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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 18/09/2009 00:49:27
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Swedish Prime Minister on a second Irish No
(Irish Times, 5 September)
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, current holder of the EU Presidency, has told the Irish Times": "If it is a No, then we keep on with the Nice Treaty.
"There is a deep respect for political processes and democracies. We have had No referendums in other countries as well. It is important to see that every time we have seen that the EU has shown an openness to listen. This will not affect the possibility of Ireland to have influence."
Mr Reinfeldt said 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 condition for an EU executive of less than 27 members, which is stipulated in the Nice treaty...
But he said there was still a question about the efficiency of having up to 30 commissioners on an EU executive if further enlargement occurred.
"We might in the future get back to this discussion. What if we keep on enlarging?"
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Lisbon deliberately designed to be impenetrable
- EU Development Commissioner Karel de Gucht
(Irish Daily Mail, Thursday 3 September 2009)
"People didnt read the Lisbon Treaty, they didn't understand the first word about it. No real debate about the Lisbon Treaty could happen. This was a deliberate decision of the European Council," Karel de Gucht, former Belgian Foreign Minister told his told his confirmation hearing as Development Commissioner in Brussels on Tuesday 1 September.
The same man made the same point two years ago: "The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable ... The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success." - Flandreinfo, 23 June 2007
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Garret FitzGerald acknowledges that Ireland would lose the right to decide its own Commissioner under Lisbon:
(Sunday Times, 6 September; excerpts from report by Sarah McInerney)
Ireland willl not have the final say in choosing its EU commissioner if the Lisbon treaty is passed, say legal experts campaigning against the Treaty.
They claim the wording has been changed to allow member states only to "suggest" their choice of commissioner to the European Coouncil , as opposed to the power to "propose" their nominee under the Nice treaty.
Anhtony Coughlan, secretary of the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre and a lecturer in social policy at Trinity College Dublin, claims the change in wording is significant. "Amendments are not made to treaties for no reason," he said. "Every word makes a dfference."
"In a legal sense, the words 'suggest' and 'propose' have very diufferent weight. A right to propose is basically a right to decide. The right to 'suggest' is crucially different. A suggestion can be turned down by the commission president.
Coughlan said the new wording effectively means that if Lisbon 2 is passed the commission president can reject the Irish government's nominee for commissioner and insist that another candidate be put forward.
Garret FitzGerald, the former Fine Gael leader and a supporter of the treaty, agrees that the change in wording gives the commission president this power, but believes this is a positive amendment
"This will give the commission president at least the theoretical capacity to turn down the member state's choice of commissioner," he said ... "It would make governments think more carefully about who they are putting forward." . . .
A spopkesman for Micheal Martin, the minister for foreign affairs. denied that the change would weaken Ireland's ability to choose a commissioner ... Billy Timmins, Fine Gael's campaign director, said the No side was playing on words "It makes no difference whatsoever."
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Judge for yourself!
The real reason why Germany, France, Britain and Italy were willing to contemplate a reduction of one-third in the size of the Commission under Lisbon - which would deprive them too of a commissioner for five years out of every 15 - is that they knew that through their decisive role in chosing the Commission President they would in effect determine who all the other commisioners were. Under Lisbon The Commission President would be chosen by 55% of the Member States as long as they had 65% of the total EU population between them. This would give the Big States the decisive say. The Commisssion President would closely interact with the Big States to whom he was indebted for his job in deciding on the individual Commissoners. He would make sure the latter were congenial to him and to the Big States, as in future Member Governments would only have the power to "suggest" a name, and no longer be able to to insist that their national nominee be chosen.
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Media statement: Lamentable performance by RTE's Europe correspondent Sean Whelan
Dublin .. . Sunday 6 September 2009
RTE's Europe correspondent Sean Whelan showed lamentable partisanship and disregard for the facts of the Lisbon Treaty on yesterday's Saturday View programme, where he and the Irish Times's Stephen Collins were presented as giving an objective summing-up of the Treaty's main provisions
Stephen Collins is a well-known Yes-side partisan, but one expects a more objective approach from RTE's Europe correspondent in the interests of decent public service broadcasting.
Instead, what listeners got from Sean Whelan was an exercise in "spin" that was clearly oriented to encouraging support for the Yes-side.
Sean Whelan represented the Lisbon Treaty as a minor tidying-up exercise designed to make the EU more effective and efficient, with a few extra powers transferred from the Member States to the supranational level.
Yet this Treaty would transfer more competences to the post-Lisbon EU than either the 1986 Single European Act, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the 1998 Amsterdam Treaty or the 2001 Nice Treaty.
The national veto would be abolished and power transferred to Brussels in over 30 areas of new supranational law-making, including such important areas as crime, justice and policing, which Whelan did not mention. Many decisions other than law-making would be transferred also.
After all Lisbon is nearly 99% the same in legal effect as the 2004 Constitution for Europe, which the French and Dutch have rejected already in referendums. As the second and third sentences of Ireland's proposed Constitutional Amendment makes clear, Lisbon would "constitute" or set up a legally new European Union which would abolish and replace the present European Community which we joined in 1973.
That is why it it valid to call Lisbon a "Constitution", even though that word, which was used in virtually every Article of the 2004 Constitutional Treaty, is now abandoned.
This post-Lisbon EU would for the first time be separate from and superior to its Member States and would be able to sign international Treaties with other States in all areas of its powers. We would all then be made real citizens for the first time of this post-Lisbon Union, rather than being merely honorary or symbolic EU citizens as at present - with our rights and duties as EU citizens having primacy over our rights and duties as Irish citizens in any cases of conflict between the two.
These are major constitutional changes by any standard. Yet there was narry a word about them from Whelan!
Sean Whelan's "spinning" was particularly misleading when he implied that Lisbon would give more "control" and more of a say to National Parliaments, even though the Lishon Treaty would remove law-making functions from National Parliaments in the 30-plus aforesaid areas.
He quite wrongly gave listeners to "Saturday View" the impression that Lisbon would give National Parliaments some new function in relation to EU legislation, when he knows full well that the only change made by Lisbon is that National Parliaments must be "informed" by the Commission of its draft proposals for new EU laws. Then if one third of National Parliaments raise objections within eight weeks, the Commission must "consider" those objections, but there is no obligation on it to withdraw or alter its draft proposals.
National Parliaments are given no new "power" whatsoever under Lisbon. Rather, they would lose their present powers to legislate in over 30 policy areas, and the citizens that elect them would lose the power to decide those areas also.
Either Sean Whelan should study more about the Lisbon Treaty or RTE management should insist that their Europe correspondent is more balanced and objective when he speaks publicly about it.
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Junior Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 14/11/2009 09:03:06
Posts: 19,
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| Thanks for the quotes educated_citizen, it's sickening to witness the arrogance and cynicism on display from our political and media elites, both here and in Europe.
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Junior Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 12/11/2009 12:32:00
Posts: 15,
Visits: 56
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An interesting press release about coverage of the campaign in the media. Yes the yes campaign is getting more coverage in the press. Not surprising really as the no campaign does not have a single figure head like it did last time around in Ganley or the CIA's money to back them up!!!
http://www.mkc.ie/index.php?p=news&id=262
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