RESTORING AN EU commissioner permanently to member states is simply "non-negotiable" in the aftermath of the Irish No vote on Lisbon, former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing maintains.
"It isn't reasonable. There will be Irish commissioners, but by rotation," he told The Irish Timesin an interview yesterday. The commissioner issue is seen as key by many to making the treaty acceptable to voters in any new ballot. And Mr Giscard, who served as president of the convention that drafted the failed European constitution, angrily denounced as "dishonest" the repeated use of a quotation attributed to him by Irish No campaigners during the Lisbon referendum.
Mr Giscard said he was unaware until now that a passage from an opinion piece about the EU constitution published in Le Mondeand The Irish Timesin June 2007 was widely quoted on posters and by No campaigners. In an article in The Irish Timesduring the campaign, Declan Ganley, wrote that Mr Giscard had "boasted that 'public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals we dare not present to them directly'."
Mr Giscard's next, unquoted paragraph, however, makes clear that he regarded such an approach as "unworthy" and likely to "confirm European citizens in the idea that the construction of Europe is organised behind their backs by lawyers and diplomats".
And Mr Giscard insists that the passage quoted pertained only to France.
"The French had voted on a first treaty, and there was talk of a new one.
"[The government] wanted to tell them 'it's not the same' when, in reality, the content was the same. So [my] argumentation was for the French. It had no meaning for people who had not voted on the text, like the Irish." Mr Giscard (82) was president of France from 1974 until 1981.
He insists "there is no alternative" to a second Irish vote. But demands by the No camp for a permanent Irish commissioner are out of the question: "Everyone decided that there would no longer be permanent commissioners. It's not negotiable, for anyone," he said.
"Ireland is 1 per cent of the EU. You're not going to have your own commissioner. It isn't reasonable. There will be Irish commissioners, but by rotation." Asked if the EU was not founded on the basis of unanimity, he responded: "Was founded on the basis of unanimity. We are evolving towards majority voting, because if we stay with unanimity, we will do nothing.
"It is impossible to function by unanimity with 27 members. This time it's Ireland, the next time it will be somebody else."