The Government's campaign for a Yes vote in the Nice Treaty referendum is "a cruel and dishonest deception", the Socialist Party has claimed. Launching the party's No campaign, the party TD Mr Joe Higgins said the real agenda was to increase the power of multinationals in the EU.
"Government propaganda would have us believe that the Nice Treaty is really about extending the hand of solidarity and friendship to the peoples of central and eastern Europe, many of whom are in dire economic straits.
"This is a cruel and dishonest deception. The real agenda of the Nice Treaty is to consolidate and extend the massive economic power of the multinational corporations in the EU. That involves the creation of a huge market of more than 500 mil lion people that can be more effectively exploited by these companies," Mr Higgins said.
The European Round Table lobby group, representing some of the most powerful multinationals, had "deployed huge power and resources to lobby or bully EU governments". Many of the companies represented by the Round Table had bought up previously state-owned public utilities within the EU and were now in search of "super-profits" from similar purchases in central and eastern Europe.
"Ordinary people and small farmers in the applicant countries, already in dire straits as a result of mismanagement of their economies by the former Stalinist bureaucracies, will continue to pay a heavy price under the EU," said Mr Higgins.
The Socialist Party insisted that the treaty would create "a two-tier EU" and a military wing which would try to dictate to "neighbours on the fringes".
The EU's Rapid Reaction Force was the beginnings of an EU army, he said. "Clearly a large majority of Irish people would oppose any such move if portrayed in its true colours."
