OPINION:If adopting Lisbon is not necessitated by the obligations of our EU membership, what legal consequences can there be for rejecting it? asks Vincent Browne.
THE BRITS can't be trusted. We have known that for years on Northern Ireland. Secret deals with the unionists, secret negotiations with the IRA, while condemning anybody who suggested they do just that. Perfidy over Iraq. Hypocrisy over nuclear disarmament. Intransigence over Sellafield. Obstructionism over murder inquiries into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 1974.
But this time they have gone too far and all of Europe is united in dismay over them, the Brits. It's hard to believe what they may now be up to. Or rather what the likely next British government, a Tory government, may be up to. The Tories have promised that if elected in 2010 they will have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if by then the Lisbon treaty is not ratified by all member states. The Tories have committed the ultimate Eurosceptic offence: a promise to allow the people of Britain to decide on a change to the EU constitution (for that is what EU treaties do).
And we all know what the outcome of that will be.
The only way of avoiding that calamity is to pressurise the Irish into thinking again on their rejection of the Lisbon Treaty last June; to bludgeon them into changing their minds under the threat of isolation in Europe, the threat of having the rest of Europe go ahead without them, marginalising Ireland; if necessary, excluding Ireland from the EU altogether (yes, yes, this is all illegal but when the dander is up these EU leaders can find ways around or through irksome legal obstacles). Quite simply, the Irish have got to "cop-on", got to ratify this in quick time, before the British have an opportunity to put the kibosh on it all.
After all, the Eurocrats have laboured mightily to circumvent any of the peoples of Europe having any say at all on the treaty, because the French and the Dutch rejected the precursor of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU constitution. EU issues are simply too "complex" for unsophisticated electorates, as Fine Gael implies in its recent observations on Lisbon. The great issues of the day have to be decided by the political elites - and, happily, those elites are usually in government.
And so it is with EU constitutional changes. Such a pity that the Irish have got caught by that prissy "necessitated" word in article 29.4 of the Constitution. And, by the way, if it is not inappropriate in deliberating on anything to do with the EU to quote an article from our own Constitution, that article states: "No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State which are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union or by the Communities or by the institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the Treaties establishing the Communities, from having the force of law in the State."
Unfortunately, it is precisely because the Lisbon Treaty is not necessitated by the obligations of our membership of the EU that we have to have a referendum here to change our Constitution. So, if it is not impertinent to enquire: if the Lisbon Treaty is not necessitated by the obligations of our EU membership, how can we be threatened with consequences affecting our EU membership if we don't go along with it?
Unfortunate, too, that the rules of EU membership dictate that unless changes to the constitution of the EU (ie to the treaties on the EU) are approved by all member states, then they cannot come into effect. Terribly irritating, especially when a member state has to engage its people, but there it is. And one expects all good Europeans to uphold this principle of the European Union. Don't we?
The uncouth president of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus hosted a lunch for EU ambassadors in Prague last week, in advance of the Czech Republic taking over the EU presidency from France in January. He was dismissive of the Czech presidency and, turning to the ambassador from Slovenia, which recently held the presidency, he said everyone knew the Slovene presidency was a charade for it was entirely scripted by the big beasts of the EU - France and Germany. His general point being that the big beasts run the EU and the Lisbon Treaty gives them more rope to do just that: more control in the European Council; and, while a full-time president of the council and a high representative for foreign and security policy would bring greater coherence, that coherence would be dictated by the big boys.
Klaus is crackers on several fronts (for instance, if the rotating presidency is a charade, then what's so bad about having a full-time presidency?), but hasn't he a point? And isn't the browbeating now of Ireland, along with the determination to avoid electorates having any say, all part of the big-beast culture?
There were and remain two powerful reasons to vote against the Lisbon Treaty: as a protest against the cynicism involved in the deliberate circumvention of the electorates of all EU states aside from Ireland; and as a protest against the incorporation, for the first time, of the EU armaments industry right into the heart of the institutional structure of the EU, via the European Defence Agency.
Those who care about the EU and who want Ireland to be at the centre of EU decision-making, have a clear obligation to vote No again, if they have to.