SEAN DEEGAN,
Sir, - Your edition of January 5th carried two parallel contributions, one from a John Palmer and the second from your regular Saturday correspondent, Dr Garret FitzGerald.
Mr Palmer, who is totally unknown to me, is described as a director of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based EU think-tank. Excellent, I'm sure, but there is no need for his organisation to make up our minds for us. Our Nice vote should have made him aware of that.
His opening sentence read: "The smooth launch of euro notes and coins this week has been widely hailed - by Euro-sceptics and pro-Europeans alike - as something of a political triumph for the wider European integration project."
Those of us who can accept an economic unit but are fervently opposed to a political union do not accept this argument. In fact, many might think that a common currency should have been one of the earlier achievements of the old EEC. As Mr Palmer is, by definition of his position, a European spin-doctor, I am merely treating the rest of his contribution as part of his "spinning" duties.
Dr FitzGerald also gets it wrong in his opening paragraph when he insinuates that the Nice Treaty is about the enlargement of the Community. It is not. It is about giving greater control to the larger powers to the detriment of the smaller member-states before allowing expansion.
Niamh Roche and Sven Modell (Letters, December 29th), pointed out the lack of public debate in Sweden on the Nice Treaty and said that if Europe's citizens were not informed they could not be considered to either support or reject it. That is a point well worth considering.
We have been the only country that had to consider the treaty - and only because of the Supreme Court's decision in Crotty v. An Taoiseach. None of the other states put the Nice Treaty to their citizens for ratification and if the bureaucrats of Europe had their way we would not have been able to decide either. So, Dr FitzGerald, as far as democracy is concerned, the EU has a "flawed pedigree". - Yours, etc.,
SEAN DEEGAN,
Stonebridge Park,
Rochfortbridge,
Co Westmeath.