OPINION:Vote Yes to Lisbon and you could be voting in same-sex marriage and abortion, writes Richard Greene
DON'T LET the EU make a monkey of you. The most talked-about poster in the campaign on the Lisbon Treaty to date features three monkeys. While it might raise a laugh, the poster makes a serious point, namely that, post-Lisbon, the EU becomes less democratic, less accountable and more powerful in ways that can only be detrimental to Ireland.
This contention is hotly disputed by the Government, but then again, Brian Cowen has admitted that he hasn't read the treaty cover to cover, so perhaps the Cabinet missed the articles that are causing serious concern to Irish citizens.
Take declaration 17 on primacy, which states for the first time that EU law can overrule national law and the Constitution. It baldly states that, "the treaties and the law adopted by the union on the basis of the treaties have primacy over the law of member states", which means that, in areas where the EU has competency, EU law trumps our law.
This is a important departure from the past, and underlines the fact that Lisbon is not merely a simple reform treaty, or a well-intentioned attempt at making the EU more efficient. The application of the Lisbon Treaty could affect our economy, our social laws and our right to be heard at a European level.
Consider our current constitutional provisions. Article 6 of Bunreacht na hÉireann states that the Irish people are the highest power in the land. We are sovereign: only we, and not the judiciary or legislature, may change or overrule the Constitution.
The Lisbon Treaty wishes to have the opposite effect to Article 6 of our own Constitution. It lays out the system whereby national law, and the sovereign people of that nation, can be overruled. The treaty, if ratified, will be bolstered by the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment on which we will vote on June 12th. In summary, this says that we are committed to full enrolment in the new European Union as set out in the Lisbon Treaty, which will abolish the EU as defined in the treaty of Maastricht, and that the Irish Constitution may be superseded by laws enacted by the EU's institutions.
It is written there in black and white, yet the Referendum Commission failed to include the wording of the amendment in the literature they sent to every home in the country.
Giving EU law primacy means conflicts will arise. Those conflicts will be adjudicated on by the European Court of Justice, which is given extended powers under the Lisbon Treaty.
For example, this court will be given the right to decide what Article 113 of the treaty actually means. The article says, on one hand, that there should be unanimity on tax harmonisation, but then says "distortion of competition" must be avoided. It is likely the court, in adjudicating on this inherent contradiction, will find Ireland's tax laws give us an unfair advantage and, since we will have signed away the primacy of our laws in the area of competition, that judgment will be binding.
Similarly, EU competency is not supposed to extend to the area of family law, yet the charter of rights attached to the treaty is legally binding across all EU member states, and covers issues as important as marriage, the family and the right-to-life. This year, Franco Frattini, the EU justice commissioner, said that despite differences between national laws on legal rights for same-sex couples, all EU countries must uphold Europe's Charter of Fundamental Rights, which he said gave a legal basis to same-sex relationships. EU rules on anti-discrimination, he noted, trump national convictions on the definition of marriage.
Similarly, the EU court, armed with a legally binding charter and the declaration of primacy, could rule that the right to a legal abortion is implicit under a provision on privacy or on dignity in the charter. Once again, since we will have voted away the prior supremacy of our Constitution, EU law will trump the convictions of the Irish people.
Gerard Hogan, the leading constitutional lawyer, has said that the Supreme Court could be "eclipsed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights" and pointed out that it would be up to the European Court of Justice to interpret key phrases in the charter. It should be up to the Irish people to decide our laws, and to choose the society we want. Don't let the EU make a monkey of you on June 12th.
Richard Greene is spokesman for Cóir, an organisation that says it works to protect Irish sovereignty and the Constitution. Its website is lisbonvote.com