The Government is being dishonest to voters in marketing the Nice Treaty as one of EU enlargement rather than something which sacrifices Irish neutrality, the Green Party has said.
Green Party TD Mr Trevor Sargent, launching its anti-Nice Treaty campaign yesterday, described the efforts as a "marketing ploy" and an attempt to divert attention from the real substance of the treaty. "The Government is fully aware that if it were to honestly market the Nice Treaty, the voters wouldn't buy it," said Mr Sargent.
Ms Patricia McKenna MEP said the Government had not wished to have a referendum and would have preferred to have rubber-stamped it by Government majority, as it tried to do with the Single European Act in 1986.
She said all of the EU would be watching how the Irish people voted. "It is vitally important that the Irish voters are not threatened and misled into believing that a No vote spells the end of Ireland's EU membership or the end of the enlargement process."
On the contrary, it would mean neither. "All it means is that the Nice Treaty must be re-negotiated. Enlargement can continue under the terms of the Amsterdam Treaty, which provided straightforward enlargement procedures for up to the next five countries."
She said all EU states should have a right to decide via referendum on new EU treaties. "The lack of such a facility only serves to increase and highlight the democratic deficit of the EU and to make the workings of the EU even more remote and incomprehensible to the people it is supposed to be serving."
The Green party, she said, strongly supported enlargement, but that was not what the Nice Treaty was about. "For a so-called treaty about enlargement there is very little in Nice that addresses the real adjustments required in the treaties to successfully accommodate up to 27 member-states."
Mr Sargent said the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, had refused to answer the question as to why Finland and Sweden no longer described themselves as neutral countries. "Ireland continues to peddle the line that we are neutral yet all three countries now have the same European commitments."
He said the referendum provided the first opportunity for the Irish people to vote on the 60,000-member Rapid Reaction Force now being created in the EU. "The voters were never told during the Amsterdam Treaty referendum that a Yes vote would result in such an EU military force."