Using Me!

The Lisbon Treaty

Are you for or against the Lisbon Treaty’s content? Do you approve of the way in which the Treaty has been put into place?

Two quite different questions if you think about it. Most people I think would answer No to both when in fact they mean No to the latter but don’t actually know anything about the former. So let’s take the latter first.

I most am most definitely against the way this change in EU power has been forced through. In 2005 both the French and Dutch populations were given a referendum on the EU Constitution and both rejected it. The Constitution required (as the Treaty requires) every member state to ratify the it before it could come into place and so the Constitution was dead.

You would think therefore that in a democratic society the population would be consulted and changes would be made to the content of the proposal such that it was agreeable to all. But that’s exactly what did NOT happen. The content was rewritten in a much shorter form but, to the very very best of what I can determine, the actual implementation remained the same. It was renamed The Lisbon Treaty. The French and Dutch governments then ratified it without giving their populations the chance to vote on it.

So that’s how democracy works now. Regardless of your position on either of my original questions I’m sure you have to agree that, having given your people a referendum on a subject and seen it rejected, to then ignore that opinion and do it anyway is utterly undemocratic.

The British government under Tony Blair had also guaranteed their population a referendum on the EU Constitution. We did not get one. At the time it was said that since the French and Dutch had rejected it already there was no need to have one. While this is a valid point of order it should be taken into consideration that polls of the time indicated the referendum would be returned with a No vote. Once the Lisbon Treaty came along the government reneged on their promise, stating that a referendum was no longer necessary because the Treaty was different, it was not a Constitution and it did not devolve any power from the UK Parliament. This is a blatant lie as the treaty clearly devolves power to Brussels on several areas, including Human Rights and various trade related policy making areas, as well as monetary policy for countries using the Euro. Clearly the government knew that the treaty would be rejected by the people and therefore a referendum would simply weaken them when they ignored the result of it.

One has to wonder then what benefits there are to the politicians involved here. Not just those that ran roughshod over the expressed opinions of their people but those other nations who felt they didn’t even need to ask before signing on the dotted line. Really, what are they getting from it? Why would they feel so compelled to ignore democratic process? I have no answer to this although I’m sure that plenty of conspiracists would chime in with various keywords that might include ‘Oil’, ‘Illuminati’, ‘Money’, ‘Rothschild’, ‘Bohemia Grove’ or ‘Freemason’.

I really would like to hear what people think about that because it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The final element in the ratification of the treaty was the Irish referendum which was the only referendum held in any member state on the Treaty rather than the Constitution. It was narrowly rejected the first time and I really have little concern that a second referendum then narrowly passed it. Both sides had plenty of time to put their views across and many did! Pro- and Anti-Treaty politicians and activists flocked to Ireland to try to influence the outcome, particularly of the second vote.

So what is the content of the Treaty?

Well it’s complicated. The treaty itself composes two parts.

First is a set of amendments to existing agreements and as such the document that is being ratified doesn’t read very well. The text itself and the resulting versions of the pre-existing documents can be found here.

Second is to make the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights legally binding. Alternate link.

There is a very good Wikipedia article which describes the amendments and the introduction of the Charter.

Much of the content appears to be groundwork for future devolution of power, placing frameworks in place for EU wide agreements and making various bodies such as the European Bank ‘official status’.

Any thoughts on this complex Treaty?