The Nice Treaty will create different tiers of privilege among peoples in Europe and do nothing to help the world's poor, argues Colm Roddy
Many of us in Ireland voted No, with foreknowledge and conviction, to the Nice Treaty 16 months ago. It appears that we are being punished for doing our democratic duty by being made to vote again on the self-same treaty. Those who chose not to vote are rewarded with a second chance.
It is unprecedented, certainly in my experience, to have the Irish people's sovereignty, enshrined in our Constitution and the 1916 Proclamation, so blatantly denied. From the moment the Nice referendum result was declared in June last year, our political establishment has been in denial.
Within days, some of them were in Europe apologising for us and advising other governments to proceed and ratify the treaty. They would see to it that our No would be overturned.
I fervently believe that everyone living on this planet, whether born in Brussels or in rural Botswana, should be regarded as equals. Many of my problems with the Nice Treaty spring from this conviction. Having lived and worked for six years in Ethiopia, I have witnessed some of the inequalities which we have created. I do not want to see these compounded.
There is widespread concern about the direction in which the European Union is heading. In the Laeken Declaration, agreed a year after Nice, a European constitution is signalled. It considers Europe as a power with a "leading role to play in a new world order", taking action "to deal with trouble spots" around the world and "resolutely doing battle against all violence."
Laeken also saw the setting up of the Convention on the Future of Europe. Last May, the EU Commission President, Romano Prodi, introduced the Commission's first submission to that convention. Sweeping new powers are sought for the Commission in an enlarged EU.
It proposes a common asylum and immigration policy, a single European legal framework and a European border guard.
The Commission seeks the leading role in a Common Foreign and Security Policy which "sets out to safeguard, outside the union's own borders, certain values which are essential to our democracies."
Those in the political, business and trade union establishment who champion a Yes vote to Nice make a virtue of their openness to embracing former Iron Curtain countries in an enlarged EU. What they don't reveal is that those countries being accepted under Nice are likely to come in as second-class members. The Nice Treaty enlargement arrangements are designed to admit the 10 countries as a bloc, offering them a negotiated deal on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Farmers in those countries may initially receive only one quarter of the agricultural subsidies given to farmers in the current member-states.
The eastern border of an enlarged EU is already being reinforced in line with the Commission's proposals. Prior to acceptance in the EU, Poland has to tighten its border with Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. They must construct new watchtowers and greatly increase border policing. Fortress Europe has taken such steps to ensure that people from "unapproved" Eastern Bloc and other countries will be firmly excluded.
Such developments certainly take the gloss off Nice Treaty supporters' noble words about reuniting historically divided eastern and western Europe. They create different tiers of privilege among Europe's peoples. Another tier will be added when some of the EU's avant-garde avail of the enhanced co-operation provisions of the Nice Treaty.
Many of us also have major concerns about the militarisation of the EU. The Nice Treaty brings the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy under the direct control of a Political and Security Committee. The treaty's article 1.2 sidelines the Western European Union in favour of close co-operation with the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
It also incorporates the European Rapid Reaction Force, already described as a European army by no less than the Commission President, Romano Prodi, and his predecessor, Jacques Santer.
Last August, President Jacques Chirac criticised the slow pace of EU military integration.
He spoke of Europe's need to "define new missions beyond those of Petersberg, which limit European ambitions" and of "systematically favouring European interests in crisis situations".
For months, we've been hearing patronising talk that the Government understands our concerns in voting No and has addressed them. Instead, since the Nice referendum, the Taoiseach has co-operated with George Bush's war on terror, allowing US troops to pass through Shannon airport en route to Afghanistan and now Iraq via Kuwait. This makes a mockery of the Seville Declarations and the "no mutual defence" amendment.
Together with the foreign aid cutbacks, these actions highlight our Government's indifference to the world's poor, especially the thousands of innocents killed in Afhganistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
A second No vote is essential to convince our leaders of our insistence that they should work for a more equal world.