Why did we have to take it or leave it???

DeVore

This treaty was horrendously complex as we all know, but it also covered a wide myriad of issues... only SOME of which seemed to be relating to efficiency. Others seemed to have been "slyed in" with the hope that no one was watching.

In my opinion quite a number of the no votes may be related to this.

Its like being asked "Do you want fries with that? Do you like the colour Blue? Will you give me all your money? Arent babies just the cutest?" YES/ NO (delete as appropriate).

Now this was all presented as a "package" but it seemed to me that many parts of it could be accepted or rejected individually. In that way:

1. People would have throw the baby out with the bathwater, as has happened.

2. Europe would now have a much better idea of WHAT it was we didnt like about the treaty.


Could this not have been voted on, piecemeal??


DeV.

copacetic

So we get to pick and choose the bits we like and the rest of Europe has to go along with us? Or everyone in Euope gets to pick and chose and only the bits everyone in the whole or Europe agrees with go through?

You would never agree either way.

ixtlan

Possibly... of course it makes life much more complicated for the politicians.

What I see as interesting is that say the military clause is something which no other state really cared whether we were part of or not. So we could have taken an opt-in/out. However if we did that, the public would not apparently not have believed that we would have opted out, so we would be back to square one. So am I correct that people would specifically want the treaty to state that Ireland could only opt-in after a referendum?

Unfortunately we would then probably never opt-in to anything... certainly not the military clause, not the tax, not the charter of rights (abortion bogeyman).

On the other hand I think that maybe these referendums could be won on their own.

Ix.

DeVore

Bits that are dependant on each other would have to be presented as a group, but that certainly wasnt the case with large chunks of this treaty.

Only the parts ratified by all 27 going forward.

(If we dont want something, we shouldnt have to put up with that thing and thats our choice. If everyone choses against compromise then clearly there isnt a consensus in the populace for more integration... )

DeV.

IRLConor

Without the cooperation of the other member states:

It would have been possible with a very long ballot paper where a "Yes" on everything would be a "Yes" overall. The only thing it would tell us is why people voted no. That's useful for renegotiation purposes but TBH the place for that kind of consultation was years ago when the treaty was being negotiated on.

With the cooperation of the other member states:

Sure, break up the treaty into lots of bits and have each state ratify each bit individually. We'd either have one referendum with lots of ballot sheets or multiple referenda on each issue that needed one. There are two catches to this:

1. There's a lot of political interdependence between all of the issues even if the issues themselves are independent. One country might be willing to accept the militarisation bits in return for the other countries accepting the Charter of Fundamental Rights. You can't get that kind of horse trading when it's possible that another country's populace might renege on "their side of the bargain". I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing though.
2. Since Lisbon hasn't passed, there's no way of making changes to the other treaties without having a full-on treaty. How do you define the order in which the patches are applied while also guaranteeing that if any one patch is not applied then all of the others will apply cleanly? From my reading of the current treaties, they're just not set up for that kind of modification.

bug

It was suggested on France 24 after the vote by a spokeswoman for libertas that the social versus econmic amendments should have been divided into two separate treaties.

Although not a big fan of libertas I thought this was a fair point.

DishonestPikey

Something along these lines probably would have happened had anyone known what people were thinking. The signs of discontent came too late.