PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT:ONE OF the leading anti-Lisbon Treaty groups has called on the Taoiseach to press for a complete renegotiation of the treaty. The People's Movement yesterday said that the treaty was dead.
Its chairwoman, the former Green MEP Patricia McKenna, said the Government needed to display political courage and insist on the treaty being reopened among all 27 member states. She also called on Brian Cowen to demand a halt to the ratification process when the summit in Brussels gets under way today. She was speaking at a press conference in Dublin yesterday.
Ms McKenna, Independent TD Finian McGrath and former TD Declan Bree said they were concerned the Government would allow other countries to ratify, in effect isolating Ireland.
"This process must involve all 27 states. We believe that this is a huge opportunity to go back to the start and go back to the people of Europe. There is no mandate for a Nice II where they give little trinkets to Ireland but trinkets that have no legal validity. We have done it once before and I think that they cannot repeat the same thing," said Ms McKenna.
She agreed that re-opening negotiations could take some time.
"It could take a number of years," she conceded. "But the EU cannot come to a standstill. The question is how you can involve the citizens of Europe in this process." She said there was no basis to claims that other states could press ahead with Lisbon and leave Ireland behind. "They need Ireland's consent to do so. Even the claim that they can do so under enhanced co-operation is wrong as this only applies to the provisions of the Nice Treaty," she said.
Mr McGrath said Irish people put down a marker that they did not want a centralised Europe. "It's clear that the Irish voted No on the questions of militarisation, equality and democracy," he said.
Mr Bree said the response of the political "elite" had been outrageous since the referendum defeat.
