The Nice Treaty will strengthen the hand of big business and accelerate the privatisation threat to Irish public services, the Green Party claimed yesterday.
Attacking the provisions of Article 133 of the treaty, a clause which brings the negotiation of international trade agreements in services under the ambit of the EU, Councillor Deirdre de Burca, told a press conference in Dublin the clause had "huge implications" for whether public services were privatised.
Mr John Gormley TD said that "important negotiations on trade are going to be fast-tracked, away from democratic scrutiny and democratic control."
The EU is becoming part of the process of globalisation and Article 133 would push that forward - that was why it was the product of intensive lobbying on the part of big business in Europe, Ms de Burca said.
"Under Article 133 the European Commission now has the competence to agree to liberalisation and eventual privatisation of services," she insisted, a contention which is contested by Yes campaigners who see the measure as entirely related to external trade.
Treaty supporters contend it is merely a rationalisation of an anomaly whereby external trade deals in industrial and agricultural goods were handled by the Commission, under mandate from the Council of Ministers, while deals in services and intellectual property remained the remit of member states.
But the fact that voting on such deals at the Council of Ministers would now be by qualified majority meant that Ireland could no longer block a measure proposed by the commission and supported by the other member states, she said.
The British Green MEP, Ms Caroline Lucas, said that Article 133 accentuated the democratic deficit in the EU at a time when it should be reconnecting with people. She deplored the fact that trade deals were explicitly excluded from provisions for co-decision in the European Parliament. MEPs are consulted but have no vote on such agreements.
"Article 133 goes to the heart of many of our critiques of the EU," she said. The EU had accepted and was promoting the rationale of the WTO's drive to liberalise global markets to the detriment of developing countries and the accession countries. The Greens were opposed to that broad agenda, she said.
Ms Patricia McKenna MEP attacked the Irish Government for supporting the expansion of the union's trade remit at Nice. "Yet there was never any debate in the Dáil on our support for that," she said.
Responding to questions on enlargement Ms McKenna again insisted that the Greens favour enlargement and that it could go ahead under existing rules.
And she again attacked the Secretary General of the European Commission, Mr David O'Sullivan, for his "totally unacceptable" attempt to "railroad" through the treaty by intervening in the debate.
