5 Key Questions on Lisbon2

marti d

The national conversation we have in the coming weeks and months is perhaps the most important conversation we have ever had on Europe and our relationship with it, and may be the last time that the voice of the Irish people will have such visibility within Europe.

The context for the next referendum is important. We are currently in the midst of a global financial crisis, caused in large part by the trading of complex financial instruments by people in financial circles who did not understand these instruments or their potential catastrophic consequences.

The Lisbon Treaty is another example of a complex instrument with enormous implications.

In light of recent experiences, it is reasonable and prudent to properly debate the implications of the Lisbon Treaty for the health and wellbeing of our democracy, before we cast our vote for the second time.


Here are five questions LivingDemocracy.ie would like to see explored:


1 The Lisbon Treaty is a collection of amendments to all previous treaties. These amendments can only be understood by reading and referencing all the original treaties. Given this complexity, who is qualified to fully understand the implications of the Lisbon Treaty?


2 In what areas of our lives will the EU constitution have supremacy over the Irish constitution?


3 The Lisbon Treaty is self-amending. This means it can be changed without consulting the people. This is a departure from all previous treaties. Does this mean that the Treaty gives the Council of Ministers power to extend the areas in which the EU can legislate and make decisions without consulting the people?

4 The change in Qualified Majority Voting will shift the combined voting power of the ‘Big Four’ countries (Germany, France, Britain and Italy) from 33.6% to 53.8%, giving the remaining twenty-three countries a combined voting power of 46.2%. (The Treaty will reduce Ireland’s voting power from 2% to 0.8%.) What are the implications of this shift in voting power for the democratic process?


5 Up to now the practice has been to rotate the EU Presidency between nations every six months, giving every country an opportunity to colour the EU agenda and become more visible within the union. The Lisbon Treaty replaces this practice with an appointed President who can hold office for up to five years. What are the implications of trading engagement and democracy for efficiency?


We’ve phrased these questions as clearly as possible. Whether you’re engaging as a journalist or as a citizen, we suggest you ask and seek answers to the questions as posed.


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P. Breathnach

Have you read any of the discussion that we have been having here?

Many of the points you raise have already been discussed here in some detail, and some of the claims you make have been debunked.

tolosenc

I'm pretty sure this thread is in breach of the charter, but anyway.

marti d wrote: »

1 who is qualified to fully understand the implications of the Lisbon Treaty?

Anyone who reads it.

2 In what areas of our lives will the EU constitution have supremacy over the Irish constitution?

Couldn't list them off, but it's not stuff like family law, or military, or what not.

3 The Lisbon Treaty is self-amending. This means it can be changed without consulting the people. This is a departure from all previous treaties. Does this mean that the Treaty gives the Council of Ministers power to extend the areas in which the EU can legislate and make decisions without consulting the people?

False. The treaty s not self-amending. Please read article 48 paragraphs 4 & 6.

4 What are the implications of this shift in voting power for the democratic process?

Bringing voting power into line with population increases democracy.

5 Up to now the practice has been to rotate the EU Presidency between nations every six months, giving every country an opportunity to colour the EU agenda and become more visible within the union. The Lisbon Treaty replaces this practice with an appointed President who can hold office for up to five years. What are the implications of trading engagement and democracy for efficiency?

It's not "trading engagement and democracy"...

Daftendirekt

I'm going to ignore the rest of your post for now, and only comment on these two points, since they're blatantly untrue and need correcting for the sake of any undecided lurkers reading the forum.

marti d wrote: »

3The Lisbon Treaty is self-amending. This means it can be changed without consulting the people. This is a departure from all previous treaties. Does this mean that the Treaty gives the Council of Ministers power to extend the areas in which the EU can legislate and make decisions without consulting the people?

Utterly false. And this has been said a thousand times already:

The treaty is not self amending. What Article 48 actually says:

Lisbon Treaty, Article 48, TEU wrote:

Simplified revision procedures
6. The Government of any Member State, the European Parliament or the Commission may
submit to the European Council proposals for revising all or part of the provisions of Part Three of the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union relating to the internal policies and action of the
Union.
The European Council may adopt a decision amending all or part of the provisions of Part Three of the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The European Council shall act by unanimity after
consulting the European Parliament and the Commission, and the European Central Bank in the case
of institutional changes in the monetary area. That decision shall not enter into force until it is
approved by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.
The decision referred to in the second subparagraph shall not increase the competences conferred on
the Union in the Treaties.
C 115/42 EN Official Journal of the European Union 9.5.2008

What this means is that should Lisbon pass, if an amendment is required, the necessity to draw up a whole new treaty will be eliminated. Our constitutional requirement for a referendum whenever we give the EU more competences remains intact. Anything that would require a referendum now, will still require a referendum after Lisbon.

4 The change in Qualified Majority Voting will shift the combined voting power of the ‘Big Four’ countries (Germany, France, Britain and Italy) from 33.6% to 53.8%, giving the remaining twenty-three countries a combined voting power of 46.2%. (The Treaty will reduce Ireland’s voting power from 2% to 0.8%.) What are the implications of this shift in voting power for the democratic process?

This is another one that has been refuted over and over again. From Article 238:

Lisbon Treaty, Article 238, TFEU wrote:

A qualified majority shall be defined as at least 55 % of the members of the Council representing
the participating Member States, comprising at least 65 % of the population of these States.
A blocking minority must include at least the minimum number of Council members representing
more than 35 % of the population of the participating Member States, plus one member, failing
which the qualified majority shall be deemed attained;

Your 0.8% figure takes into account the population requirement, under which alone, Ireland's voting weight would be reduced significantly. However, it conveniently ignores the requirement for 55% of the Council members to agree. When you consider both these requirements, our voting weight works out roughly the same. The voting weights as they stand can be seen on the table here

Referendum Commission wrote:

France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom

29

each

Spain, Poland

27

each

Romania

14

The Netherlands

13

Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Portugal

12

each

Austria, Bulgaria, Sweden

10

each

Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovakia

7

each

Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Slovenia

4

each

Malta

3

Total

345

Scofflaw has done a much better analysis of this somewhere on the forum, if you're interested, please seek it out.


Apologies if I came across as being overly blunt, but I can't stand to see people, or groups like Libertas, playing off voter ignorance.

finbar10

marti d wrote: »

1 The Lisbon Treaty is a collection of amendments to all previous treaties. These amendments can only be understood by reading and referencing all the original treaties. Given this complexity, who is qualified to fully understand the implications of the Lisbon Treaty?

Some of the implications are clear. Others are not so clear. The European council and parliament gain in power. That's clear. For the council many areas go to QMV voting in this treaty. Most others can permanently go to QMV voting if there is an unanimous decision. The European parliament gets some extra powers. A positive aspect of the treaty is that many areas now will be codecided by both council and parliament. An absolute majority of all elected MEPs can block the council where codecision applies, a useful counterbalance to its power. The fact that an absolute majority of all MEPs whether attending or not is required weakens this power, but I guess it's a step in the right direction.

The charter of fundamental rights is an area where the implications are less clear. There are so-called "horizontal" safeguards meant to limit application of the charter. It's only supposed to apply when EU law is being implemented and cannot extend the competences of the EU. But there has been legal debate as to the degree to which these safeguards will limit application of the charter. A fairly broad view can be taken as to what constitutes EU law. And there are few areas that either shared or exclusive competences of the EU and EU law don't touch upon in some way. The charter of fundamental rights would likely significantly strengthen the power of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This is certainly arguable though. We'd just have to wait and see I guess.

2 In what areas of our lives will the EU constitution have supremacy over the Irish constitution?

Many areas of our lives but not all. In the areas where the EU has competence I would suppose. EU law basically has supremacy over our constitution. In referendums we give permission for the state to ratify European treaties and allow us to become members of the European community being set up. In order to prevent any possible conflicts between the constitution and EU law/treaties article 29.4.10 of the constitution states:

10° No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State which are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union or of the Communities, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the European Union or by the Communities or by institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the Treaties establishing the Communities, from having the force of law in the State.

This basically ensures automatic supremacy of EU law. I'm not sure we really need such a strong degree of supremacy. We could easily delete or weaken this provision in a referendum. The European treaties would still stay ratified. As was seen recently in the German constitutional court the supremacy of EU law is not always automatic in other EU countries, despite ECJ case law asserting it is. We could perhaps build in some extra democratic checks on the EU institutions into our constitution.

3 The Lisbon Treaty is self-amending. This means it can be changed without consulting the people. This is a departure from all previous treaties. Does this mean that the Treaty gives the Council of Ministers power to extend the areas in which the EU can legislate and make decisions without consulting the people?

I don't believe the Lisbon treaty is self-amending (at least not as it applies in this country anyway). The provisions of the Crotty judgement still apply. However I don't think the Crotty judgement is as strong as people sometimes think. Someone else here said that 95% of Lisbon would get past Crotty. That's probably true. There are issues that might not, e.g. the charter. I think though that broadly Crotty would apply when proposed treaty provisions take the EU in a new direction which could not reasonably have been envisaged from previous EU treaties. As each EU treaty is ratified the scope of treaties gets broader. It's likely to become harder and harder to convince the supreme court that some new measure is not a reasonable development based on previous treaties. The Dáil practice for recent treaties have been the conservative and safer option of putting EU treaties to referenda. With Lisbon would come a new mechanism to more easily make smaller changes. With a new mechanism the Dáil may not feel the need to go with the traditional mechanism of referenda. I think they would have a fairly free hand even under Crotty to make quite wide-ranging changes via the simplified revision procedure.

Proposed new article 29.4.4 also muddies the waters via Crotty:

4° Ireland affirms its commitment to the European Union within which the member states of that Union work together to promote peace, shared values and the well-being of their peoples.

There's a possibility this might constrain Crotty further. It might allow the Dáil to exercise the new broader flexibility clause in some cases. I wouldn't mind seeing legal opinion on this.

4 The change in Qualified Majority Voting will shift the combined voting power of the ‘Big Four’ countries (Germany, France, Britain and Italy) from 33.6% to 53.8%, giving the remaining twenty-three countries a combined voting power of 46.2%. (The Treaty will reduce Ireland’s voting power from 2% to 0.8%.) What are the implications of this shift in voting power for the democratic process?

I'm not wholly convinced the change in voting procedures will make that much difference either way. The changing of voting to QMV and the possibility to do so in other areas is the main means by which power is flowing to the council.

5 Up to now the practice has been to rotate the EU Presidency between nations every six months, giving every country an opportunity to colour the EU agenda and become more visible within the union. The Lisbon Treaty replaces this practice with an appointed President who can hold office for up to five years. What are the implications of trading engagement and democracy for efficiency?

I don't think we are trading democracy. The EU institutions are democratic. All officials are either democratically elected or at least appointed by someone who is. I would feel its democracy is becoming more centralized though. We are "sharing sovereignty". We are trading a smaller say in a bigger area for a bigger say in a smaller area. The council and parliament are becoming more powerful. The same probably also will hold for the ECJ. Where is this power flowing from? IMO the national parliaments. I don't object to power flowing towards the centre as long as there are checks and balances. The principle of subsidiarity is written into the charter. The checks on this flowing of power to the centre, such as the "orange card" procedure for parliaments and the "citizens initiative", just seem too weak to me. If beefed up a good deal they might make me happier about this treaty. I'd like to see subsidiarity provisions with real teeth.

The council remains the most powerful EU body. To be honest I'd like to see this remain the same. I really wish the EU parliament could function as a more potent check on its power though. The council is not undemocratic. But it makes the democratic structure less direct by adding yet another layer of decision making. I'd have no problems with this if it were counterbalanced by the directly elected European parliament. But the parliament is far from being an effective and coherent check on the power of the council (and this will remain the situation I feel even with new co-decision powers).

I think the treaty would make the EU more efficient. But I fear that the checks and balances provided to compensate for increased EU power are not really adequate.

BlitzKrieg

1 The Lisbon Treaty is a collection of amendments to all previous treaties. These amendments can only be understood by reading and referencing all the original treaties. Given this complexity, who is qualified to fully understand the implications of the Lisbon Treaty?

Cant add much to whats already been said about 2-4 but the justification for the bit in bold: That the treaty by itself is unreadable because it needs to be referenced to the prior treaties is mute when the consolidated versions of the treaty's text has been freely available since before the first referendum by both sides of the debate. This fills in the references required to understand the treaty (minus the charter of fundemental rights, which is a bit strange).

Hitman Actual

The Treaty is being very badly represented on your website, marti d. As well as what has been said above, point 5 doesn't cover the new position of President very well. It's not a 'President of Europe' per se, it's the President of the European Council, the EU institution which comprises the heads of state of member countries. It's main aim is to provide a figure-head for the EU and to hopefully keep some continuity to the EU's policies (having a change of position every 6 months is a really inefficient way to run any organisation). Also, the new position doesn't have any real power.

And to be clear, every member state still gets to hold the 6-month Presidency of the Council (of Ministers), so the idea of losing 'visibility' in the EU doesn't really apply.

P. Breathnach

I suspect that marti_d signed up to promote a website, and won't bother staying around to read any of the above responses. Hit and run.

oscarBravo

Agreed. This isn't anyone's personal blog.

nesf

Removed blatant advertising from first post.