The first article of this new treaty states that the EU 'shall replace and succeed the European Community'. The European Community of Member States as we currently know it would be gone if we vote for this Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty proposes no meaningful reforms in the EU's remote centralized decision-making and lack of subsidiarity, and in this respect, makes the current situation worse instead of better.
Even those who seek an EU Federal State should oppose this Treaty since it would produce such an undemocratic centralized EU Government. Despite the Laeken Declaration, the EU has refused to devolve a single power back to the Member States or to give the European Parliament the power to propose any legislation.
Critically, it appears that the Lisbon Treaty, by making the EU treaties self-amending, by means of moving from unanimous to majority voting in several areas, the Irish people and the citizens of the other EU Countries would also be denied a say in respect of a number of important future changes to the constitutional documents of the EU.
By removing the unanimity requirement from more than 60 more areas and issues, the Lisbon Treaty would further undermine the democratic input from its Member States. The Supranational European Federal State that Lisbon seeks to build would have serious democratic shortfalls. Neither European nor National Parliaments would, for instance, be allowed to introduce future EU legislation, and there would be no democratic procedure to elect the two new Presidents of Europe and the new EU Foreign Minister (to be known as the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy). The EU would become a closed shop run by the EU political elite, with minimal reference to the citizens of the Member States, quite the opposite to what the Laeken Declaration, which mandated the Constitutional Convention in the first place, had set out to create.
Prominent continental politicians are already on record as saying that the reason why they did not allow any of their countries to vote on this Treaty was because they know that the people would reject it just as the voters of France and Holland have already done.
Ireland is now being presented with the core elements of this rejected Constitutional Treaty with its name changed to the Lisbon Treaty. To preserve any kind of democratic legitimacy, the Irish voters should reject this Treaty on behalf of the French and Dutch voters and the citizens of the other EU countries all of whom are being shamefully denied an opportunity to reject this Treaty as well.
The "pillar" structure of the present EU would go under the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution. That means foreign and security policy and justice and home affairs - "intergovernmental" matters at present - would be significantly "communitarianised".
The new EU would not make laws relating to foreign policy and security matters, whereas it would on justice, crime and home affairs. However the proposed new EU Foreign Minister would have a key role in foreign policy henceforth, with an EU diplomatic service at his disposal. Simultaneously he would be a Vice-President of the Commission.
That would give the Commission a role in foreign policy for the first time. Lisbon proposes that in the event that the European Council decides unanimously to take an interest in some foreign policy matter or issue and asks the Foreign Minister to make proposals with regard to it, the latter may then propose further policy measures to attain the larger objective, and these may be decided on by qualified majority vote (QMV).
The Lisbon Treaty would continue the process of shifting law-making and decision-taking from the national to the supranational level. An example of the power that the Commission wants to exert on the Member States is illustrated by Lisbon specifying that if the Council needs to vote on a proposal that has not originated from the Commission or from the proposed new Foreign Minister, then the proposal would require the support of 72% instead of just 55% of Member Countries. This puts a higher obstacle in the way of Member Countries themselves being able to make decisions as far as the EU is concerned.
The new voting system, first introduced in Nice, would under Lisbon continue the increase in Germany's voting power from its level of 3 times that of Ireland's prior to Nice, to 20 times that of Ireland's.
Nobody mentions how the USA, with a full Federal State structure has, for 200 years, successfully allowed each of its 50 states, whether they are large or small, equal voting power in its Senate, whereas the EU seems incapable of doing anything similar with a membership of only 27 States.
In this respect, US states get a better deal in the USA than the EU is prepared to allow to independent sovereign European Nations.
Compared to the situation before Nice, the proposed system under the Lisbon Treaty would copper-fasten the reduction of Ireland's voting strength vis-a-vis the four top EU countries by 75%. Ireland's vote, compared to theirs, has dropped from 6% to 1.5%.
A further important point is that three of the four largest EU countries, France, Italy and the UK command just 36.9% of the EU population, which is currently insufficient to give them a blocking vote against the remaining EU members, but the Lisbon Treaty proposes to reduce the required minority blocking vote from 38% to 35%, which would give them the blocking power that they currently lack.
Furthermore, under the proposed Lisbon Treaty rules, any three countries, for instance, France, Germany and Italy, would only need to persuade one small friendly country, (say Luxembourg), to join them and they can block all decision-making until the Council comes up with the 'right' decision: by 'consensus', of course.
These four countries can therefore effectively dictate their own policies to the EU, and the content of the Lisbon Treaty suggest that they may have already done so. Four countries would have the potential to dictate to the remaining 23 countries.
The Lisbon Treaty threatens the retention of Ireland's current veto on corporate tax harmonisation, on which Ireland's economic prosperity depends.
The Commission and Germany and France, however, have made no secret of the fact that they want to harmonise these tax rates across the EU area. They have made a start by proposing an EU-wide system of calculating these taxes. A temporary halt has been put to this process until after the Irish referendum.
Ireland may have won this temporary delay, but it is surely only a matter of time before we are again threatened by Germany and its allies in the EU that we will not be considered to be a fully signed-up member of the EU unless we toe the line on this last remaining issue.
Unless a stop is put to these threats, tax harmonisation will follow as sure as night follows day. It will be up the Irish voters to put down a marker on this issue by voting 'no' to Lisbon. How could we seriously hope that Irish politicians will otherwise stand up to the sort of pressures and blandishments that they meet in Brussels?
Perhaps the most overlooked proposal in this treaty is its proposal to impose real EU citizenship on the citizens of the EU's Member States without their knowledge or approval.
EUReform maintains that the minimum democratic requirement for any State planning to peacefully impose the duties of citizenship on people is to first seek the approval of the people in question. This should not be done without first clearly informing them and seeking their approval by way of referendum, for one can only be a citizen of a State, and all States must have citizens.
The supporters of the Lisbon Treaty may argue that the proposal in the Treaty is not significantly different to the 'citizenship of the EU' that had already been imposed by the Maastricht Treaty. The fundamental difference is that Maastricht introduced the notion of 'citizenship' of an EU that had no international legal personality, and was not yet a State.
Under Maastricht, EU citizenship is stated to complement natonal citizenship. The treaty of Lisbon provides that EU citizenship shall be in addition to natonal citizenship. It would confer a real dual citizenship on 4 million Irish people and 500 million Europeans without asking the latter. And the duty of obedience to EU laws and loyalty to the EU's ethos and authority would be superior to one's duties to one's own state and country. EU law, the EU "constitution" and the dutes of EU citizenship would be legally superior in any case of conlfict between the two.
The difference is that by giving the EU legal personality, Lisbon would transform 'EU citizenship' into a serious legally-binding obligation under National and International Law. Irish voters need to vote 'No' in order to protect the citizens of other Member Countries from having this citizenship imposed on them without their knowledge or consent.
Lisbon would provide a legally binding status to this Charter. The Charter would duplicate many of the rights already contained in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Council of Europe's Human Rights Convention enforced by its Court in Strasbourg. This new Charter is therefore a recipe for confusion and conflict in the human rights area. The Council of Europe pre-dates the Treaty of Rome, and is a genuinely European-wide body totally independent of the EU.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxemburg would be given the new job of adjudicating on this new EU set of 'rights'. This would have the effect of transferring more power to the mandarins in Brussels.
The conflict within and between many of these proposed legally enforceable rights and other well-established human rights is likely to be problematic, especially for countries like Ireland that have a long-established tradition of protecting human rights and which recognises Natural Law in its Constitution which the EU does not. Continental Europe's ethos is profoundly secular and individualistic, and over time, this ethos would dominate the Charter and the ECJ's interpretations of it.
Definitions of new 'rights' and delicate questions involving each Nation's traditions and ethos should not be imposed by 'one size fits all' legislation imposed on the citizens of its Member States by an all-powerful EU Court, within a Supranational European Federal State structure.
Under Lisbon, the entire European Council would lose its current independence and become an institution of the EU, legally subject to the EU Court of Justice. This represents a fundamental move from inter-governmental to Federal Control of the EU.
In association with at least ten other constitutional changes contained in Lisbon, this proposed change moves the EU fundamentally towards the structure of a fully-fledged Federal State.
The proposed downgrading of EU Member-States' input in Brussels is illustrated by Lisbon's proposal to eliminate one-third of the current commissioners. Ireland would lose its right to have its own permanent commissioner.
It now seems that the power-brokers in Brussels are not prepared to accept the current situation. They want to cut the number of commissioners and also to give the proposed new President of the Commission the power to dismiss commissioners at will.
It should not be beyond the imagination of the EU to give useful jobs to each of the 27 commissioners that it currently has? They could start by appointing one of them to monitor the EU's books of account. The EU has not produced a single set of accounts fully acceptable to its Auditors for the past eleven years!
Furthermore, a Member Country's role in nominating its commissioner would, under Lisbon, be seriously undermined by the Treaty's new proposals.
This list, which is not exhaustive, includes crime and justice (subject to Government opt outs), foreign policy, defence policy, youth, health, industry, culture, tourism, research, technology, energy, transport, environment, agriculture, discrimination, some areas of taxation, data protection, employment, sport, immigration and, security.
Space in this press release does not permit more than the briefest summary of the radical constitutional proposals contained in the Lisbon Treaty. We hope that you have read enough to understand the concern that we believe Irish voters should have when they are asked to vote in favour of this treaty.
EUReform has been formed by a group of Irish citizens who, while they are enthusiastic suppporters of the European Community, have become concerned about recent developments in the EU. The proposed Lisbon Treaty has been the catalyst that has inspired them to come together to oppose this Treaty.
EUReform recognises the positive contribution that membership of the European Community has made to Ireland's prosperity, and its contribution to peace and prosperity in the EU area generally. We wish to see all EU Member States continue to develop and prosper, with EU assistance.
We have grave concerns however in respect of Member States' excessive loss of sovereignty, identity and independence resulting from the development of the EU into a State in its own right, and we consider that the Lisbon Treaty would advance this development, beyond a critical tipping point.
EUReform has therefore been set up to promote the reform of the EU, and to campaign for a 'No' vote in the coming referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
While the treaty does seek to introduce a few cosmetic reforms, the Treaty on balance seeks to transfer further power and independence from the EU's individual Member States, particularly from its medium sized and smaller Members, and seeks to micro-manage an excessive number of affairs that should properly be within the remit of its Member States.
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