Madam, - European Commission president José Manuel Barroso told students of University College Cork last Friday that the Lisbon Treaty was "not a question of Ireland versus the rest [ of the EU]" (The Irish Times, April 19th). This insinuates that the rest of Europe is in favour of the treaty.
Quite to the contrary, the peoples of both France and the Netherlands rejected an almost identical proposal three years ago, and neither they nor the citizens of any other member-states have been afforded the opportunity of rejecting this treaty should they be similarly opposed to it. Indeed President Sarkozy himself has implied that the French would reject the treaty were a referendum put to them.
This bypassing of the will of the people is completely out of line with the democratic principles upon which the European Union is based.
We in Ireland are now faced with a decision to accept this silencing of our continental cousins and vote purely on our own issues with the treaty, or to make a statement that if other governments will not afford their people the right to decide for themselves, then we will afford them that right by sending our leaders back to the drawing board to come up with something that the majority of Europeans will actually support.
I believe that is a duty we hold not only to the people of Europe, but to democracy itself. - Is mise,
DARRAGH CONWAY.
The Crescent
Inse Bay,
Laytown,
Co Meath.