Referendum on Lisbon Treaty

Tommy T

Moriarty wrote: »

Anyone who bases their vote in a referendum on anything other than the issues proposed by the referendum does not deserve a vote. Irresponsible childishness is not to be encouraged.

Whats the view like from the moral high ground...?

Thankfully the Nanny State a la Moriarty holds no writ in my voting constituency...

ashyle

Firstly, I'm not an idiot and I read the papers everyday. How is it that I cannot understand a word of what the European union site says about this treaty??

Can someone explain it in a nutshell??

Victor

Broken link

http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/take/index_en.htm

eoin5

I'd like to decipher it too but i'm only human. I think its about making the EU a more singular figure on the world stage. I wonder if it means anything to the vetoing strength a collective europe may have.

Saruman

Not even going to attempt to read it all. I for one though am pro Europe. I will be voting yes. I would like to see an EU superstate, similar to how the US works. A central/federal government but each state has its own local government and laws.
Obviously i would assume the European system would work a little better than the US.

The main argument the opposition has is that it will force us into a European army which is not true according to the Q&A

walrusgumble

Saruman wrote: »

Not even going to attempt to read it all. I for one though am pro Europe. I will be voting yes. I would like to see an EU superstate, similar to how the US works. A central/federal government but each state has its own local government and laws.
Obviously i would assume the European system would work a little better than the US.

The main argument the opposition has is that it will force us into a European army which is not true according to the Q&A

not going to read it? fair enough won't argue

i don't believe we will be "forced" into a european army. the will and always have been opt out clauses available as with the justice and immigration side of things. touch wood that will continue.

but, in light of your opinion, the difference between the us and an european state is that in the us senate & congress, each us state, regardless of size and population has a equal vote. why make it so complicated and unfair (for smaller eu states) by not giving each other the same quota?

do you not think ireland should have an equal say in europe as the others? will loosing a commissioner and european parliament seat not effect us?, do you trust the institutions that have not been able to agree with the court of auditors books? who can a member state enjoy independence in making its own laws when the union wants to transfer competence in new areas. like the idea of europe having a say on our taxing? would you like europe telling us whether or not we can apply 12.5% corporation tax?


what ever happens, hopefully govenments start encouraging people to get out more and vote in the european parliament elections because the turn out do be brutal. more needs to be done to educate people as to the importance of the institutions

Saruman

walrusgumble wrote: »

not going to read it? fair enough won't argue

I did not say i was not going to read it, i meant i was not going to read it all! Way too much info.


The same people who vote no to this, are probably the same people who moan about rip off Ireland and how much better things are in the rest of Europe and how we should be more like them.

walrusgumble

Saruman wrote: »

I did not say i was not going to read it, i meant i was not going to read it all! Way too much info.


The same people who vote no to this, are probably the same people who moan about rip off Ireland and how much better things are in the rest of Europe and how we should be more like them.

who are these same people, as a matter of interest that say we should be more like them? granted our european neighbours have alot of good ideas but as for the rip off, well i am not an economics expert or have any real and competent knowledge to be one, but the "rip off ireland" tag is our own fault, with higher wage expectencies etc and better economy than the previous 20 years which resulted in ireland been cheap labour etc at start of boom? (a title which fine gael first used years ago with ther website to slag off fianna fail)

i doubt its just the no vote people who moan about that.


out of interest, if anyone can answer this, what has the fundamental charter of human rights got that the european convention of human rights not? why is there a need for a new charter? (not saying that is a bad thing, on the contary)

IRLConor

walrusgumble wrote: »

the difference between the us and an european state is that in the us senate & congress, each us state, regardless of size and population has a equal vote. why make it so complicated and unfair (for smaller eu states) by not giving each other the same quota?

The US House of Representatives is divided proportional to the population of each state. The US Senate is 2 senators per state.

I must read the Treaty but before I have to vote on it.

Moriarty

Threads merged.

purple'n'gold

“The main argument the opposition has is that it will force us into a European army which is not true according to the Q&A”

If we are part of a federal Europe surely we should be obliged to defend it? Or are we still going to be hamstrung with this ridiculous treble lock nonsense?

SeanW

I intend to get a look over the Lisbon treaty before deciding. But I don't think I will be voting for it.

I'm not normally a Euro-sceptic, but because the way these European things seem to go - have a referendum and if we don't like the result, keep holding new referenda until we get the "right" result.

Nice had to go to our electorate twice for this reason. The European Constitution was already defeated in the only two countries that had referenda, France and Holland.

This time around, Ireland is the only country that will vote on the EU Constitution-lite. This raises my suspicions that the treaty is somehow being rammed through, and causes me to be cautious.

walrusgumble

SeanW wrote: »

I intend to get a look over the Lisbon treaty before deciding. But I don't think I will be voting for it.

I'm not normally a Euro-sceptic, but because the way these European things seem to go - have a referendum and if we don't like the result, keep holding new referenda until we get the "right" result.

Nice had to go to our electorate twice for this reason. The European Constitution was already defeated in the only two countries that had referenda, France and Holland.

This time around, Ireland is the only country that will vote on the EU Constitution-lite. This raises my suspicions that the treaty is somehow being rammed through, and causes me to be cautious.

the issue about france and holland, i ask, if we had the referendum on the same day as those countries, and had voted by reading the constituion without considering what the other countries thought, what might have the outcome have been?, considering, ireland (politicans) have always or nearly been the good little european who always said yes when voting (not great at implementing the regulations/directive in a timely fashion though). the eurobarometers would suggest we as a country less eurosceptic (normally place around 2nd after luxembourg) than countries such as france or the uk (did uk even bother with referendums in the past in relation to europe, bar 1973ish?)

also consider that with the fact that much of the voting rights/allocation of seats etc was agreed in the amsterdam (badly, hene need for nice) and the nice treaty (were we really victims of scaremongering at second ref or did gov badly misinformed us at sec ref?)

without stating the obvious, i will be looking exclusively at what is a good deal for ireland.

gurramok

"EU wrote:

The standard system of voting in the Council of Ministers will be “Qualified majority voting” (QMV). It will be based on the principle of the double majority. Decisions in the Council of Ministers will need the support of 55% of Member States (currently 15 out of 27 EU countries) representing a minimum of 65% of the EU's population. To make it impossible for a very small number of the most populous Member States to prevent a decision from being adopted, a blocking minority must comprise at least four Member States; otherwise, the qualified majority will be deemed to have been reached even if the population criterion is not met.

So there you have it, small countries are screwed unless we find 3 allies!

OTK

What are the options for Ireland?
a) Ratify treaty - gradually continue along path of european integration
b) Reject treaty - leave the EU and operate as a member of the EEA like Norway.

I can't see 495 million people waiting for us to change our minds should we reject the treaty.

So am I right is this vote just a vote to see whether we want to remain full members of the EU or not?

N8

I personally see this treaty as another example of contempt from the political elite of Ireland and Europe.

They have some cheek to re-present a European Constitution and rename it instead 'The Lisbon Treaty' after it was rejected by Holland and France and crashed, and the rules changed now that those same countries cannot vote now. The UK despite being promised a referendum it seems won’t get one.

Those that have voted (Malta) have been bribed with both aid and increased representation. A representation that is to be significantly reduced for us with this re-presented constitutional treaty.

The Lisbon Treaty will cut our voting strength on the European Council by more than half and will end our automatic right to a Commissioner.

Bar bribed Malta, we are the only country to be permitted to vote away our nationalities and our voting power in Europe, and we are being advised by our politicians to do so.

It gives the EU too much power and reduces our ability to stop decisions that are not in Ireland's interests. EU laws and agenda will take precedence.

Worse still the politicians here have decided to remove informing the Irish public by way of the referendum commission.

Me personally I am tired of being f*cked by politicians in this country.

Elmo

So am I right is this vote just a vote to see whether we want to remain full members of the EU or not?
Today 00:15

That is just scaremongering.

A No vote is to veto this treaty, to change the terms to ones that are more suitable to the people of Europe.

LostinBlanch

N8,

I agree with much of your post.

I see that a number of public figures have called for the referendum commission to start work immediately, in a letter in todays Examiner.
http://www.examiner.ie/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=53896-qqqx=1.asp

Let the Referendum Commission give us all the EU treaty facts and keep powerful lobbies well out of it

THE eyes of Europe and much of the world will be on Ireland when we vote on the new EU treaty — the Treaty of Lisbon — and particularly as it now seems we will be the only member state to have a referendum on it.


That is why we urge the Government to call the Referendum Commission into being some months in advance of the referendum so as to give it adequate time and resources to carry out its statutory function of informing citizens what the referendum is about and encouraging maximum turnout of voters.

We do this even though we ourselves have diverse views on the contents of the treaty. The establishment of the Referendum Commission under the 1998 Referendum Act was a progressive development in Irish public policy.

Although the function of setting out the Yes and No arguments in referendums was removed from the commission in 2001, its function of telling citizens what the referendum is about and encouraging them to vote is still hugely important.

We are confident that the commission will provide truthful, objective and non-partisan information to citizens if it is given enough time and resources to do this by the Government and Oireachtas and is not faced with the task of publicising multiple referendum propositions simultaneously, as has occurred on occasion in the past.

The commission should have a central role in the EU treaty referendum if European and world opinion is to regard our referendum arrangements as enlightened and democratic.

The Referendum Commission consists of the ombudsman, the comptroller and auditor general, the clerk of the Dail, the clerk of the Seanad and a chairman nominated by the Government from among the senior members of the judiciary.

Its five members will need time themselves to get on top of this complex and many-sided treaty before they set about the job of informing the public of its contents and the implications of ratifying it for Ireland and our constitution.

In the commission’s reports on previous constitutional referenda, its chairman, former Chief Justice TA Finlay, was implicitly critical of governments of the day for failing to give the commission enough time to do its job effectively. That must not happen on this occasion.

We hope that the media and all our political parties, whatever their views on the treaty, will support this call.

Other aspects of a democratic referendum are fair coverage for the arguments of both sides by the media, the avoidance of abuse and personal attacks on the proponents of either side and non-interference from outside the country by powerful interested parties with huge financial resources at their disposal such as the EU Commission and well-endowed foreign supporters of either the Yes or No sides.

We also believe that the Government should make the text of the treaty easily available to those citizens who wish to obtain it, as well as the text of the consolidated European treaties which it amends.

Darina Allen
Robert Ballagh
Gay Byrne
James and Therese Gorry
Declan Kiberd
Frank Keoghan
Pat McCabe
Rev Terence McCaughey
Muiris MacCongail
Finian McGrath TD
Patricia McKenna
Tony MacMahon
Christy Moore
Dervla Murphy
Prof John A Murphy
Senator David Norris
Emmett O’Connell
Jer O’Leary
Bob Quinn
Senator Fergal Quinn
Ruairi Quinn TD
Adi Roche
Dr Andy Storey
Bishop William Walsh

Of course having the referendum commission start work straight away would mean that they would have to make all the information requested above public. Never mind the fact that it would stop such scaremongering rubbish such as we'll have to leave the EU if we vote no.

OTK

Elmo wrote: »

That is just scaremongering.

A No vote is to veto this treaty, to change the terms to ones that are more suitable to the people of Europe.

Are you suggesting that in the event that Ireland rejects the treaty, Europe will renegotiate the terms to give everyone a better deal?

99% of the people of Europe will have the treaty ratified on their behalf by their parliaments. Is our decision of any interest to them? The last attempt to ratify the constitution only stopped because France and the Netherlands rejected it in referenda. The UK would likely have also rejected the constitution in their planned referendum

This time around the same constitution has been repackaged as a treaty. No referenda are planned apart from ours.

Elmo

Are you suggesting that in the event that Ireland rejects the treaty, Europe will renegotiate the terms to give everyone a better deal?

99% of the people of Europe will have the treaty ratified on their behalf by their parliaments. Is our decision of any interest to them? The last attempt to ratify the constitution only stopped because France and the Netherlands rejected it in referenda. The UK would likely have also rejected the constitution in their planned referendum

This time around the same constitution has been repackaged as a treaty. No referenda are planned apart from ours.

Some of the views such as the terms of Irish Neutrailty where changed in the Nice. Terms can be changed. However the government did not fight our strongly enough for other terms to be changed, in Nice.

There own parliaments decisions are of interest to them, and they should be more involve.

Just because we are a small country doesn't mean we aren't strong in Europe.

Some of the leaders of Europe have stated that they would not be able to carry such a referendum on the Nice treaty. Which shows that they have their own reservations.

OTK

Elmo wrote: »

Some of the views such as the terms of Irish Neutrailty where changed in the Nice.

Were they changed? My understanding is that there was an EU declaration of Ireland's neutrality and our constitutional amendment was changed to include some reference to the Dail ratifying deployment of troops for EU missions. I don't think the Nice treaty was changed at all. Essentially we rejected the treaty, we had another referendum the next year and ratified it.

Elmo

Were they changed? My understanding is that there was an EU declaration of Ireland's neutrality and our constitutional amendment was changed to include some reference to the Dail ratifying deployment of troops for EU missions. I don't think the Nice treaty was changed at all. Essentially we rejected the treaty, we had another referendum the next year and ratified it.

What I ment was that a tiny amount was changed. Now that we see that change can happen with a NO vote then if we feel the deal as outlined in the treaty is not for us then we should try to get change.


I mean the leaders of the Dail have not listen to the idea that this could be considered undemocratic, they should be asking for European wide Referendums, Presidental Elections, Commissioner Elections etc.

OTK

I agree that the process is undemocratic and that we should have more directly elected European officials.

oscarBravo

N8 wrote: »

They have some cheek to re-present a European Constitution and rename it instead 'The Lisbon Treaty'...

OTK wrote: »

This time around the same constitution has been repackaged as a treaty. No referenda are planned apart from ours.

It's simply misleading and factually incorrect to say that the Lisbon Treaty is the same thing as the proposed Constitution, with only minor changes in the wording. There are substantial differences in the structural changes proposed in each.

OTK wrote: »

I don't think the Nice treaty was changed at all. Essentially we rejected the treaty, we had another referendum the next year and ratified it.

We didn't vote on the Nice treaty at all. We voted on a proposed amendment to our own Constitution. The proposed amendment that was accepted was different from the one that was rejected.

Look it up.

N8

Quote:
Originally Posted by N8
They have some cheek to re-present a European Constitution and rename it instead 'The Lisbon Treaty'...

Quote:
Originally Posted by OTK
This time around the same constitution has been repackaged as a treaty.

oscarBravo wrote: »

It's simply misleading and factually incorrect to say that the Lisbon Treaty is the same thing as the proposed Constitution, with only minor changes in the wording.

Hmmm...

“The substance of the Constitution is preserved. That is a fact.”
- Angela Merkel, German Chancellor

“A great part of the content of the European Constitution is captured in the new treaties.”
– Jose Zapatero, Spanish Prime Minister

“The good thing is...that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters – the core – is left.”
– Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish Prime Minister

“They haven’t changed the substance - 90 per cent of it is still there.”
– Bertie Ahern, Irish Taoiseach

“It’s essentially the same proposal as the old Constitution.”
– Margot Wallstrom, European Commissioner

“Only cosmetic changes have been made and the basic document remains the same.”
– Vaclav Klaus, Czech President

“There’s nothing from the original institutional package that has been changed.”
– Astrid Thors, Finnish Europe Minister

“This text is, in fact, a rerun of a great part of the substance of the Constitutional Treaty.”
– Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Author of the European Constitution


“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly… All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”
– Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Author of the European Constitution

“The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable… The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.”
- Karel de Gucht, Belgian Foreign Minister

“The good thing about not calling it a Constitution is that no one can ask for a referendum on it.”
– Giuliano Amato, Italian Interior Minister

“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly… All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”
– Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Author of the European Constitution

Elmo

Every time I read those quotes I imagine all of the European States ending their individual quotes with a mad evil laugh. AAAAAAAAAAH HA HA AHA AH AAAAHA.

OTK

oscarBravo wrote: »

We didn't vote on the Nice treaty at all. We voted on a proposed amendment to our own Constitution. The proposed amendment that was accepted was different from the one that was rejected.

Look it up.

I don't think you read my post.

oscarBravo

OTK wrote: »

I don't think you read my post.

I did. My point stands.

N8: despite all your fascinating quotes, the Lisbon treaty is a different animal from the proposed Constitution. To pick just one rather significant point: the proposed Constitution would have effectively revoked the Rome and Maastricht Treaties, as well as the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Lisbon Treaty proposes to amend the Rome and Maastricht Treaties, and leaves the Charter alone.

You can argue that the intent of Lisbon is broadly similar to that of the proposed Constitution, and I'll agree.

Elmo

You can argue that the intent of Lisbon is broadly similar to that of the proposed Constitution, and I'll agree.

You will need to take that up with the leaders of Europe, rather then N8 who is only quoting them.

walrusgumble

OTK wrote: »

Are you suggesting that in the event that Ireland rejects the treaty, Europe will renegotiate the terms to give everyone a better deal?

99% of the people of Europe will have the treaty ratified on their behalf by their parliaments. Is our decision of any interest to them? The last attempt to ratify the constitution only stopped because France and the Netherlands rejected it in referenda. The UK would likely have also rejected the constitution in their planned referendum

This time around the same constitution has been repackaged as a treaty. No referenda are planned apart from ours.

unless someone can kindly produce polls, where is the evidence or lack of evidence, to show what the citizens of the other countries think of the treaty? how many french and dutch national actually think of the treaty, much of which they refused in their respective constitution referendums? for those agianst it but have no voice, would it encourage them to protest against their governments if the results in ireland conclude a no vote? would public opinion in other countries force their respective ministers to make further negoiations to improve the treaty, and thus stop ireland been used as the scape goat?