The declarations make no difference. We should still reject Nice because itattacks the original idea of the EU as a partnership of equals, assertsAnthony Coughlan
It is certainly undemocratic and possibly unconstitutional for the Government to put exactly the same Nice Treaty before the people next October which they rejected by 54 per cent to 46 per cent last year.
Our politicians failed to do their constitutional duty after Nice One when they did not insist that our EU partners abide by their own EU rules, whereby every EU treaty must be unanimous and respect the democratic Irish vote. Instead Germany's Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, said: "The Irish people will have to decide in a new referendum." (Irish Independent, June 15th, 2001).
It is too late to change Nice now. If the Government issues declarations or holds other referendums alongside Nice Two, it will not change the fact that Nice Two will be - indeed constitutionally must be - exactly the same as Nice One.
To help push through Nice Two the Government has removed from the neutral publicly funded Referendum Commission the job of setting out the Yes side and No side arguments, as it did in Nice One. It has done so with an amendment to the Referendum Act, which it put through all stages of the Dáil and Seanad in one day on the eve of rising for Christmas. This clears the way for massive Yes side advertising by private interests in Nice Two, who will have vastly greater money than the No side.
"Legally, ratification of the Nice Treaty is not necessary for enlargement," said EU Commission President Romano Prodi after Ireland's verdict last year.
All 12 applicant countries can join the EU on the basis of clauses in their individual accession treaties incorporating the allocation of council votes and parliament seats, set out in Declaration 20, attached to Nice. This is not legally part of the treaty and so we did not reject it last year. That is how Ireland joined the EU and how others did as it grew from six to nine to 12 to 15.
Do we want a two-tier two-speed EU, divided into first-class and second-class members? Nice abolishes the veto we have to prevent that at present. It permits an inner group of eight or more States - grouped around the Franco-German axis - to hijack the EU institutions for their own purposes and present the rest with continual political and economic "faits accomplis", e.g. on harmonising taxes in the euro zone.
"A Union for the enlarged Europe and a federation for the avant-garde," says Jacques Delors.
"A federation and government which, within the EU, should speak with one voice," says Joschka Fischer. Nice is the legal path to that.
This destroys the EU as a partnership of legal equals. It subverts fundamentally the European ideal. It has turned this long-time Eurosceptic into a defender of the EU as it stands, as preferable to one run as a power-play of the big states.
The big states need the Nice Treaty provisions, not for EU enlargement but to allow them to establish an inner political directorate so they cannot be outnumbered by all the smaller states.
Do we want an EU where Ireland periodically loses its EU Commissioner and is unrepresented on the body which proposes all EU laws? Former senior Irish EU officials Eamon Gallagher and John Temple Lang call this provision "a serious flaw" in the Nice Treaty, and in no way necessary for EU enlargement. It subverts the legitimacy of the Commission as the guardian of the common EU interest, and as special guarantor of the interests of smaller states.
Under Nice the Taoiseach and Government will no longer have the final say on who represents Ireland on the EU Commission. That will be decided by majority Council vote rather than unanimously as now. Do we want an EU where Ireland loses its veto on 30 new policy areas, replacing it with majority voting on the Council of Ministers?
Nice makes the EU directly responsible for running the 60,000- soldier Rapid Reaction Force, to which Ireland has committed 850 men, rather than operating as hitherto through the Western European Union, which Ireland did not join because of public pressure but on which we have observer status.
It thereby turns the EU itself into a military alliance, entitled to intervene abroad without a UN mandate, although without as yet a mutual defence commitment.
Nice establishes a political and security committee to supervise these military operations, to which the EU military committee and EU military staff, on which Irish soldiers now serve daily, will be responsible.
While nobody opposes EU enlargement, we need an honest debate on its costs: the effect of two million Polish farmers on the CAP; businesses moving eastward, where wages are one-third of ours, and eastern workers moving westward; and politically strengthening the EU nuclear lobby, for most of the applicants are nuclear energy users.
Is it true that the Government has assured the East European applicants that their nationals can come here from their first year of membership, even though they cannot move elsewhere in the EU for seven years?
As responsible Europeans we should vote No to Nice to hold the EU together. By doing that, Ireland can ensure the debate on the future of the EU, in the convention preparing the Year 2004 Treaty, takes place pre-Nice instead of post-Nice. Post-Nice, the fork in the EU road will have been taken. Permission to divide the EU "club" into two clubs will have been given.
Anthony Coughlan is secretary of The National Platform, a research and information group, which may be contacted by phoning: 01-608 1898 (office) or 830 5792 (home)