THE FRENCH ambassador to Ireland has sought to clarify remarks made by French president Nicolas Sarkozy in which he appeared to set a deadline for resolving Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.
Alluding to his planned visit to Ireland later this month during a televised interview broadcast on Monday, Mr Sarkozy said: “We mustn’t hurry. At the same time, we don’t have much time. What is the deadline? June 2009, because there are European elections.”
During a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs yesterday, a number of TDs voiced concern about the comments. Labour’s Joe Costello said talk of deadlines was “not particularly helpful”. Fianna Fáil’s Noel Treacy agreed, warning that any suggestion of a deadline being imposed could be “dangerous” and counter-productive.
Addressing the committee, Mr Yvon Roe d’Albert played down suggestions of a deadline being set to resolve the Irish rejection.
The purpose of Mr Sarkozy’s visit on July 21st would be “to listen to the Taoiseach, to take the time, analyse and debate. Not to rush things,” the ambassador said, going on to stress the need to take account of the “message sent by the Irish people” in last month’s referendum, which, he pointed out, corresponds to that expressed by French and Dutch voters who rejected the treaty’s forerunner in 2005.
“We are all aware of this message: Europe must respond better to the concerns of citizens, beyond information and pedagogy. Europe must be able to react in order to restore the confidence of Europeans and provide concrete answers to concrete problems.”
The ambassador also said the main body of the Lisbon Treaty will not be revised at the EU summit in October.
He was responding to a question from Mr Costello who said it appeared increasingly likely there would be a re-run of the treaty rather than a new treaty. The Labour TD pointed out that when Ireland voted against the Nice Treaty there was a re-run, but there was no question of a re-run when two larger countries, France and the Netherlands, rejected the EU onstitution three years ago. There seemed to be “one law for the large countries and another for smaller countries” he added.
The ambassador rejected that argument, saying the French and Dutch referendums could not be compared to the Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty as France and the Netherlands rejected a constitution, which was more difficult and involved issues of sovereignty.