Madam, – Robert Ballagh (September 8th), states that “the suggestion that we will be marginalised in Europe if we vote against the Lisbon Treaty is outrageous”. He criticises the prediction by some on the Yes side that a two-tier, or two-speed, status could emerge following a second rejection of the treaty, calling on the Referendum Commission to clarify that this cannot legally occur.
It is certainly true to say that there are no definite, immediate consequences of a second No vote. However, Mr Ballagh is quite naive to describe it as a misleading argument that Ireland could become more isolated in Europe in this case, given, as he states, that the consequences would not be of a legalistic nature, but adhering instead to a question of realpolitik in the EU. Another rejection of the treaty would be very bad for Ireland from a goodwill perspective, an often overlooked consideration that is intrinsically important for member-states to maintain within the EU in terms of diplomatic objectives.
The main precedent example of a similar dilemma would be the Danish rejection of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Following this, the Edinburgh Agreement emerged later that year, whereby it was agreed that Denmark would be excluded from four key reforms in this treaty, including the ultimate introduction of the euro, while other member-states moved ahead.
Voters here must consider the likelihood of the Conservative Party returning to power in the UK before the end of next year. If Lisbon is rejected here, and if the Conservatives’ current party policy on the EU is delivered upon while it is in power, the UK will remove itself from the tenets of the Lisbon Treaty agreement.
This would open a deep-rooted questioning among all EU member-states as regards the future direction of Ireland and the UK, and possibly other countries, within the union. There is no doubt that serious consideration would be given to the option of a two-tiered Europe being instigated in this scenario.
Despite what Mr Ballagh argues, a second Irish rejection would be broadly interpreted internationally that Ireland has strong reservations about being at the “heart of Europe”. The Referendum Commission does not have a crystal ball so I would therefore advise it against attempting to clarify what Ireland’s position in Europe would look like a year after voting No again. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – When right-wing groups such as Cóir speak about abortion and our place in the EU, the discussion always seeks to portray Ireland as a lone bastion of “life” in a European sea of unrestricted abortion.
This distorted view is helped by our unfortunate position culturally sandwiched between the two most liberal abortion regimes in the western world – the UK and the US.
The European norm is far closer to the Irish position than that of the UK. Poland, Spain and Portugal have virtually identical laws to our own – abortion is only permitted when the life of the mother is in danger. In Malta, abortion is illegal – even when the mother’s life is in danger. Virtually every other EU state allows abortion only in restricted circumstances and only up to 12 weeks gestation.
If, as Cóir claims, the European Court of Justice legalised abortion on the basis of a right to privacy, it would have to override the laws of every member-state, not just Ireland.
This would be opposed everywhere, by every state. Any such judgment would quickly be nullified by political action, reverting the law to its previous position. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Jamie Smyth, European Correspondent is somewhat misleading in his explanation of how the Lisbon Treaty “creates a more democratic voting system in the EU”.
He writes, “Lisbon introduces a new ‘double majority’ voting system” (Opinion, September 8th). In fact a double majority system exists at present, whereby European laws require a simple majority of member-states plus a qualified or weighted majority of votes. In this system Germany, France, Britain and Italy have 29 votes each and Ireland has seven, one quarter of each of the “Big Four”.
Under the Lisbon double majority the number of states required goes from 14 to 15, so that 15 states could outvote and impose an EU law on 12 as long as the 15 had 65 per cent of the total EU population of some 500 million between them.
It is therefore the abolition of the weighted voting system which has existed since the 1957 Treaty of Rome and its replacement by an exactly proportionate population-size criterion that is new under Lisbon. This change would double Germany’s voting weight from its present 8 per cent of all the weighted votes to 17 per cent on a population basis, increase France’s, Britain’s and Italy’s from 8 per cent to 12 per cent each and halve Ireland’s voting influence from its present 2 per cent to 0.8 per cent.
Mr Smyth says that the new Lisbon system “is designed to be more democratic” by better reflecting the EU population, but this is true only on the assumption that democracy requires the whole of the EU to be regarded as one unified state or country rather than a grouping of different states and countries.
On the EU commissioner he fails to inform your readers that while the current Nice Treaty requires the number of commissioners to be fewer than the number of member-states from 2009, any such change must be unanimous, so that Ireland has a veto on it and we cannot have anything imposed on us that we do not agree to. We have no such veto, however, on the post-Lisbon arrangements.
On September 5th your paper reported Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt as saying that under Nice a “26 plus one option” was probably the best solution, whereby 26 states retain their commissioner and the 27th state is offered the post of high representative for foreign affairs instead. This would give all 27 countries a top EU job, while complying with the legal requirement for an EU executive of less than 27 members, which is stipulated in the Nice Treaty. – Yours, etc,