Madam, - May I suggest an addition to the book list Alan Dukes (June 24th) has drawn up for Gay Byrne with a view to changing his views on the EU?
The Great Deception, by Christopher Booker and Richard North (Continuum Publishers), is in my opinion the best account of the EU project from its start. The "deception" in the book's title refers to how successive EU treaties were presented to people as being necessary for jobs and growth, while each one was a step in moving the EC/EU towards a federal-style political union under the hegemony of the big EU states, particularly France and Germany.
The Lisbon Treaty is the constitutional culmination of this process, for as the first sentence of the constitutional amendment which voters rejected on June 12th makes clear, Lisbon would establish a constitutionally new European Union that would be very different from the EU of which we are currently members, which was established by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
Whatever about being a "superstate", the post-Lisbon EU which Gay Byrne shuns would have the constitutional form of a supranational federation - a state, in other words. It would abolish and replace the European Community that we have been members of since 1973. It would have its own legal personality for the first time, separate from that of its member-states. It would act as a state in the international community of states, 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 being merely symbolical or notional EU "citizens", as at present.
Alan Dukes will assuredly agree that all states must have citizens. Can he tell us how one can be a citizen of anything other than 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.
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 its policy-making. That is why, to answer Alan Dukes's questions to Gay Byrne, the governments of the big states are happy to mediate their state interests through the EU. As for politicians and senior civil servants from the smaller states, one East European gave a clue as to how they see things when he said: "It is nicer to be running Europe than running Slovakia!"
If Lisbon should be ratified, the post-Lisbon European Union would have all the main attributes of statehood except the power to force its member-states to go to war against their will. However, the treaty states that there will be an EU "common defence", ie a common European army, in due course.
Can one have an EU federation when its central spending is just 1 per cent of EU GDP? Yes, one can. Federal spending was not much higher than that when the US was founded, or Canada or Switzerland or 19th-century Germany, which are the classical federations whose constitutions are similar to that which the Lisbon Treaty would bestow on the new EU it would establish. Moreover Lisbon would permit this new union to impose any tax on its citizens to raise the resources needed to meet the union's many objectives, so long as that is unanimously agreed by the ministers concerned (Art. 311, TFEU). - Yours, etc,
ANTHONY COUGHLAN,
Crawford Avenue,
Dublin 9.
Madam, - Jurgen Habermas is a giant in the field of political communication. When he wrote the article you published last Saturday, he could not have been aware of what had passed for public discourse in Ireland in the weeks preceding the Lisbon referendum.
The time-honoured convention of balance and the normal media desire for newsworthy material allowed the airing of irrelevant arguments and bizarre claims.
Given the prosaic content of the Treaty, it was always going to be difficult to excite public interest and to find sensible counter-arguments. It was clear too that fantasies would crowd to fill the opening. What needs examination, however, is the role of the media - particularly radio and TV - in facilitating the repetition of bogus, discredited arguments, day after day after day. It is easy to cry, "No censorship!" and rush to defend impartiality. Silencing expressions of dissent is very, very risky; but there was nothing liberal or democratic about the way the discussion of Lisbon was reduced to a contrived controversy. - Yours, etc,
COLUM McCAFFERY,
Ardeevin Avenue,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - The decision of the Irish people to reject the Lisbon Treaty would appear to have been a wise one in the light of reports of "joint training exercises" involving European and Israeli air forces. The Israeli air force stands accused of war crimes against the Palestinians of Gaza and the Lebanese. Despite this, we learn that in the first week of June, 100 fighter jets of the Israeli air force, with the co-operation of Italy and Greece, flew 1,500 kilometres across the Mediterranean "in an unprecedented exercise widely reported as a 'dress rehearsal' for an attack on Iran" ( Jerusalem Post, June 23rd). Add to this President Sarkozy's recent reassurances to the Knesset last week that France, which now assumes the EU presidency, is ever Israel's friend and we have real reason to be worried.
We regard it as intolerable that the European Union, instead of punishing Israel for its countless breaches of international law - the UN Charter, over 70 UN Resolutions, the Hague Regulation and the Geneva Convention - continues to offer it privileged trading arrangements and European airspace to facilitate its aggressive aims.
Making Israel the dominant power in the Middle East is central to the Neo-Con agenda. By supporting this project the leaders of the European Union are leading their people down a disastrous path. Let us hope that those people, like the Irish, will rebel. - Yours, etc,
CAITLÍN NÍ CHONAILL,
Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign,
Dublin 2.