Who is really driving the Nice Treaty? The public faces pushing the treaty are those of the leaders and governments of the EU. Hidden from view, however, are the groups which have really shaped EU economic policies and which have lobbied and bullied governments into implementing them.

They include the European Round Table composed of chairmen or chief executives of the most powerful multinational corporations based in the EU, with a turnover in 1998 of £740 billion sterling (€1.2 trillion). They include Nestle, Siemens, Jefferson Smurfit and Fiat.

The EU Committee of the American Chambers of Commerce, representing 140 of the largest US multinationals operating in the EU, also lobbies heavily.

Both see their mission as strengthening the competitiveness of the European economy on the world stage. In practice, this has meant a ruthless drive to privatise state and semi-state companies and public services all over Europe.

The multinationals seize these privatised assets and, in the name of breaking down state monopolies, gain greater monopolies for themselves. The Nice Treaty is an instrument to facilitate these corporations.

EU institutions have facilitated and promoted the multinationals' extension into Central and Eastern Europe. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is a public sector bank of the EU supposed to aid development in these states.

Its first loans, however, were to EU-based multinationals to purchase businesses in the applicant states.

The policy is to finance private conglomerates rather than public sector projects. The mainstream political parties in this State have embraced the privatisation agenda.

One obvious consequence has been the burning of the small shareholders in the privatisation of Telecom Eireann and the current feeding frenzy around Eircom's fixed-line business.

The Government states categorically that EU enlargement will provide a huge economic lift for the ordinary people of the applicant states. There is no evidence given to support this.

In Poland, where one fifth of total employment is agricultural, the average farm is about 20 acres. Does anybody believe that these small farmers will survive the invasion of the multinationals whose factory-farming methods allowed the catastrophic scale of the British foot-and-mouth epidemic and BSE? The enhanced co-operation element in the Nice Treaty allows weak applicant states into the EU but they would be shunted into the slow lane as the more powerful move up a gear.

There could be a rude shock for the political establishment in this State. Intoxicated with recent growth rates in the Celtic Tiger, it forgets its dependence on the world economic situation. A new recession, already beginning in the US, may sober it up very quickly depending on its depth.

Having embraced the Maastricht criteria and the euro, it will find it has given away what few economic levers it had to try to exercise control.

Having embraced the euro with great fanfare, the establishment may well find a need to bale out ignominiously when the cycle of boom and slump asserts itself.

The Nice Treaty advances a clear agenda among EU strategists to construct an economic super bloc able to rival other blocs, including the United States.

The Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Rapid Reaction Force will give a military arm to this bloc to add to its economic weight. The military-industrial complex in the EU is huge. Yet there is rarely any detailed discussion on it.

Of the top 100 arms-producing companies in the OECD, 39 are based in the EU. These had sales of $55 billion in 1998 with profits of $13 billion.

Like the European Round Table, they wield enormous power.

They have financed political parties and politicians, sometimes involving massive corruption. They are enthusiastic backers of the Nice Treaty because it advances the militarisation of the EU through the creation of the Political and Security Directorate, including the Military Committee of the European Union and the Military Staff of the European Union, which will direct the Rapid Reaction Force.

In rejecting the Nice Treaty, the Socialist Party does not advocate that this State should withdraw into a mid-Atlantic isolationism. We are an internationalist party. Our alternative to the Treaty of Nice is to fight for a Europe based on the principles of democratic socialism.

The resources available could be developed for the genuine benefit of the majority, free from the grasping hands of the multinationals, with protection of our environment and ecosystems given the highest priority.

The rejection of the Nice Treaty in the June 7th referendum would be a clear signal from the people of Ireland that they see the future of Europe in an entirely different light to the arms merchants and multinationals. Joe Higgins is the Socialist Party TD for Dublin West

Tomorrow: Conor O'Clery on how the United States views the treaty