Madam, - Anthony Coughlan's letter of November 11th contains many of the tired arguments that he has been producing for some time now.
His habit of making a statement of fact and then interpreting it in an erroneous fashion continues to be the hallmark of his contribution to the debate on the European project. It is of course true that the new Constitution repeals all the existing treaties that form the legal basis of the European Union - from Rome to Nice - but he suggests this is a major problem. It is, in fact, the greatest virtue of the Treaty. The new Constitution sets out in clear language who has responsibility for what in the EU, what the functions of the various institutions are, and what lines the EU institutions cannot cross in terms of the rights of member-states.
Mr Coughlan's statement that the new constitution will make the EU superior to the "constitutions and law of its member-states, effectively in all areas of public policy either actually or potentially" is so wrong in plain fact that it can simply not go unchallenged. The whole point of the exercise in creating the new constitution is that it explicitly makes clear what is an EU area of competence and what is an area solely within the control of the member-states.
There is no ambiguity here and no room for complete distortion of these facts, however much Mr Coughlan would like to persuade your readers that the new constitution will turn the EU into some version of the old Soviet Union.
The continual use by him and others of the red herring that this constitution will change something fundamental in the EU in relation to the primacy of EU law over national law is a nonsense that was comprehensively rebutted by Eugene Regan on your opinion page only last week. It has always been the case since we joined the then EEC that once there is common agreement between the member-states an area of public policy should be transferred to the EU, and when a decision is taken in relation to that issue, then all member-states are bound by it. We make the free decision to hand over sovereignty, as the Irish people have done in the various Treaties we have ratified since we joined the EU. The simple reality is that without this procedure, the EU could not work. If you join a club, the commonly accepted view is that you abide by the decisions of that club.
A Tidy Towns committee or a GAA club couldn't function without such an arrangement, so why on earth is it so shocking that the EU, dealing with all manner of complex global problems, should operate any differently?
Mr Coughlan also uses the analogy that the new constitution would make each member-state like Texas in relation to the federal government of the United States.
The analogy is absurd, for any number of reasons. Let me pick one: if Texas had decided it wished to have nothing to do with the war in Iraq, would there be Texans in Falluja this morning or not? Of course there would, because Texas is a state within a federal system of government, which gives control over war and peace to the federal authorities. If the EU had such powers, or if it was proposed that the EU had such powers, the British army would have had to stay away from Iraq, or the French army would have had to have gone to war.
No such power to decide on matters of war resides with the EU, whether we ratify the new constitution or not. This is not an argument from Mr Coughlan but plain scaremongering, justified not by fact but fantasy.
One final point: In his sketching of the history of the development of the constitution, Mr. Coughlan paints a picture of an army of unrepresentative "Euro-federalists" driving through an agenda to create a federal Europe.
This certainly demands rebuttal. Most of the people disappointed with the new EU constitution are in fact "federalists" (who are, by the way, now an endangered species) because it didn't go far enough.
Surely Mr Coughlan's letter cannot be the means to achieve an informed and open debate on the merits or otherwise of this constitution? - Yours, etc.,
RUAIRI QUINN, TD,
Chairman,
European Movement Ireland,
32 Nassau Street,
Dublin 2.
Madam, - I endorse Richard More O'Ferrall's refutation (November 13th) of Anthony Coughlan's claims about the EU Constitution. May I, too, refute another of Mr Coughlan's claims, that the EU Constitution "removes important remaining powers from national parliaments and citizens, and does not propose to repatriate a single power from Brussels to the member-state". This is simply not true.
The EU Constitution strengthens the role of national parliaments in Europe in two particular protocols attached to the EU Constitution. First, the Protocol on the Role of National Parliaments encourages greater involvement in EU activities by national parliaments. It enhances their ability to express views on behalf of their citizens. It provides for all legislative proposals, Council, Commission and Court of Auditor papers to be sent directly to parliaments for consideration by the member-states. Under new arrangements, parliaments can also submit reasoned opinions challenging any EU legislative proposals, enabling them to act as watchdogs for their people.
The details of how all this will work are set out in a second protocol, the Protocol on Subsidiary and Proportionality. Mr Coughlan, please take note. - Is mise,
Cllr NIAMH BHREATHNACH,
Anglesea Avenue,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.