OPINION:The treaty is unfair to small states - here's the chance to send it back to the table, writes Jens-Peter Bonde.
NEVER BEFORE have so few voters had a chance of such a big say. The Irish are the only European citizens to be allowed a vote on the Lisbon Treaty, and the opinion polls show the vote is neck and neck.
Already it can be said confidently that the Lisbon Treaty has no popular approval in any member state.
The Irish parties have not put forward arguments on the core content of the treaty. They have mainly threatened people with being marginalised in the EU if they vote No.
They have kept hidden the constitutional content of the treaty. They have used taxpayers' money to finance misleading Government and Referendum Commission booklets. They have promised a veto in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which does not exist for agricultural products.
They have induced European Commission president José Manuel Barroso to say Irish voters need not be concerned about Ireland's low company taxes, even though the scheme for a harmonised tax base will be pushed by the French when they take over the presidency on July 1st. They have asked the commission and the council to hold back all controversial proposals until after the Irish referendum.
The Government has said it got everything it wanted in the Lisbon negotiations, so there would be nothing to negotiate after an Irish No. In the Constitutional Convention, however, 21 EU governments fought to keep the principle of one commissioner each. Three-fifths of the convention members signed a petition calling for that, including all of the Irish members - and Minister of State for European Affairs Dick Roche.
In the event, Roche compromised and accepted a system of equal rotation. This compromise is bad for the following reasons:
1It is not sustainable. When France takes up a commissioner place after Malta, and Germany after Cyprus, everyone will realise it is not fair and the result will be permanent seats for the big member states and rotation for everyone else.
2Even if it were sustainable, it would destroy day-to-day co-operation in the EU. Small Irish companies and communities need to be able to continue making easy phone calls to the cabinet of the Irish commissioner to deal with local Irish problems.
3The commission will have extended powers to decide laws on its own under the two articles that were unfamiliar to the Referendum Commission chairman at last week's press conference. The commission can also be delegated to amend agreements like the WTO one on its own.
4The commission has the monopoly on proposing EU laws. How can law proposals be legitimate if no Irish voice has been heard in making them?
According to the European Ombudsman, the European Commission is proposing a step backwards as regards transparency. All of the Irish members and all elected members from national parliaments signed a petition to organise disclosure rules so that everything would be open and transparent unless otherwise decided.
No other proposal had such support in the convention. Even the French, German and British ministers supported it personally, but they were not allowed to call for it. Ireland should bring this proposal to the table again.
Today Germany has four times Ireland's vote in the council. When Denmark and Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, Germany had three times our vote. There has been an adjustment for the big member states in the Nice Treaty as a compensation for their losing a second commissioner. But under Lisbon Germany will have 20 times the Irish vote and 16 times the Danish. This is too much.
Let us go back and find a fairer solution. In the German Bundesrat (upper house) they give six votes to North Rhein-Westphalia, with 18 million citizens, and three votes to Saarland with one million. In the US, California's 36 million citizens have no more Senate seats than Wyoming's 520,000 citizens.
It is not difficult to see where Lisbon can be improved. I hope for democratic improvements for all. I am sure this will happen if there is a solid Irish No. But I fear that there will be a small No and the Government will come back with some nice words on specific Irish issues and have the treaty adopted in a second referendum.
Europe deserves a better treaty for our necessary and useful European co-operation.
Jens-Peter Bonde from Denmark is a long-time critic of the European project. He is a former MEP, member of the Convention on the Future of Europe and president of EU Democrats, a pan-European alliance that campaigns for a different sort of EU. Further information from www.eudemocrats.org
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