From: Anthony Coughlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> APPEAL ACROSS EUROPE FOR SOLIDARITY WITH IRELAND. . . RESPECT THE IRISH PEOPLE'S DECISION AND RECOGNISE IT AS THE END OF THE NICE TREATY RATIFICATION PROCESS FROM: The National Platform 24 Crawford Ave., Dublin 9 Republic of Ireland Web-site:< www.nationalplatform.org> (Affiliated to TEAM, the European Alliance of EU-critical Movements) Tels: 8305792 / 6081898 Saturday, 9 June 2001 Dear Friends Across Europe, Already the Brussels Commission and Mr G�ran Persson, Prime Minister of Sweden, are openly hinting at an attempt to blandish and bully the Irish people to reverse their decision of last Thursday to reject the Treaty of Nice by a referendum majority of 54% to 46%. With colossal arrogance and contempt for the democratic process, EU law and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the Swedish Prime Minister and EU Commission President Romano Prodi say that no changes can be made in the Treaty of Nice to accommodate Irish reservations and they openly talk of "doing a Denmark" on it. In other word, they plan to issue some political Declarations and statements on different aspects of the Treaty, hope that these can be "spin-doctored" to the Irish as representing significant change, and then hold a second Irish referendum on the same treaty, without changing a jot or tittle of its contents. Mr Persson, Mr Prodi and others who mnay be tempted to follow them, had better think again. Any attempt by a compliant Irish Government to side with them and other EU Governments against its own people would be fraught with disaster. Any attempt to present what was legally the same Treaty(viz. "Nice 1" repackaged as "Nice 2")to the Irish people for referendum a second tgime would undoubtedly face constitutional challenge in the Irish Courts. If that challenge failed and "Nice 2" were to go to a second referendum here, it would almost certainly be defeated a second time by an even bigger majority on a much larger turnout of voters. For Mr Bertie Ahern's Government to connive at such a course would split his party, possibly end his own political career, and lead to new political forces taking a giant step forward to the centre stage of Irish politics. Irish democrats appeal to Swedish democrats in particular to press the following on Prime Minister Persson's Government as it presides over the EU summit in Gothenburg next weekend:- 1) that Sweden and the other EU Member States must now publicly recognise that the Nice Treaty ratification process is at at an end, and that it would be an insult to the Irish people, as well as an infringement of EU law and of public international law governing the ratification of treaties, to purport to continue with the Nice ratification process by presenting the Treaty for ratification before any Member State national parliament when the Irish people have rejected it; 2) that the Treaty cannot be ratified as it stands because of the Irish people's rejection of it, and that if the EU Member States wish to implement some of the positive and uncontroversial elements of Nice - for example the revised Statute of the European Court of Justice, or the agreed "common position" of the Member States on the allocation of voting weights and Euro-Parliament seats to the 12 Applicant countries in a putative EU of 27 States - these can be put into a different treaty and sent around for ratification by the 15 Member States, something that would not require a constitutional referendum in Ireland, as no surrender of sovereignty would be entailed; 3) that an Intergovernmental Conference(IGC) should be called to to consider what changes should be made to the EU treaties following the rejection of the Treaty of Nice, and that there should now begin the debate on the future of the EU, leading up to the proposed 2004 "grand treaty" which is outlined in Nice's Declaration 23 on the Future of the Union. 4) that the EU enlargement negotiations with the 12 Applicant States should continue uninterrupted, as the Treaty of Nice is NOT LEGALLY NECESSARY for EU enlargement, but is only REGARDED AS POLITICALLY NECESSARY in order to ensure the predominance of Germany and France and an inner club of Member States, when and if a a major enlargement of the EU by up to 12 States should come about. 5) that up to 5 of the current Applicant States can be admitted to the EU under the provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam which are currently in force, without triggering a grand conference on the revision of the institutions; that 3,4 or 5 Applicant States should be admitted before 2005 if their accession negotiations are successfuly completed, and their individual Accession Treaties are acceptable to their citizens in fair and free referendums. 6) That the debate on the future of the Union involving its citizens should begin now, rather than after Nice was supposed to have been ratified, when the EU "club" of legal equals would have been permitted to divide into two clubs; and that the reform proposals of the SOS Democracy Inter-group in the European Parliament should become the basis of a fundamental reform of the EU. Irish democrats appeal to democrats all over Europe, within the EU and outside it, to organise and protest against your Governments and political Establishments if they now connive with the Irish Government to pretend to continue the Nice Treaty ratification process in the period ahead, with a view to browbeating the Irish people to change their minds in a second Nice referendum. This "strategy" is now being proposed by the power-grabbing Brussels Commission, which stands to gain much extra power in the Treaty of Nice. This is in spite of the fact that the EU Commission has no role whatever in the EU Treaty ratification process. EU Treaties are exclusively matters for the Member States. The Commission is not a party to the Nice Treaty. Commission President Romano Prodi and the Irishman who is currently Commission Secretary-General, David O'Sullivan, should respect the Irish people's decision,instead of arrogating to themselves the role of go-between and orchestrator in an attempt to revivify Nice, which is, or should be, legally dead following its rejection by the Irish people. Irish EU Commissioner David Byrne had the impudence to go on Irish radio and TV last evening and criticise the independent and impartial statutory body, the Irish Referendum Commission,whose role is to provide objective information,not advocacy, in Irish referendums. Commissioner Byrne and the EU Commission Head Office in Dublin interefered masssively in Ireland's Nice referendum by spending EU money in partisan fashion advocating a Yes vote, in violation of both EU law and the Irish Constitution. In showing solidarity with Ireland by pressing your Government to recognise that the Nice Treaty ratification process should now end, it is important to realise that the Irish No-to-Nice was not against EU enlargement as such. All the elements involved in Ireland's No-to-Nice movement said that that they were not against EU enlargement if the Accession States got a fair deal that was acceptable to their peoples in fair and free referendums. They contended rather that Nice made a practical EU enlargement more difficult than did the Treaty of Amsterdam. Amsterdam permitted EU enlargement before any EU "deepening" or further integration. It permitted up to 5 new States to join the EU without further Treaty change. Nice by contrast meant more "deepening" and integration BEFORE any enlargement. Thus Nice provided for the abolition of the national veto in 35 areas, the division of the EU into an inner and outer circle, a significant shift of relative voting strength from the Small States to the Big States and the militarization of the EU - all to occur irrespective of any enlargement. Logically and practically, this would make enlargement more difficult for the Applicant States, as they would have to accept these Treaty of Nice changes in addition to the contents of all the previous EU treaties if they wanted to join the EU. The Irish people's rejection of Nice is therefore doing a good turn for the Applicant countries, if joining the EU is really what their peoples want. It is widely recognised that the States most likely to complete successful accession negotiations with the EU between now 2005, and to join it if their peoples agree to that, are Hungary,the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia and Malta. But this five could be admitted under the Treaty of Amsterdam, without the changes provided for in the Treaty of Nice. The reason for Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovenia being in this putative first group is because they have relatively few farmers,as their land was collectivised in the communist period. Poland by contrast has 2.200,000 small farmers, as their land was never collectivised. Most Polish farmers are opposed to joining the EU, as the livelihoods of most of them would be destroyed. Poland could only join the EU if the Common Agricultural Policy were to be abandoned, which France does not want as French farmers are the principal gainer from the CAP. The Irish people depend on you now to do all you can to press your Government to respect the Irish people's will and to recognise that the Nice Treaty ratification process is at an end. Yours fraternally Anthony Coughlan Secretary PS.WHAT BHAPPENED IN DENMARK IN 1992: As regards Denmark,which rejected the Maastricht Treaty in June 1992, several other EU States had already ratified Maastricht by the time the Danes came to vote on it. Legally this should have made no difference and the ratification process should have stopped for all once the Danes said No. Politially however, it meant that there was more pressure on the Danish Government to try to get Maasticht through in a second Danish referendum. Also the Danish Government changed between the first and second Danish referendum, which made it more compliant. That Government combined tith the othjer EU Sattes to blandish and browbeat the Danes to change their minds on Maastricht in a second referendum. The Danes were fobbed off with various political Declarations, but no change was made to the Maastricht Tretaty,for any change,no matter how small, would have had to be agreed by an Intergovernmental Conference and the entire ratification process would have had to begin again from scratch. That problem or political embarrassment does not arise in the current Irish case. _________________ Read EUobserver on the internet for a daily free digest of Eu-related reports, with good coverage of the Irish post-referendum situation. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
