I think we need to replace the gravy train notion with recognition that the EU is a battle ground.

Attitudes on the MN poll seem to be hardening. It shows a wide lead for the no vote. Every radio poll conducted this past week has shown the No side win by large margins. How can bookies be so sure of a Yes vote in this climate?

I think it will still be a no vote by quite a considerable margin

Even tho I believe that the issues debate has been won pretty comprensibly by the Yes side -

the Yes campaign have run such a wretched campaign - have felt this for weeks and am now convinced of it.

The No vote will turn out as per usual - but this time and most importantly - there are whole phalanxes out there who are motivated to give the Gov a good bloody nose over the economy,health care and various other totally unrelated issues - they will turn out - its cool to say no and as far as most of these people who say that they are voting no - it will be consequence free -sure they'll be back us in a year or so begging us with some goodies and bribes thrown in - I wish I could share their confidence.

In a way Im intrigued as to what will happen if and when we reject this treaty - even tho I know I convinced at least 5 wavers over to the Yes side today - I know in my guts that this campaign is lost - what will happen afterwards is what is interesting me most at the moment.

I've been pretty much un-decided the past few weeks since I am torn both ways. I want to vote Yes, but I can't banish the doubts from my mind to commit myself to a Yes vote. I just don't feel sufficiently compelled.

People like Ray Kinsella of UCD arguing that our corporation tax will be under-mined by the Lisbon Treaty and the chilling words of D'Estaing are reasons why I cannot feel comfortable in saying Yes.

Yes this D'Estaing stuff with the underhand quote going around from him ... it's a receipe for undermining the confidence there. I just don't feel comfortable with it and I'm going with that for now. What's more, nobody was made feel comfortable either.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Yes this D'Estaing stuff with the underhand quote going around from him ... it's a receipe for undermining the confidence there. I just don't feel comfortable with it and I'm going with that for now. What's more, nobody was made feel comfortable either.

The thing about that quote, as I've said from the start, is that d'Estaing was the one who put a lot of unwanted stuff into the Constitution - stuff that both the French and the Dutch objected to - and was very bitter when his pet amendments were taken out. It's a slender beam to put any weight on.

Guys - I dont know what to say to you.

D'estaing has been out of the equation since 2004 - and he is bitter that most of his recommendations for the initial constitution were binned - cannot understand the prominence of this retired french politican who was sidelined and marginalised at his own gig - the intergovernmental conference.

The French have been banging on about tax harmonization since 1963 - and everytime they bring it up it is binned and it will be no different this time - national governments do not give up tax raising powers - also expect the CCCTB report to be either binned or shelved regardless of how the Treaty goes - it simply does not have the support and it requires unanimity aswell - no chance - The French presidency will start with the usual bluster - aimed purely at a domestic audience already losing confidence in a President who has stalled or chickened out off all the reforms that the french economy badly needs - in december see how much of this programme will have surivived - SFA of any relevance going on the precedence of previous french presidencies.

The only way our low corporate tax-rate of 12.5 % will come under threat is if Sinn Fein win the next election - They are ideologically against it as Mary Lou confirmed in the EP earlier this month - but nothing in Lisbon or the existing the EU treaties can touch it.

Are there any polls on p.ie or boards? I don't think there are.

ibis wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Yes this D'Estaing stuff with the underhand quote going around from him ... it's a receipe for undermining the confidence there. I just don't feel comfortable with it and I'm going with that for now. What's more, nobody was made feel comfortable either.

The thing about that quote, as I've said from the start, is that d'Estaing was the one who put a lot of unwanted stuff into the Constitution - stuff that both the French and the Dutch objected to - and was very bitter when his pet amendments were taken out. It's a slender beam to put any weight on.

So bitter a man should not have been given the power he was given then. Very bad judgment by the EU heads of state.

Or is there an element of air-brushing him out of history now. After all his comments are not a million miles away from what Garret Fitz (who is voting Yes) has said -

"The most striking change [between the Lisbon treaty and the Constitution treaty] is perhaps that in order to enable some governments to reassure their electorates that the changes will have no constitutional implications, the idea of a new and simpler treaty containing all the provisions governing the Union has now been dropped in favour of a huge series of individual amendments to two existing treaties.

Virtual incomprehensibility has thus replaced simplicity as the key approach to EU reform.

As for the changes now proposed to be made to the constitutional treaty, most are presentational changes that have no practical effect. They have simply been designed to enable certain heads of government to sell to their people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action rather than by referendum."

Yes, I've seen the quote before. As to d'Estaing being given the oversight of the Constitution drafting, he wasn't given it because he was the right man, but because he was a nuisance. Strange, but true.

If it was being drafted now, there's an equally big chance it would be overseen by someone French, which would be Chirac, or even Sarkozy. And both of them are muppets too.

Quote :

If it was being drafted now, there's an equally big chance it would be overseen by someone French, which would be Chirac, or even Sarkozy. And both of them are muppets too.

Is that supposed to make us feel better, ibis?

I'll be voting no but not on the basis of supporting any of the organisations or individuals who are out there at the moment.

1. There has to be reform of the commission and its roles if the EU is to function more smoothly and with credibility.

We cannot have an unelected people proposing legislation. Regardless of what happens to it afterwards, it goes against everything that I believe in and I feel there has to be some separation of power between the Head of Department Role of the Commissioners and the sole responsibility for proposing legislation. I don't have an easy solution for that, though perhaps if there were 27 elected commissioners with 15 separate Department Heads - either senior civil servants or as present feeding into that College of Commissioners, it would be a better, more credible institution.

Nobody is challenging the widely held view that Peter Mandelson has exceeded his mandate. He remains unrebuked and has not been reined in. This is intolerable. We cannot have a situation where agreements reached by heads of nations and ministers are blatantly ignored with impunity. It is a dashing blow to the credibility of the commission and its commitment to its quite considertable mandate.

2. I will not put my name to a treaty that will give the blessing to groups of countries to undertake military action (as yet essentially undefined) under the EU banner and whether or not such actions require unanimity is irrelevant. When Ireland joined the EU it was an economic union and I suppose that I'd be happier if it had stayed that way - or at least had not been altered under the SEA referendum (which I would not have been old enough to vote in. Maastricht happened when I was 19 I knew nothing about the EU. It was 'out there.').

I can't go along with the militant anti-militarists but I am firmly of the belief that the EU is not the place for military alliances. Co-ordination of resources and action in peace-keeping does not need the EDA - an essentially illegal body, when nations can function within the UN - and maybe work to make that organisation more efficient and equitable. The triple lock is also really a double lock (with government and Dáil being essentially the one machine) and having the blatantly self-interested UN Security Council define where we take action on peacekeeping as part of the EU seems rather bizarre. So there is much to be improved. Keeping our neutrality, such as it is, is not any great achievement, unfortunately.

So there are bigger issues to be resolved in my mind before I can give my blessing to any solidarity pact. And I don't think we've had the kind of debate on neutrality that we need here. Perhaps Lisbon would have a better chance of making it if all the military 'stuff' was dealt with separately.

3. I'm uncomfortable that some issues have been added to the remit of the EU because I don't see how they can properly be dealt with more efficiently by Europe than individual nations. To add sport and culture to the mix is to take the EU down a road that moves beyond what I feel should be the role of the Union. All sports have their own international governing bodies and culture is a matter for each nation to deal with by itself. They are not logistical matters as climate change, energy security and trade agreements are. It points to a different kind of Union to the one I'm happy to support.

4. I suppose my attitude to the Lisbon Treaty is partly 'thus far and no further'. You could at a pinch call that anti-European though it's not my intention. I would like to see a particular kind of European Union which is not the one we have and I don't see it getting better under Lisbon. I'm not really sure about the consequences of giving the EU status as a legal entity and the change in focus from the community of member states to the Union. I'm not with those who predict we've sold ourselves if we sign up to that but there is sufficient doubt in my mind about the necessity (and hence, I suppose, motivation) for such a move to make me very uneasy about where it might lead to. I realise there's nothing concrete to support that stance but it's valid nonetheless. In this case I'm valuing instinct and intuition over logic and fact.

5. I find that democracy as I understand it cannot be applied to the workings of the EU - it's too primitive a tool to use in attempting to understand the role of the citizen (who is at a number of physical and philosophical removes from the seats of power) and I doubt its efficacy in fairly and effectively working in an organisation of 27 disparate nations and almost half a billion people. The scale and nature of the EU is beyond what the concept could ever have had within its contemplation.

Part of that problem stems from the kind of representation we have here at local level compared ot other countries, part of it from the workings of the Union itself over the years. I feel there are a series of hollow victories to be won under Lisbon. The citizen's initiative is more or less meaningless. A million signatures will never have the imact of a well resourced lobby group. And maybe the initiative should be meaningless, because the legislation arrived at by the EU shouldn't be subject to the whims of interest groups - but should be more informed by their needs in the first place. Scale makes that quite difficult to achieve. I don't think we should be cheering that our government now has more opportunity to consider legislation because it should have been doing that all along and we have been badly served in that regard, not just by the EU but by successive Irish governments.

6. I don't know necessarily that there is a great conspiracy to make the Treaty incomprehensible to the general public. It is, I have learned, not very different to other treaties. But it's neither the layout nor the fact that it's a series of amendments that make it difficult to read but that it's that it's open to all kinds of interpretation (as it should be) which the regular Joe has no tools to attempt to understand. We are, in general, not good Europeans and not good citizens.

While ibis hasn't convinced me to vote yes, he certainly has convinced me by example of the value of looking behind the soundbites, of learning and understanding how the EU works before applying my feeble opinions to the proposals contained within the treaty and of having some kind of philosophy of my own as a context for those opinions and understandings. I am profoundly grateful for the effort that he has gone to in supporting his points with the kind of links and references that I was too lazy or ignorant to search for. I will never have the level of knowledge (or interest, frankly) that some posters here and abroad have but after almost six months, I feel that I have enough understanding and knowledge of Europe, the Treaty and myself to be able to make a decision that is informed and which I can stand over. Whatever way the vote turns out, it's been a worthwhile experience for me.

My No arguments are probably closer in tenor and style to those of the Yes side who find it hard to take specific points and say 'these are the concrete and referenced facts, the reasons why you should vote Yes as cited in Article X.' There is a presumption on the Yes side that proposing the Union on the broad fundamentals is sufficient and acceptable whereas the No have latched on to specific details. For the Yes side, to quote ibis (in a very different context), the best should never be the enemy of the good and 'details' are merely that. I've come to accept over the course of my interaction with the Treaty that there is actually nothing wrong in that. On a side note however, sadly I don't think I've heard a single Yes speaker admit that the treaty isn't the best, that it is simply good and that's good enough. On the Yes side there seems to be no room to consider any weakness.

The conclusion that I have reached is that it is the proposal and support of the Union as we have it and in ways that will be essentially unchanged by Lisbon as I have outlined above is not sufficient or acceptable to me and that some changes only exacerbate the weaknesses that I see and feel in the EU. I'm voting No because I don't want to let the worst be the enemy of the 'not good enough.'

Whatever about the significance of our personal journeys to a no vote, Kate P, your rationale for doing so is actually a pretty good summation of the bog standard reasons that most no voters will be voting no.

One of the things I disagree with you about (mostly not to do with the Treaty so I won't derail the thread by discussing them here) is where you say the drafting is reckoned to be pretty typical. That is not at all true. It's a dog's dinner of of legisative drafting - more like an atrociously bad statutory instrument - a more accurate description of the function that it serves both as a rewording of the rejected constitution and because of the huge number of amendments it makes to two other Treaties. From the perspective of relying on the Treaty judicially, it will be a heart-sinking task for judges and lawyers alike. Treaties ordinarily describe themselves more or less in their entirely - they stand alone from an interpretive point of view.

Elsewhere, EU politicians are more forthcoming about the purpose of the Treaty - openly boasting about things that the Yes politicians here are denying and accusing the no side of being 'dishonest' about even while they lie through their own teeth with concocted upset and indignation. I'd like to hear Brian Cowen reconcile his claims with the statements below by his colleagues in Europe:

Democracy

"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."
Former French President V. Gisard D'Estaing, who headed the drafting of the EU Constitution which the French and the Dutch rejected in their 2005 referendums, and which is now being implemented through the Lisbon Treaty.
Le Monde, 14 July, 2007

"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, Flanders Info, 23. June 2007

"90% is still there ... these changes haven't made any dramatic Change to the substance of what was agreed back in 2004."
Bertie Ahern, Irish Independent, 24 June, 2007

"The good thing about not calling it a constitution is that no one can ask for a referendum on it." [Well, he obviously didn't know about Raymond Crotty's effort.]
Guiliano Amato, Italian Prime Minster, later vice president of the EU Convention which drafted the Constitution. Speech at London School of Economics, 21 February, 2007

__________________________________________________________________

Sovereignty


"In Europe one needs to act 'as if' - as if what was wanted was little in order to obtain much; as if states were to remain sovereign to convince them to concede sovereignty ... the Commission in Brussels for example, should act as if it were a technical instrument, in order to be able to be treated as a government. And so on by disguise and subterfuge."
Guiliano Amato, La Stampa, 13 July, 2000

"Of course there will be transfer of sovereignty, But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact."
Jean Clause Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg

"There is no longer the question of saying that are certain things that the Union can't touch. Actually, the Union can touch everything."
Gisela Stuart, British Labour MP who helped draft the EU Constitution, comment on Lisbon Treaty 18 January, 2007

The constitution is a milestone. Yes, it is more than that. I think the EU Constitution is the birth of the United states of Europe."
Hans-Martin Bury,German Minister for Europe, Die Welt, 24 February, 2007
"This is the crossing of the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign states in Europe with fully fledged governments and parliaments which represent legitimate interests, but only on state will remain... We are against a European super state."
Vaclav Klaus, Czech President, Mlada Fronta Dnes [THE ONLY NON-TRAITOR]

Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation of the organisation of an empire."
J-M Barroso, EU Commission President, The Brussels Journal, 11 July, 2007

___________________________________________________________________________

Neutrality


"The Commission has the legal basis for a future European Army."Dominique Strauss Kahn, former French Finance Minster,Oui Lettre ouverte aux enfants de l'Europe,' Oct 2004

"I am sure that in the medium term we will have a European Army finaced by the EU budget."
Wilhelm Schoenfelder,[i] [/i]German Ambassador to the EU[i], Handelsblatt, [/i]19 April 2007

"Our traditional concept of self-defence was based on the threat of invasion. With the new threats, the first line of defence will often be abroad.We should be ready to act before a crisis occurs." [My emphasis]

Javier Solana, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, in a 'Secure Europe in a Better World', endorsed by the EU in December 2003.

_________________________________________

Kate P wrote:

...I'm voting No because I don't want to let the worst be the enemy of the 'not good enough.'

This debate has allowed people to work through arguments, reject what is unsustainable, follow through on points of interest, and now we reach for the little pencil stubs to make our mark on history.

I am hoping for a constructive No.

Then we need to have a period of consultation with the citizens of the EU to decide what changes are actually (a) wanted and (b) have popular consent.

The political leaders who have prematurely committed themselves to Lisbon (because they did so before consulting anyone other than themselves) need to look outside the hothouse they live in. There is a great big creative world out here and those of us who share it might have some good ideas!

I would be happy enough with a constructive No. Unfortunately, I cannot see how we will get there from where we are the day before polling day.

ibis wrote:

I would be happy enough with a constructive No. Unfortunately, I cannot see how we will get there from where we are the day before polling day.

How do you mean? No means No, there are only two boxes on the ballot paper, not a whole variety of hues of opinion. This is not like the subtlety of our PR 1-12 order of preference for elections. This is black and white.

Someone is going to have to define "Constructive No" for me. How does it differ from an ordinary No? Is that like a warranted No ?

Helium Three wrote:

I am hoping for a constructive No.

Then we need to have a period of consultation with the citizens of the EU to decide what changes are actually (a) wanted and (b) have popular consent.

The political leaders who have prematurely committed themselves to Lisbon (because they did so before consulting anyone other than themselves) need to look outside the hothouse they live in. There is a great big creative world out here and those of us who share it might have some good ideas!

But are we going to get that? This whole project has been years in the making and I don't see how European civil servants, leaders and political groups will find the energy and interest to re-start this process again. Constructive No might be beyond our ability in this regard.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Someone is going to have to define "Constructive No" for me. How does it differ from an ordinary No? Is that like a warranted No ?

Actually there is no such thing from the yes voters point of view since the fact of saying no is deemed not to be constructive in and of itself . So you are on a wild goose chase there EVM.

I think Irish Examiner letter posted (by Helium Three)on another thread makes a constructive no case, albeit in the context of a piece of satire.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

ibis wrote:

I would be happy enough with a constructive No. Unfortunately, I cannot see how we will get there from where we are the day before polling day.

How do you mean? No means No, there are only two boxes on the ballot paper, not a whole variety of hues of opinion. This is not like the subtlety of our PR 1-12 order of preference for elections. This is black and white.

A really constructive No would be a No that was specifically related to the Treaty, that had specific objections to the provisions, and a set of specific changes it would like to see made. I don't see anyone in this category, although plenty of people pretend to be.

A slightly less constructive, but still constructive, No, would be a No that objected to a particular overall direction the EU is actually taking. There are people in this category, like Joe Noonan, who objects to the militarisation of the EU.

An unconstructive No consist of an amalgam of people who are voting to kick the government, voting No because they don't want the EU anyway, voting No on red herring issues, voting No to protest their parking tickets, voting No because the voices are telling them to, etc etc. This is most of what we've got - the bulk of the No vote will almost certainly consist of the 500,000 voters who always vote No in EU referendums. Unless the No vote actually doubles in absolute terms, that's what the majority of the No vote represents.

Darn it. Aragon I am not sure that the nationalism that wants to preserve national sovereignty in the 21st century is a progressive force. Xenophobia and outright racism is there throughout a lot of the No side.
If you look at social, environmental and employment legislation from Europe a lot of it is far more advanced than we would have got under Irish sovereignty. We will have to fight battles over policy on public versus private services, and over participation in military exercises and wars, whether or not the Reform Treaty is passed.

The requirement to spend more on the military is a hard one to get over. I think Ireland would be better off without doing that. We are too small to contribute significantly, but it can hurt us in many ways.

I think the idea in the EU that, after adopting Lisbon, business would go on as before in terms of public participation is naive and wrong. The shift of power would be followed by a shift of attention and scrutiny by the public and popular organisations.

The degree of public interest and involvement in this Treaty has been much higher than was the case with Nice and I think the reason for that is the perception is that Brussels is now where the power is. Our Government said as much when our economic boom hit a wall, and we were told they could do nothing as all the decisions are taken in Brussels.

I agree with Ganley that we will see the growth of pan-European parties, as the reality becomes apparent.

The issue of National identity per se will not affect my vote.

Quote :

The requirement to spend more on the military is a hard one to get
over. I think Ireland would be better off without doing that. We are
too small to contribute significantly, but it can hurt us in many ways.

We don't have that commitment. We can meet our Treaty obligations by stating that we are spending the same amount of money more wisely, or any of the usual guff that governments come out with on such occasions. Frankly, nobody is going to care.

That sort of cute-hoorism is unusual coming from you ibis. If we make a promise we should mean it wholeheartedly. What way is that to maintain respect?

cactus flower wrote:

Darn it. Aragon I am not sure that the nationalism that wants to preserve national sovereignty in the 21st century is a progressive force. Xenophobia and outright racism is there throughout a lot of the No side.
If you look at social, environmental and employment legislation from Europe a lot of it is far more advanced than we would have got under Irish sovereignty. We will have to fight battles over policy on public versus private services, and over participation in military exercises and wars, whether or not the Reform Treaty is passed.

The requirement to spend more on the military is a hard one to get over. I think Ireland would be better off without doing that. We are too small to contribute significantly, but it can hurt us in many ways.

I think the idea in the EU that, after adopting Lisbon, business would go on as before in terms of public participation is naive and wrong. The shift of power would be followed by a shift of attention and scrutiny by the public and popular organisations.

The degree of public interest and involvement in this Treaty has been much higher than was the case with Nice and I think the reason for that is the perception is that Brussels is now where the power is. Our Government said as much when our economic boom hit a wall, and we were told they could do nothing as all the decisions are taken in Brussels.

I agree with Ganley that we will see the growth of pan-European parties, as the reality becomes apparent.

The issue of National identity per se will not affect my vote.

I certainly don't support any form of xenophobia or racism. Id do away with national boundaries completely if I had my way. But in considering the Treaty in the present context, the loony fringe of no voters should actually be voting yes for Fortress Europe if they were following the plot. Equally their nutty climate change denial and fulminating at the EU for apparently buying into it is eqaully silly. The EU is actually protecting the interests of polluters pretty fiercely in many instances - and pursuing all manner of environmentally unsound policies - including GM crops eg.

The curious thing is that possibly the most common concession to the no side of many yes voters in media commentary is on that very point: that there might be some justification for people's concerns about immigration, for instance. The racism is on both sides in fact. And another curious thing is that it is almost always the other no voters who are the most vocally critical of this element of the no campaign.

Read Willie O'Dea on the subject. Read Willie

Defence expenditure has dropped continuously since 1987 in terms of both GNP and exchequer expenditure.

Our Constitution prohibits us from direct military action.

Read Willie. I'm not impressed with the "fellow traveller" reference. I heard him on the radio on this too and I am quite clear he proposes increased "defence" spending. There is nothing in his blog that says otherwise.