Source: http://www.wiseupjournal.com/ireland/submission-to-irish-govt-on-irelands-future-in-the-european-union/
Timestamp: 2016-08-24 12:04:49
Document Index: 728352505

Matched Legal Cases: ['Art.1', 'Art.17', 'Art.9', 'Art.189', 'Art.14', 'Art.214', 'Art.17', 'Art.6', 'Art.42', 'Art.42', 'Art.2', 'Art.7', 'Art.4']

Submission To Govt On Ireland's Future In The European Union * - Wise Up Journal
What the Irish Government should now do on the Lisbon Constitution: Submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Ireland’s Future in the European Union from The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre (N.B. The four numbered headings below correspond to the four points of the Oireachtas Committee’s terms of reference)
Irish referendums are a form of direct legislation by the people Irish referendums are a form of direct legislation in which the Irish people, who adopted their basic law or Constitution by direct referendum vote in 1937, decide to legislate or not to amend that Constitution in subsequent referendums thereafter. Last June’s referendum vote was a clear refusal by the people to assent to the constitutional revolution which had been presented to them for decision by the Government and Oireachtas in the 28th Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 2008.
The Irish people decided to reject Lisbon by clear majority vote. All Yes-side voters who are democrats should respect that vote and abide by it. Any attempt to put the same Lisbon Treaty to the Irish people again with a view to reversing last June’s vote would almost certainly be in violation of Article 6 of the Constitution and would be open to consitutional challenge in the Courts. “Respecting” the voters’ decision means abiding by it, not working to overturn it Although the Government says that it respects the voters’ decision, which means that it should abide by it, all the signs are that Taoiseach Mr Brian Cowen and his colleagues, from the moment the trend of the ballot papers was evident at the referendum count, have set out to work with other EU Governments to overturn this democratic result in a second Lisbon referendum, just as occurred when voters rejected the Treaty of Nice in June 2001.
A dilemma of the Government’s own making If Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his colleagues find themselves next month to be the government of one of only a handful of EU Member States that have not ratified Lisbon, this will be entirely due to the unwillingness of the Taoiseach and his Government to respect the Irish people’s referendum vote on Lisbon. It will be due to their de facto efforts to reverse that result in concert with President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel, Commission President Barroso and others. This is truly a constitutionally awesome course for any Irish Government to take. The suggestion that the other EU Member States are unwilling to open issues of concern in the Lisbon Treaty, or to “re-negotiate” its contents, is a spurious one, for the Treaty cannot come into force without Ireland ratifying it. If Ireland does not ratify, the Treaty falls. All the issues of the Treaty’s contents would still remain in play however, to be dealt with in the normal toing-and-froing of EU politics over the years or in further EU treaties at some future date.
That this would be the case was admitted by French President Sarkozy when he stated at a meeting of group leaders in the European Parliament last year that “France was just ahead of all the other countries in voting No. It would happen in all Member States if they have a referendum. There is a cleavage between people and governments … A referendum now would bring Europe into danger. There will be no Treaty if we had a referendum in France, which would again be followed by a referendum in the UK.” (EUobserver , 14 November 2007)
The EU Prime Ministers and Presidents act against their own peoples That is the reason why the Prime Ministers and Presidents of the EU Member States gave a commitment to one another when they signed the Lisbon Constitution to avoid referendums on it at all costs. It is why the French and Dutch Governments refused to hold referendums on Lisbon even though it was virtually identical with the constitutional treaty their peoples had voted No to in 2005. It is why British Prime Minister Gordon Brown abandoned his Labour Party’s commitment, and his predecessor’s promise, to hold a referendum on an EU constitution in the UK. It is why the Danish Government is avoiding a referendum in Denmark even though referendums on major EU treaties have traditionally been required there.
What the Irish Government should now do on Lisbon To meet the challenges facing Ireland in the EU following the Lisbon referendum therefore, the Irish Government should do the following: –
c) Point out to its EU fellow governments that the British Conservative Party is committed to putting Britain’s ratification of Lisbon “on ice” in the event of that party being elected to office before that Treaty is ratified, holding a UK-wide referendum on it and recommending a No vote to it, and that it would therefore be prudent of the EU as a whole to await the outcome of the UK general election, which is due in little over a year, before trying to foist an unwanted Lisbon Constitution on the peoples of the UK. The Government should point out that such a referendum would also give our fellow-countrymen and women in Northern Ireland an opportunity to express their views on this hugely important treaty; d) Recommend to its fellow EU governments that it would be prudent also to await the outcome of the Czech Constitutional Court and Senate proceedings, and the Grauweiler constitutional challenge to Lisbon before the German Constitutional Court, before doing anything further in this matter;
2. Ireland’s future in the EU… Our influence within the European institutions: Ireland should remain a fully committed member of the present European Commmunity and European Union. At the same time the Government should advocate a genuine democratic reform programme for the EU, following debate and discussion with its own citizens and with other EU States, especially smaller ones, in the process of consulation suggested in Point (b) above.
Advance a programme of democratic reform of the EU Such a process of genuine EU democratic reform could include, inter ali a: (i) the election of Commissioners from each Member State, with the Commission’s legislative programme being presented beforehand to National Parliaments each year; (ii) changing the Council of Ministers voting system so that European laws could be adopted only if at least three-quarters of Member States covering at least half of the EU’s population were in favour; (iii) abandoning the idea of a special code of fundamental rights for EU citizens as distinct from national citizens and requiring the EU institutions to abide instead by the European Convention of Human Rights; (iv) reducing drastically the burden of EU laws and repatriating appropriate law-making areas from Brussels to the Member States as envisaged in the Laeken Declaration.
– Former German President Dr Roman Herzog and former president of the German Constitutional Court, article on the EU Constitution, Welt Am Sonntag , 14 January 2007
4. Improving Irish public understanding of the EU?:
Mr Tony Brown and Foreign Minister Micheal Martin “spinning” tales about conscription to a post-Lisbon EU army The undersigned recalls that the first person to raise this scare was Mr Tony Brown in a letter to the Irish Times some months before the Lisbon referendum. In this letter Mr Brown condemned what he said were likely to be the exaggerations and false-claims of No-side people, as illustrated by their putting around this scare-story about conscription to an EU army in previous EU referendums. I was actively involved in all of these referendums and have no recollection of this theme being pushed by No-side advocates at any time in the past. I can say with absolute certitude that it was not made an issue in the Lisbon Treaty referendum by No-side campaigners either.
The Referendum Commission, conflicts of interest and questionable tendering procedures The Referendum Commission sought legal advice from solicitor firm A and L Goodbody, although this firm represented some Yes-side interests. It relied on Murray Consultants for printing and public relations, the contact person for whom appeared on the Commission’s press releases and was a former press director of the Fianna Fail Party.
Ensuring that the Referendum Commission abides by its terms of reference and does a proper job in explaining the significance of the constitutional amendment to citizens is clearly fundamental to improving public understanding of the EU and its importance for Ireland’s future. Such understanding is never more important than when the people are being invited to change their Constitution to ensure the superiority of EU law or not. Appended below is our preliminary submission made to the Oireachtas Sub-committee on Ireland’s Future in the EU on 22 October 2008.
Preliminary submission to the Oireachtas Sub-Committee on Ireland’s Future in the European Union from The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre: Why Lisbon is a bad Treaty for both Ireland and the EU Ireland should remain a fully committed member of the present European Union and European Community that were established by the 1992 M aastricht Treaty on European Union. It should not support the abolition of the present European Community and Union and their supersession by the proposed new European Union whose Constitution is set out in the 2004 Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe and the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon, and of which we would all be made real citizens for the first time.
1. Lisbon would abolish the European Community which we have been members of since 1973 (Art.1 TEU / Treaty on European Union) and would replace the existing EU with a legally new Union in the constitutional form of a supranational EU Federation with its own legal personality distinct from its Member States. Instead of being sovereign States in the international community, Lisbon would thus reduce Ireland and the other Member States to the constitutional status of provincial states in a Federation, like Virginia inside the Federal USA or Bavaria inside Federal Germany. The laws of this new European Union would thereafter have primacy over national Constitutions and laws (Arts.1 and 47 TEU; Declaration No.17 concerning Primacy ).
2. It would make the 500 million people of the EU into real citizens of this new EU Federation, owing their prime obedience to its laws and loyalty to its authority over and above their citizens’ duty to their national Constitution and laws in any case of conflict between the two. One can only be a citizen of a State and all States must have citizens. Instead of EU citizenship being ” complementary” to national citizenship and essentially notional and symbolical (Art.17 TEC / Treaty Establishing the European Community). Lisbon would make EU citizenship “additional to” national citizenship (Art.9 TEU). This would give us all a real dual citizenship, not of two different States but of the Federal and provincial levels of one State, as in the US or German federations. One example of this change: if Lisbon came into force MEPs, who at present are “representatives of the peoples of the States brought together in the Community” (Art.189 TEC), would become “representatives of the Union’s citizens”, just as in any State (Art.14.2 TEU). Ireland’s statutory Referendum Commission failed to make any mention of these facts in the material it sent to citizens for the June 2008 referendum,despite being given ¤5 million to explain the constitutional amendment to voters.
4. It would remove the right of Ireland and the other EU Member States to decide who their national Commissioner would be in the ten years out of every 15 when Member States would have a Commissioner under Lisbon . It would do this by replacing each Member State’s present right to “propose” a Commissioner – and to insist if need be on its proposal being accepted as a condition for it accepting the proposals of others (Art.214 TEC) – by the right to make “suggestions” only, and leave it for the incoming Commission President to decide (Art.17.7 TEU). Who the Commission President is would be decided mainly by the votes of the Big States. Again the Referendum Commission glossed over this significant Lisbon amendment in its information material to Irish voters by using the same word – “nominate” – for the pre-Lisbon and post-Lisbon situations as if there was no difference!
5. It would give the EU Court the power to decide our fundamental rights as EU citizens, rights which the EU and its Member States would then have to enforce over and above our rights as Irish citizens in any case of conflict between the two (Art.6 TEU and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights) .
9. It would militarize the EU further , requiring Member States “progressively to improve their military capablities” (Art.42.3 TEU ), and it contains what Commission President Barroso termed “a mutual defence clause”, requiring Member States to go to the assistance of other Member States in the event of war (Art.42.7 TEU).
12. It would reintroduce the death penalty “in time of war or of imminent threat of war” for the European Army that it envisages by providing for the post-Lisbon EU acceding as a corporate entity, separate from its Member States, to Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which permits use of the death penalty on these occasions, instead of to Protocol 13, which bans the death penalty in all circumstances and to which most EU Member States have acceded ( Explanation attached to Art.2 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights ). This item is in a footnote of a footnote in the Lisbon Treaty and has caused much controversy in Germany and Austria, although most people in Ireland have never heard of it. Again the Referendum Commission made no mention of this proposal in its information material to Irish voters for the 2008 Lisbon referendum, although the matter was drawn to the Commission’s attention.
13. It would make National Parliaments formally subordinate to the post-Lisbon EU. Far from increasing the power of National Parliaments, as pro-Lisbon spokesmen untruthfully assert, Lisbon underlines their implicitly subordinate role in the institutional structure of the post-Lisbon Union by providing that “National Parliaments contribute to the good functioning of the Union” by various means that are set out in Article 12 TEU. Under Lisbon National Parliaments must be informed of and may scrutinise draft EU legislative acts, but while the Commission is required to review the legislation if one-third of National Parliaments object, the Commission can then decide to continue with its legislation unamended, with its decision confirmed by the normal Council of Ministers QMV procedures ( Protocol on Subsidiarity and Proportionality , Art.7.2). In no sense can this be said to give “more control” to National Parliaments, as pro-Lisbon spokesmen continually assert in blatant contradiction of the truth.
The Nice Treaty’s Protocol on EU Enlargement ( Art.4.2) requires the number of EU Commissioners to be less than the number of Member States from 2009, although by an unspecified number to be agreed unanimously.
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