Same Treaty, Same Question: Same Answer?

Irish Referendum Part II. At least they get to choose

The recent Open Europe bulletin gives a pretty decent insight into the latest attempt by the EU to wangle a 'yes' vote out of the people of Ireland in order to keep the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty alive. Read on...

1. Ireland to vote on exactly the same text of the Lisbon Treaty.
Following the European Council meeting last week, Open Europe has published a briefing on the so-called 'guarantees' offered to Ireland in exchange for holding a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

In the conclusions of the summit, EU leaders agreed on a series of statements which seek to address what EU leaders perceive to be Irish concerns about taxation, ethical issues, workers' rights and neutrality. They also reiterated an agreement reached in December to postpone the reduction of the size of the Commission laid down in the Lisbon Treaty.

However, despite promises from the Irish government that they would not force people to vote on exactly the same text a second time around, the deal reached at the summit made no change whatsoever to the text of the Treaty, meaning Irish people will be forced to vote on exactly the same text they rejected last year.

As an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today notes, "So the Irish will vote on the same text they previously rejected by a seven-percentage-point margin despite assurances by their government as recently as last month that this would not happen." (WSJ, 26 June)

EU leaders agreed to attach the statements as a protocol to the Treaty after the Irish referendum and once it is already in force, but the text of the conclusions is clear that: "The Protocol will clarify but not change either the content or the application of the Treaty of Lisbon."

The EU Presidency confirmed that: "the text of the guarantees explicitly states that the Lisbon Treaty is not changed thereby" and several other EU leaders have since said the same. PA quoted Gordon Brown saying, "The summit conclusions set out the fact that the protocol does not change the relationship between the European Union and the member states, and that the protocol clarifies but does not change the content and application of the Treaty...The Treaty assurances have made explicit what was implicit in the Treaty already." (PA, Czech EU Presidency statement, Council conclusions, 19 June)

Czech Europe Minister Stefan Fuele told a Czech Senate committee, "The guarantees do not change the Lisbon treaty itself in any respect. They have the character of explanatory assurances. In other words, the Irish guarantees only confirm and explain what is already in the text of the Lisbon treaty". Czech PM Jan Fischer also added that the guarantees were, "an explanatory clarifying text which changes not a dot nor comma of the Lisbon Treaty."(Irish Times, 20 June; Ceskenoviny, 25 June)

To read Open Europe's briefing on the Irish guarantees, click the link below:

http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/irishguarantees.pdf

Please leave your comments on our blog:

http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/

Simply incredible. The same treaty surely means the same question for the Irish, doesn't it? So that should mean the same answer, shouldn't it? So why ask it? Are they saying to the Irish people that they got the answer wrong the first time? You know, I think they are. Unbelievable. Where does the EU get off lying through its teeth to the leaders and the people of sovereign nations? When, exactly, did this become acceptable - even the norm? How can our leaders debase themselves in this way, and, by implication therefore, the countries they were elected to lead? I don't know about you, but I regard the integrationist propaganda coming out of Brussels these days, and dutifully passed on by our sickeningly fawning government in the UK, as an absolute insult to people's intelligence. They can't seriously believe that the EU Constitution, repackaged and given a new name (a bit like Windscale/Sellafield!), is something that they can simply ram through regardless of the wishes of the majority of people all over Europe.

Do these idiots think they can enforce a federal Europe on people who don't want it, who want to retain their national identities? If they imagine that this is not the case, then they are living in a fantasy world. For example, in the same bulletin it's revealed that 77% of the German electorate want a referendum on the Treaty. Logically, it can be safely assumed that those people don't want a referendum just so they can say 'Ya'! So 77% of the German people don't want an EU constitution. They want to remain German in a country called Germany where they elect Germans to govern them. For similar reasons, you can guarantee that that figure is higher in the UK. How are the goons in Brussels and David Millipede at home going to spin their way out of that one, I wonder.

It is essential that Ireland's people are not fooled by this spin and propaganda. It is no longer possible to believe not only the statements and guarantees coming out of Brussels, but also the words of reassurance spoken by their own leaders. But I am now seriously concerned. The UK has been denied a referendum and so has Germany because it is widely known that both countries would deliver a NO vote. You have to conclude that the outcome in this new, totally outrageous second Irish referendum might actually not matter, given this apparent contempt for the will of national populations. It's becoming pretty clear that there's a significant risk the ruthlessness of the EU leadership and their many accomplices in national governments is such that it might be decided simply to railroad Ireland, the UK and everyone else and enforce the treaty anyway, perhaps on the back of an ultimatum in Ireland's case, and even in the case of the UK.

Well, if they do try that (and after the treatment of member states over the constitution issue, you have to assume there is a degree of socialist mega-zealousness within the EU regime that makes such a ludicrous development possible, difficult to compute though that insanity is) then the answer to such brinkmanship is simple: call the bastards' bluff.

We'll soon see then who needs whom the most. We'll also see that the EU experiment has actually been a very expensive waste of time, effort and money. It's time for the UK government to start acting according to the will of the people who elected it. Either that or we'll get another one - and another one, and then another one, over and over again until we get a government that understands how democracy and liberty work.

Perhaps that highly hypothetical new administration could then teach the European socialist-federalists about democracy and liberty too instead of the current arrangement with our pisspoor government sucking up to the federalists, taxing us to buggery, curtailing our freedoms (the smoking ban was an EU idea, for example) and wiping-out our agriculture and fisheries for the privilege. Marvellous.

I think we've had enough of that kind of 'integration' in Europe, thank-you very much.