WLADYSLAW
Madam, - Some of our names are probably unknown to you. Others may be familiar. We include artists, business people, politicians, academics, teachers, farmers and students from Poland. All of us admire Ireland and its achievements. We take it as a compliment to be known as "the Irish of the East".
Many Irish people have been guests in our country or worked here, and Irish companies are among our largest foreign investors. Soon we expect to conclude our accession negotiations to join you in the European Union - in a reunited continent. We want to repeat your extraordinary success.
But to do so we need your help. You will soon be voting again on the Treaty of Nice. We recognise its imperfections. But they are already being corrected at the European Convention. And its main outlines are what Europe needs: a stable continent undivided by barbed wire and minefields.
A resounding Yes vote will be a great gesture of European solidarity. A No will reaffirm the rejectionists who can only look backwards. We appeal to you to support us in the referendum on October 19th. - Yours, etc.,
WLADYSLAW
BARTOSZEWSKI,
Historian, former Polish
Foreign Minister;
KRZYSZTOF BOBINSKI,
Deputy President,
Unia & Polska Foundation;
HENRYKA BOCHNIARZ,
President, Confederation of
Private Polish Employers;
MIKOLAJ DOWGIELEWICZ,
College of Europe,
Natolin Campus;
JOANNA CZUPRYNA,
Head of An Chóisir
dance group;
OLGA JACKOWSKA,
Pop singer;
LENA KOLARSKA-
BOBIÑSKA,
Sociologist, Institute
of Public Affairs;
BRONISLAW GEREMEK,
former Polish Foreign Minister,
College of Europe,
Natolin Campus;
JACEK KSEÑ,
President WBK Bank,
Zachodni;
JUSTYNA MAREK,
Academic;
MARIAN MARKIEWICZ,
Head of Young Polish
Farmers' Association;
TADEUSZ MAZOWIECKI,
former Polish
Prime Minister;
PIOTR NOWINA-KONOPKA,
Rector, College of Europe,
Natolin Campus;
MAREK SARJUSZ WOLSKI,
President, Unia & Polska
Foundation, former European
Integration Minister;
KRZYSZTOF SCHRAMM,
Teacher, head of
Polish-Irish Association;
RÓZA THUN,
President, Robert
Schuman Foundation,
Warsaw;
BOGUSLAW TRZECIAK,
Jesuit,
head of OCIPE;
ANDRZEJ WAJDA,
Film director;
BOGUSLAW WITA,
Carrauntoohil, a
Celtic music group;
ANDRZEJ WIELOWIEJSKI,
President,
Polish Council of
the European Movement;
JACEK WOZNIAKOWSKI,
Academic, Art Historian;
KRYSTYNA
ZACHWATOWICZ,
Theatre Designer;
KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI,
Film Director.
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Madam, - One of the slogans from the anti-Europeans against the Nice Treaty is that more power will given to the larger states. Like all of their other slogans this is a complete myth.
When the EU first began in 1951 with the creation of the ECSC, three of the six states were large. However, by 2007 when the EU expands to 27 states, only six of them will be large. How can the larger states dominate if there are six of them compared with 21 of us?
Currently the five large states have two Commissioners each while the rest of us have only one. After Nice, all states, big and small, will have only one Commissioner. Also, when the rotational system comes in, all states will rotate equally. For the first time all states will have absolutely equal representation in the Commission.
The move of 30 policy areas from unanimity to qualified majority vote actually favours the smaller states. This is because every state is giving up the same vetoes. An example of the destructive nature of the veto was when the Convention on Europe was set up and France insisted that its man, Giscard d'Estaing, be president or it would veto every other candidate. The larger states use the veto more often, so removing the veto hurts them more than it hurts us. Besides, a veto is not democratic - and does anyone seriously believe that a union of 27 states could function if each state had a veto?
Currently under QMV a proposal is passed if 62 out of 87 votes are in favour. The five largest states have 48 of these votes, representing 55 per cent of the total. Under Nice and in an enlarged union of 27 states a proposal will be passed if 258 out of 345 votes are in favour. The six largest states will have 170 of these votes representing 49 per cent of the total. How can they outvote us when they are 88 votes short?
Under Nice an additional check is added to QMV whereby the vote in favour must have the support of the majority of the states. In an enlarged union this means that 14 states must approve. How can the six larger states outvote us when they are eight states short?
In the past five years there have been 250-odd QMV votes in the Council of Ministers. Ireland has been on the losing side seven times and Germany the loser over 100 times. It doesn't sound as if the Germans get their own way now, does it?
Currently in the European Parliament the five largest states have 424 seats out of 626, or 67 per cent. In an enlarged union of 27 states the six largest states will have only 415 seats out of 732, or 57 per cent.
Currently the five largest states have 80 per cent of the EU population. After enlargement the six largest states will have only 70 per cent of the population.
After Nice Ireland will have over five times the number of Council of Minister votes and over two-and-a-half times the number of seats in the European Parliament as Germany in proportion to our respective populations. Despite only having 0.8 per cent of the EU population we will have 2 per cent of the Council votes and 1.6 per cent of parliamentary seats.
Do the maths and you will clearly see that the smaller states are vastly over-represented compared with the large states. Nice is a great deal for the smaller states. If it is rejected, the larger states may not be so generous in the new treaty and it is entirely possible that we could be worse off. It is not worth the risk. Vote Yes. - Yours, et.,
JASON FITZHARRIS,
Carlow.
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Madam, - Dr Garret FitzGerald's method of political controversy seems to be to attribute propositional Aunt Sallies to his opponent, knock them down to his own satisfaction and congratulate himself on having won a victory, while avoiding dealing with the central point of his opponent's argument.
In his column last Saturday, he quite fails to deal with my question regarding his advocacy of an inevitable EU federation, just as he avoided dealing with them in the UCC debate that he refers to.
May I repeat the two most revealing sentences from what Dr FitzGerald wrote in The Irish Times in May 2000, as they go to the heart of current debate on the Nice Treaty? First: "Ireland cannot on its own block the development of a core European federation and to attempt to do so would make us a pariah among our partners." And second: "All key decisions would thereafter be taken by the core federation, from which we would be absent" - absent, that is, if we stayed outside it together with Britain and Northern Ireland when it is formed.
There will be a moratorium on letters about this subject next Saturday, which is polling day for the referendum
Dr FitzGerald knows well that the so-called "enhanced co-operation" provisions of the Treaty of Nice provide the necessary legal path towards the division of the EU into what Jacques Delors has termed "a Union for the enlarged Europe and a Federation for the avant-garde". On several occasions during France's presidential election this summer, President Jacques Chirac called for the establishment of such a "federation of nation states" for at least an inner core of EU members. His Minister for Europe, Pierre Moscovici, called for that at the National Forum on Europe in Dublin Castle last December.
I am well aware that there are conditions for the establishment of such EU sub-groups of States, which the Nice Treaty empowers to use the Commission, Council, Court and Parliament for their own special purposes. But it is no way a safeguard against the establishment of an inner-core EU federation for Dr FitzGerald to say that enhanced co-operation under Nice "must remain within the limits of the powers of the Union or of the Community". The EU constitutional treaty being now planned for 2004 will sanction just such a division, if it is not sanctioned already under the existing EU treaties, as many would contend it is.
In the meantime, "enchanced cooperation" under Nice can be used by the other member-states of the eurozone to harmonise taxes among themselves and use the EU institutions to implement that - something Ireland can veto at present. Such a development, which has been mooted in the financial press, will certainly increase the pressure on Ireland to do the same. If we succumb to that pressure, we harm ourselves economically. If we do not succumb and decide to retain our veto on our own taxes, although Nice deprives us of our veto on tax harmonisation by others, we harm ourselves politically by remaining outside the avant-garde.
The only way to avoid this highly probable policy dilemma is to vote No to Nice.
May I give one other example of the drawbacks of losing our veto on "enhanced co-operation" under Nice? It means that Saturday's referendum could be our last chance of affecting the development of the EU as a whole. For if Nice is ratified and permission is thereby given for the EU to divide into two classes, two tiers or two speeds, and if Ireland or any other member-state should ever say No to an EU treaty again, those who want that treaty can go ahead with it, or its main elements, under the guise of "enhanced co-operation." They cannot do that now.
These provisions of the Nice Treaty are the way in which the Eurofederalists, integrationists and supranationalists can get around the "awkward squad" of countries, such as Ireland and Demark, that say No to EU treaties and ever further European integration. It is the principal reason why we should vote No on Saturday.
Voting No is to hold the EU together as a partnership of legal equals, in our own interests, that of the 10 applicant countries and of the EU as a whole. It is to prevent the EU and its institutions being effectively taken over by a political directorate of the big states for their own state-power purposes. - Yours, etc.,
ANTHONY COUGHLAN,
Secretary,
The National Platform,
Crawford Avenue,
Dublin 9.
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Madam, - The idea that there is something undemocratic about a second Nice Referendum seems incomprehensible. For better or worse we do live in a representative democracy, and last May candidates for the four largest parties in the Dáil all explicitly campaigned on their conviction that a second referendum was essential for Ireland. Those so elected now form more than 80 per cent of the Dáil, and they had not just the right but the responsibility to put the referendum to the electorate. There was no compulsion, after all, to elect them.
Should there be a Yes vote, candidates in the next election will then have the choice to campaign on the promise of a third referendum to allow Ireland to derogate from Nice. If such candidates then get a majority, they also will have the right, and the duty, to do just that. - Yours, etc.,
CHRISTOPHER ROBSON,
Chelmsford Avenue,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.
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Madam, - We are all familiar with the phrase "Terms and conditions apply", used mainly by financial institutions when advertising their products and letting us know that we have no comeback if we haven't read the small print.
Had the Government parties used this handy phrase a few months ago in their election propaganda, they would not have been subjected to such a level of criticism over broken promises and terminological inexactitudes.
In order to avoid anything similar happening after the Nice referendum, and in the unlikely event of it being approved, could I suggest to the Government parties and all other proponents of a Yes vote that after all their interpretations and statements about the Nice Treaty they add the rider "Terms and conditions apply"?
Yours, etc.,
ROBERT McKEOWN,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.
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Madam, - One would have to be Rip Van Winkle not to notice the material benefits that have accrued to Ireland since joining the European integration process 30 years ago.
The endless catalogue of non material benefits to this country are more subtle, yet very real. These include such matters as equal pay for men and women, non-discrimination on the grounds of gender, consumer rights, environmental protection, the right of all citizens of all member states to reside and work in other member states, and a European Charter of Fundamental Rights, to name just a few.
The days of national sovereignty and the Congress of Vienna are long gone. The world has moved and we now live in a cosmopolitan age.
Europe has learned its lesson from the past and the tragedies of 20th-century history - that reason must prevail! A maxim which is in keeping with its philosophical tradition. A strong and united EU is essential to get the balance right in this uncertain and volatile world.
For these reasons, Ireland should continue to play its full part in the European integration process and this time, vote in favour of the Nice Treaty. - Yours, etc.,
JOE MURRAY,
Pembroke Road,
Dublin 4.
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Madam, - In the area where I live strange posters have been attached to street lamps and telegraph poles. The posters are headed "Fianna Fáil" Underneath this title appears the face of a man, smiling at us. A TD, I presume. Below his picture is the word "Yes".
What is going on? Is he trying to get elected to something? - Yours etc.,
M.M. IRELAND,
Priory Avenue,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.