Private polling and focus groups indicate Lisbon 2 may be lost: Sunday Times

[McDave]

That's ridiculous.

Are you saying that no conceivable Irish Government could enact sane labour and H&S laws that maintained acceptable standards while minimising bureaucracy?

Pro-EU people seem to have this dreadful inferiority complex whereby no Irish Government could ever possibly do things properly and we need Mutha in Brussels to civilise us.

Granted most of our Governments since Independence have been pretty useless, but the response to that is to educate the electorate to put a higher calibre of TD in the Dáil to run Ireland's business properly! It's not to do what you and other Europhiles are doing and advocating the abandonment of any meaningful nationals sovereignty on the grounds that we'll never get it right!

What is it with this country and the aiming for low targets and failing to achieve them? Sheesh.

Getting Brussels to wipe your arse cos you're too hopeless and apathetic to up your game and do it yourself is infantile and degrading.

To be fair to me, I was responding to a specific query by Jethro on EFTA. But to put a finer point on it, if our govt decided to go back to EFTA what would be their motivations in the first place? To get the EU off our legislative backs? I can imagine plenty of Irish politicians wanting to get off the legislative hook in the interests of general deregulation, so-called competitiveness and (more likely) a nice easy life with longer Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. I would contend that the Irish body politic would not leave the EU in order to be free to make better legislation.

It is also an indisputable fact that many if not most of the environmental, social and other public policy benefits we enjoy are as a result of pressure fom EU directives. I'm not prepared to ignore this fact. And the Irish electorate should give it due consideration when contemplating what the EU has done for us.

And finally, I never made the argument for abandoning our sovereignty. In fact the basis of EU action is conferred powers. We have transferred contingent powers to the EU. We still retain our own sovereignty. That is also the case for all other EU member states.

Your ass-wiping comment is a fair one to ask our dreadful politicians (esp. in FF), and by extension the voters who have been sustaining them, especially over recent decades.

[Freeborn John]

I never made the argument for abandoning our sovereignty. In fact the basis of EU action is conferred powers. We have transferred contingent powers to the EU. We still retain our own sovereignty. That is also the case for all other EU member states.

Any power transferred to Brussels is exercised from Brussels, which is de-facto sovereign. The sovereignty of any member-state of the EU can only be exercised by withdrawing from the EU so it is a theoretical sovereignty for any member-state. For those 'states' that remains in the EU political union, it is the decisions taken by the EU institutions which trump those of national parliaments and people who are therefore subject to the EU and not in any practical sense sovereign.

[eurosceptic]

Good point funky. The commission can only be downsized by unanimity so there is an irish commissioner for the next 130 years unless we agree otherwise.

[Earnest]

Wrong. The vote has already taken place. It was unanimous.

The unanimous vote was to decide that, if Lisbon comes into force, the number of Commissioners will be raised to 27.

If Nice remains in place, the number of Commissioners has to be less than 27. MrFunkyBoogaloo is quite wrong to say that Ireland could veto this. The Nice Treaty says it has to be less than 27 and the precise number is to be decided unanimously. A decision by the European Council, or a failure to decide by the European Council has to be compatible with the Nice Treaty. Therefore any decision to veto all proposals for a number less than 27 would prevent the appointment of any Commission at all.

[myksav]

Why's that?

Aesthetics. Don't know which is worse, the 'death-star core' or the glass barn.

[hiding behind a poster]

Good point funky. The commission can only be downsized by unanimity so there is an irish commissioner for the next 130 years unless we agree otherwise.

Utterly incorrect. As long as we are operating under the Nice Treaty, then from November 2009 the Commission MUST have at most 26 members, while it currently has 27. And nowhere in that does it say that Ireland is entitled to be the last country to lose a Commissioner for 5 years. Please at least TRY and get your facts right.

And as for the unanimity requirement - the 2/3 Commission proposal WAS agreed by unanimity. The subsequent June 2009 Decision to trigger the provision for a 27-member Commission can only come into effect under Lisbon, as it would be in breach of Nice. That is what was agreed by the member governments - that IF Lisbon is ratified by the 27, that provision will be enacted. It will not be enacted otherwise, because it can't. It would be illegal.

[FutureTaoiseach]

Utterly incorrect. As long as we are operating under the Nice Treaty, then from November 2009 the Commission MUST have at most 26 members, while it currently has 27. And nowhere in that does it say that Ireland is entitled to be the last country to lose a Commissioner for 5 years. Please at least TRY and get your facts right.

And as for the unanimity requirement - the 2/3 Commission proposal WAS agreed by unanimity. The subsequent June 2009 Decision to trigger the provision for a 27-member Commission can only come into effect under Lisbon, as it would be in breach of Nice. That is what was agreed by the member governments - that IF Lisbon is ratified by the 27, that provision will be enacted. It will not be enacted otherwise, because it can't. It would be illegal.

There could be a caretaker Commission until a solution is found. A parallel context would be the interregnum iun 1994 between the collapse of the Reynolds-Spring govt and the accession of the Rainbow. My solution would be to either come out with a new Protocol stating that each member state will have a Commissioner. Hardly anyone would vote against that in a referendum in this country. Alternatively, the President of the Commission could be counted as not being part of the Commission, with the missing country given that Presidency.

[ibis]

There could be a caretaker Commission until a solution is found. A parallel context would be the interregnum iun 1994 between the collapse of the Reynolds-Spring govt and the accession of the Rainbow. My solution would be to either come out with a new Protocol stating that each member state will have a Commissioner. Hardly anyone would vote against that in a referendum in this country. Alternatively, the President of the Commission could be counted as not being part of the Commission, with the missing country given that Presidency.

Those options suffer from the drawback of being illegal. An illegally constituted Commission cannot do anything - even if the political will is there to allow such a Commission to exist, it will be entirely unable to legislate, because any legislation originating from it can be immediately challenged.

Your choices are simple - vote Yes, or give up the Irish Commissioner.

[turdsl]

Give him up, its only a pay off for someone that's not wanted or a failure here, I believe they cannot show favoritism anyway. Plenty more top jobs should be cut there, not create more big jobs

[CookieMonster]

Never wanted the stupid commissioner anyway...

*shuffles feet, kicks dust*