Ireland says no
Ireland’s no vote in their referendum on the Lisbon Treaty raises a host of questions and issues.
As a country that has benefited more than pretty well any other (alongside Spain) from the EU’s largesse, it is quite something that the Celtic tiger has turned on what was the goose that laid the golden egg.
Beyond that, though, it raises the broader question. Will the EU ever listen to its citizens?
Don’t get me wrong – I am not a eurosceptic and this is not a rant against the EU.
But it has now been 7 years since the Convention on the Future of Europe started to draw up proposals for an EU constitution. That was then rejected by both the French and the Dutch in referenda in 2005. It was then re-named the Lisbon Treaty and has now been rejected by the only country that is holding a referendum.
Now I speak as one of the only people in the whole of Europe to have actually read what was the European constitution. Extraordinarily, it is actually the most readable and sensible document I have ever read about the EU. Contrary to popular belief, it does not really centralize much at all. Most of the powers it gives to Brussels are ones in justice and home affairs which the UK wants to have at European level as it would improve our ability to deal with international and cross-border crime.
The constitution also gave some powers to the national Parliaments in the EU for the first time ever. It also set out a mechanism for leaving the EU which currently does not exist.
But the constitution was voted down by two countries who were founders of the EU – France and the Netherlands.
So what did the EU’s leaders do? They took out the flag and the anthem, called it a Treaty and claimed that it was something entirely different. That is a straightforward lie. Anybody who knows anything about the constitution and the Treaty knows full well that the two are basically identical. Don’t kid us.
And now the Treaty has been rejected too by one of the most pro-EU countries in Europe.
It had been thought that the EU would not be able to survive once it became 27 member states without a new constitution or Treaty. But the fact of the matter has been – and this has been shown through independent research – the EU has worked extremely well without a new Treaty or constitution. And the member states know that.
So the EU’s leaders must listen to the people of Europe and not ride roughshod over them again. They have to drop the Lisbon Treaty.
But of course, they won’t. They will invent some sham to get it through against the wishes of the electorate.
And they wonder why the EU is unpopular?