring to EU patronage that is threatened. There is no mechanism for expulsion of members. You know you're being offered a raw deal when the elites talk about everything except what's in it to get you to agree to it. They don't mention the expansion of Qualified Majority Voting on the Council of Ministers, the halving of the Irish voting-strength while Germany's doubles and the French vote increases by one-third, or the Charter of Fundamental Rights turning the ECJ into a Supreme Court (particularly over asylum and immigration), oer the govt's intention to surrender the veto on Justice and Home Affairs (provisions allowing for this were contained in the Referendum Act 2008 in relation to relinquishing the Protocol with the consent of the Oireacthas but without a referendum(. Unfortunately for them, there are those willing to confront them on these issues, as well as how Lisbon would in fact worsen the recession by copperfastening plans for corporate-tax harmonisation via CCCTB and the amended Article 113 of the TFEU, which facilitates tax harmonisation to combat "distortions of competition" - a clear reference to low-tax economies like Ireland.

More LIES from PresentLiar.

[Arcadius]

...
the halving of the Irish voting-strength while Germany's doubles and the French vote increases by one-third,
...

@FT: I presume many people have pointed out to you how misleading that claim is.
QMV uses a hybrid voting system that combines one-country-one-vote and voting-weighted-by-population.
In order to determine Ireland's voting strength you have to account for both.
Is there a legitimate reason why you're ignoring the one-country-one-vote part in your calculations of voting strength?

[molloyjh]

The Dept of the Marine, which has effectively criminalised Irish fishermen, is hardly an impartial source of information on this question. The €200 billion figure is also referred to in the Donegal Democrat. And most of the Brussels billions went in CAP payments anyway. We remained beset with mass unemployment and emigration for the first 20 years of EU membership. The role of American FDI was far more important, as were our tax-reforms and the devaluation of the Punt in 1992 which boosted exports. We are now back in a recession largely the product of an unholy alliance between an incompetent govt, an ECB imposing Franco-German interest rates, and mass-migration resulting from EU Enlargement. For the first 10 years of Eurozone membership, Irish inflated ranged from 4-7%, while Eurozone interest rates ranged from 2-5%. Were EMU not an establioshed fact, such a monetary policy for Ireland would have been inconceivable. Together with unregulated mass-immigration from the Accession states, these factors conspired to overheat the property-market to the point where 25% of men were employed in the construction-sector, meaning that the crash, when it came, was all-consuming in the devastation wreaked on the economy. If there are lessons to be learned from this disaster, they include supping with a long spoon where European integration is concerned.

Yes let's ignore the Department of the Marine, finfacts.ie and a completely independant American organisation in favour of a Sinn Fein statement made in the Donegal Democrat with no supporting evidence what-so-ever.

molloy you forget we could have accessed EU markets via the EEA without signing up to the common fisheries policy.

And we all know how that one panned out for Iceland!

Surely there shouldn't be a "No" side and a "Yes" side. Surely we should be able to just stand back and look at what is best for the people of Ireland (and not those bureaucrats in Brussels sitting doling out orders)?!

I am a "No" voter and will continue to be. I see Lisbon as another step in the centralisation of decision making world wide...Lisbon is a threat to democracy.

There should be no sides, yet you're firmly planted in one. Where is the threat to democracy in Lisbon?

Nevermind the sham our democracy has turned into with our local and national parliaments useless and merely a club for the lads to hang out and shout insults at each other across the house every so often. We don't make decisions here, we do what the EU (or the all knowing markets) tell us. The only real decision we can make is when to say yes to a treaty every few years. We get to decide whether we'll agree the first time or whether we'll make them plamas us a little bit.

Our electorate have done a good enough job turning this countries democracy into a sham by re-electing the crooked shower of f**ks time and again. There are a number of cases of TDs being re-elected after being found defrauding the system. Democracy here is screwed regardless of the EU IMHO.

Actually FT's 'Jobs Not Lisbon' slogan is a winner. In one simple statement it makes the referendum about the government and Yes parties obseession with getting Lisbon passed as against the priority of the ordinary person on the street being of more day to day matters in their lives.

That slogan is a winner!

Ah yes slogans. Short on content and substance, but easy on the eye. Why can't we have both?

Now THAT is stretching it. One of my main bugbears about Lisbon was that no one, other than Ireland, were given the right to vote on the treaty (although France and the Netherlands voted NO to almost the exact same document) and you are now trying to tell people that the Lisbon Treaty is pro democracy when it is plain to see that the powers that be in Europe have actaully denied their peoples their democratic right.

The yes camp are twisting the truth if you are anything to go by. Yet another reason for people to vote no.

Noone else sought the right to vote. We did through Crotty years ago. If noone in the other other member states didn't do what we did that is their fauly, not their Governments nor the EUs.

As for the slogans they were a tongue in cheek response to the No side slogans earlier, see my reference to meaningless slogans (the amended bit of the quoted post) and my "when in Rome" comment after the slogans.

Brilliant post!

On the efficiency topic - "efficiency" in politics just means that more decisions are centralised and thus made more efficiently.

It seems that efficiency is at odds with democracy. Democracy is messy and inefficient, but it's what we want and need.

No effeciency is getting the same job done quicker and easier. Where is the democratic deficit?

So what if membership has been positive? In the last number of years Ireland has given more back to the EU than most other countries especially on integration issues with the new accession countries in 2004. We were one of the few countries who threw open our borders to those new EU citizens which surely has had an extremely positive impact on the success of enlargement.

What Lisbon is trying to impose is far different to what the EU (or EEC) was orignally established to be. No one on the Yes side has convinced me that Lisbon is about anything other than making the EU an even less democratic institution or that it will bring benefits to the people of Europe. What I am convinced it will do is take accountability much further away from the people who elect the European representatives and it will give far greater power to fairly unaccountable individuals.

Lisbon doesn't have any selling points as such as it just modifies hoe the EU does things to make it more effecient for the most part. There are no direct benefits, not direct disadvantages. A more effecient EU is surely in everyones benefit though?

Bringing up EU membership itself is a distraction by the yes campaign. EU membership continues regardless. It's the gravy-train for politicians aspiring to EU patronage that is threatened. There is no mechanism for expulsion of members. You know you're being offered a raw deal when the elites talk about everything except what's in it to get you to agree to it. They don't mention the expansion of Qualified Majority Voting on the Council of Ministers, the halving of the Irish voting-strength while Germany's doubles and the French vote increases by one-third, or the Charter of Fundamental Rights turning the ECJ into a Supreme Court (particularly over asylum and immigration), oer the govt's intention to surrender the veto on Justice and Home Affairs (provisions allowing for this were contained in the Referendum Act 2008 in relation to relinquishing the Protocol with the consent of the Oireacthas but without a referendum(. Unfortunately for them, there are those willing to confront them on these issues, as well as how Lisbon would in fact worsen the recession by copperfastening plans for corporate-tax harmonisation via CCCTB and the amended Article 113 of the TFEU, which facilitates tax harmonisation to combat "distortions of competition" - a clear reference to low-tax economies like Ireland.

Don't start with the corporate tax thing again FT, we've already shown elsewhere that you don't even understand corporate tax itself, much less the EUs position on it or Lisbons impact (or lack there-of) on it. Don't make us show you up on it again.

Fair play to MLM on Drivetime on Radio 1 now for exposing the worthlessness of the 'guarantees', in particular the fact that Lisbon allows for the veto on taxation to be relinquished without a referendum.

Source for this ridiculous claim?

Irish workers will be displaced a result of the Charter's provisions forcing us to allow asylum-seekers to work.

It seems the more I read your posts the more I believe you to be little more than a bigot. You fit in quite well with the BNP type mind-set, and that is shameful.

[molloyjh]

@FT: I presume many people have pointed out to you how misleading that claim is.
QMV uses a hybrid voting system that combines one-country-one-vote and voting-weighted-by-population.
In order to determine Ireland's voting strength you have to account for both.
Is there a legitimate reason why you're ignoring the one-country-one-vote part in your calculations of voting strength?

It doesn't suit his argument. The guy doesn't understand the basics, you can't expect him to get the detail right.

[FutureTaoiseach]

It seems the more I read your posts the more I believe you to be little more than a bigot. You fit in quite well with the BNP type mind-set, and that is shameful.

Nonsense. You fit in quite well with the PC-brigade mindset. Asylum should be about safety, not merely a flag of convenience for economic migration. The UK does not allow asylum-seekers to work either. Given their partial optout from the Charter, Article 15 of the Charter could well mean we are the only English speaking country in the EU to allow asylum-seekers to work. That would lead to a large influx into this country by asylum seekers living in the UK. In a recession, this is an unacceptable burden to place on the Irish people, 600,000 of whom are expected to be out of work by the end of the year.

And let me remind you: it was the Irish govt that revoked the right of asylum-seekers to work - and for good reason. Do they have "the BNP type mind-set" too?When it was last permitted, we had 11,000 coming here per annum. This was the argument rolled out when we had the Citizenship referendum aswell, even though we were only bringing our laws into line with the rest of Europe. And as for the BNP and the Far Right generally, it's PC attitudes like yours which have spawned the growth in support for such parties. Closing down debate by mainstream parties drives people to the extremes. So it may well be that retaining our restrictions helps prevent the rise of racist groups in this country. It is the politicians I am blaming, not the immigrants. But charity begins at home, and we have been generous enough.

And we all know how that one panned out for Iceland!

Switzerland is faring better than we are economically outside of the EU.

Source for this ridiculous claim?

I assume she is referring to the simplified-ratification procedure, which allows for changes in the texts of the Treaties without referenda. I specifically recall on Prime Time during the Lisbon I campaign it being stated by the narrator that the Treaty allowed the govt to surrender further vetoes in the future - including taxation. These assurances are a scrap of paper, which can be thrown out by the ECJ. One thing that is certainly the case is that in the Twenty-eighth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2008, specific permission was given to the govt, with the support of the Oireachtas, to surrender the veto on Justice and Home Affairs through the abrogation of the Protocol on the Area of Justice and Freedom, and thereby avoid a referendum. Watch for the 2009 Referendum Act for them to attempt again to slip things in under the radar when they think we're not looking.

Here is the gem they put into the legislation last year to allow them surrender our veto on Justice and Home Affairs:

13° The State may exercise the option to secure that the Protocol on
the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland in respect of the 35
area of freedom, security and justice annexed to the Treaty on the
European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European
Union (formerly known as the Treaty establishing the European
Community) shall, in whole or in part, cease to apply to the State,
but any such exercise shall be subject to the prior approval of both 40
Houses of the Oireachtas.