Até Mais, Lisbon

[Niall Munnelly]

This rambles a bit, sorry.  I wrote it between housework,
breakfast, palying with the dogs, and so on.

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 10:42:43AM +0200, Peter Korsten wrote:
> 
> So what exactly was wrong with the Constitution, and with the Lisbon 
> Treaty? Could you point out what proposed changes to the EU's structure 
> and functioning you didn't like?

Well, they make a sleeker and better Europe, but not
necessarily a better Ireland.  Opening the door to
privatization of resources and utilities in Ireland will not
benefit us.  It's hard to believe, since I swear to god we
have the worst, laziest, most incompetent public sector in
the world, but there's some accountability there.  We're up
to our knees in marshland over here.  Why must I pay a
water-consumption tax {schools do}, or god forbid, pay a
hypothetical French business conglomerate for my water?  Why
should my electricity provider be allowed to fix prices with
impunity, because the company that sells kwh to me buys
their electricity from their parent company {seriously,
that was the case in Chicago when I left}.

> Is it the loss of the commissioner? Making the ECB and the euro 
> official? Increasing the power of both the EP and the national 
> parliaments? The foreign representative?  The charter for fundamental 
> rights? The streamlining of decision-making, so that no individual state 
> can block legislation for all?

I'm okay with most of these. Much hay has been made of the 
rotating commissioners and adoption of QMV, but the issues
Ireland has historically been protective of, viz neutrality, 
abortion and WTO veto, have been assured for some time.
More on that in a bit.

> Oh, come off it. One of the reason there was a 'no' vote was apparently 
> the weather, which favoured the more determines opponents. How can the 
> future direction of 450 million people be determined by the weather and 
> by the 1.5 million Irish that actually bother to show up for the referendum?

We had a 50+ % turnout here, which isn't too bad.  The
weather was one of many potential, possibly spurious,
certainly anecdotal reasons for the other half not showing.
Thousands of recently registered voters didn't get their
cards in the post.  I'll guess that thousands of voters
abstained, citing frustration at the lack of transparency
from sitting politicians, all of whom were vocally in the
Yes camp or disgust at the FUD spread by both camps.

> Just like it's doubtful that the Spaniards, Luxembourgers and Romanians 
> knew exactly what they supported when they voted in favour of the 
> Constitution in their referendums, it's doubtful that the French, Dutch 
> and Irish population had a very clear idea what it was all about when 
> they rejected that same constitution and Lisbon Treaty.

You were right to call me out for implying that a "No" vote
was informed, while the "Yes" was apparently not.  That
wasn't my intent, but I should apologize for making it look
that way.

On reflection, I do find it hard to argue with your
assertion that a referendum turns lack of information into a
No vote, but I have a different spin.  There was
near-universal support for the amendment in all major
political parties here in Ireland, but for whatever reason -
confidence that the Irish people who have reaped so much
from "Punching above their weight" in Europe for the past
fifteen years or so would vote Yes, or the very Irish
inability to get their shit together, or both - the campaign 
started way too late, lacked any kind of specificity {the
FUD spread by the broad spectrum of No voters was frequently 
hysteric, but issues-specific and media-savvy} and was
fairly halfhearted in general.  There were no mailings of
substance about the amendment - voters relied on newspaper
editorials, radio commentary and, in some cases, the
internet.  I spent a good month reading about it online,
which is a luxury here.

If the amendment died in the referendum
stage, then it was either bad for Ireland, or the voting
public weren't convinced that it was good for Ireland, and I
place the blame for the latter on the government.  They
should have sold it better.  In either case, I see the No
vote as a "try again".  There's a precedent for this - Nice
failed to pass in Ireland the first time it was put up for
consideration.  The guarantee of Irish neutrality, which was
alwasy implicit in Europe, was made explicit in Nice 2.0,
and it passed.  I expect that Lisbon 2.0 will make its way
back here, and it will be put up for the vote again.
Specific objections will be voiced before then, but for the 
life of me, I don't know what they'll be.  Ireland already
has a lot of leeway in Europe.


So, I believe the people can be convinced to vote for
it, and I'm fairly sure that they eventually will.  I'm
happy that that can be achieved by a referendum.  I know
that a small country is essentially voting for almost 500
million Europeans.  I'm sorry about that.  Maybe 
ratification shouldn't be a parliamentary procedure in those
countries.

> > I wonder what will happen next.
> 
> Best to scrap the current EU institutions, draw up a new constitution or 
> whatever and have each current and future member re-apply for 
> membership. If they don't decide to join, they can dump the euro, get 
> work permits for their nationals working abroad, say bye-bye to EU funds 
> and start paying import fees again.

Europe will become a federalized, corporate super-state
whether Ireland plays ball or not.  Having conceded that, I
fear that, should my best-case scenario {Lisbon 2.0} not pan
out, the repercussions for biting the hand that feeds will
be worse than even the Yes camp imagines.

-- 
Yours,
Niall.
.. .  .   .    .     .       .           .             .                 .
Aleph Null.                             A Simple Insinuation Around Silence.
http://aleph-null.net
.. .. gpg public key - http://aleph-null.net/niall.gpg .. ..