Rejection of treaty would be greeted with 'great relief' in France

ANTI-TREATY MEETING:REJECTION OF the treaty would be greeted with "great relief" in France, a member of the French Socialist Party national executive has said.

Addressing a press conference against the treaty in Dublin yesterday, François Delapierre said the French people had been "robbed of the right to vote" on the treaty.

"It is you, the Irish people, who will be giving all the people of Europe a chance to get a better treaty if the result is No."

The press conference, hosted by the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, also heard from anti-Lisbon Treaty campaigners from Germany and Austria as well as from Ireland.

Carla Kinger, of Attac Germany - a European anti-globalisation organisation - said the people of Europe were hoping the treaty would be rejected by the electorate here. "We wish so much it will be a No vote, though we know we cannot tell the Irish people how to vote."

Siegfried Bernhauser, of Attac Austria, said there had been a number of demonstrations in Vienna by people demanding a national referendum on the treaty. "We were denied that right and only you can give it back to us."

Brendan Ogle, an official with the Unite union, said the treaty represented an "attack on democracy" and should be rejected.

"We are being conned into a federal Europe," he said, adding that the treaty would pave the way for wages across all sectors to fall.

He said employers would be legally entitled to bring workers from lower-paying economies into the State and pay them at rates they received at home.

Eddie Conlon, spokesman for the campaign, said the treaty would reinforce the primacy of the market and the neo-liberal agenda, and that all other concerns, including health and social services, would be subservient to the market.

"The European Court of Human Justice has declared that internal market rules apply to health services. This and other public services should be excluded from market rules.

"Neither Article 16 nor the protocol on public services will protect our services from private contractors and the profit motive."

The Charter of Fundamental Rights would not stand up against the primacy of the market in the treaty. "It is subject to extensive limitations."

He said it had been used "as a reference for fundamental rights" by the European Court of Justice in the Laval case, a fact which underlined how limited was its scope.

In the recent Laval case, the court of justice ruled that a Swedish firm could employ Lithuanian workers and pay them at Lithuanian rates.

Separately yesterday, the Unite union, which has 60,000 members, called on members to reject the treaty. Irish regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said there was an obligation on members to the hundreds of thousands of workers across Europe "to push as hard as we can to defeat the Lisbon Treaty and secure a better deal for working people".