Is Lisbon 2 legal?

RandomName2

Well... it's a valid question...


Even though it has become a clichéd attack used by the 'No' side, Lisbon does seek to make constitutional amendments (and hence is a constitution). The political ramifications of this in Europe should be quite considerable. After all constitutional amendment was a by-product of the perversion of democracy by fascism during the 1930s, by which popular movements subverted law in order to secure their supremacy. Thus, the redefining of political power throughout Europe - no matter what its motivation - must be burdened by the vigilance incurred by such disastrous manipulation of the political infrastructure as has hitherto been witnessed.

While this at least has - and will - be aired in the public forum of referendum in Ireland, the actual decision process concerning constitutional amendment has been taken out of the hands of the polis within Europe. Whilst the polis is perhaps not the best body to look to for such serious infrastructural reform - can the same not be said of a political party which has specific interests in the outcome?

The 'Yes' side has voiced its concern that only a million Irish voters, many of whom were badly informed, have impeded the ratification of legislation that effects everyone in Europe.

But let's put that in context.

So far, including the referendum in Ireland there have been roughly 760027 individual votes cast in favour of Lisbon across Europe and 863471 against - albeit with a victory in every individual European parliament (some gave Lisbon almost 100% approval - a bit odd in itself considering the traditional left-right alignment of parties within Europe). Should a French MP’s vote matter more than a vote of an Irish Joe Bloggs? Perhaps, perhaps not.[/SIZE]

But what is clear is that the Irish vote is a joke – and don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this pejoratively. Rather, it is hollow. Whether or not Lisbon II will be passed has already been decided by the fact that politicians throughout Europe almost unanimously approve of it (apart from some crazy socialists or far-right bigots). As it has been ratified already across Europe it behoves us to rubber-stamp it, and if we don’t, we could be forced out of the Union. It seems safe enough to assume that an elected member of parliament would have our best interests at heart, doesn’t it?

That may be so, but – I hate to mention it – Hitler was elected, and he used his elected party’s majority in the Reichstag to force ‘reforms’. Now, lightning can’t possibly strike 27 times; it is unreasonable to consider the possibility that every government in Europe is as extreme as the Nazi party. That’s plain ridiculous. In fact, the extremists seem to be those opposing the treaty.

So what’s the problem?
The problem is that democracy has clearly been subverted in order to pass Lisbon. The problem is the fact that no credible national party in Europe opposes it (or worse, even mentioned it in their manifestos), the fact that the constitution was rejected by the French and Dutch and was reworded to bypass the necessity for referendum. The fact that it has been mooted by our politicians whether or not we are ‘intelligent’ enough to be allowed vote in referenda. This is the problem.[/SIZE]

Now, democracy is over-rated. It is a ‘feel-good’ term that politicians feel the need to bandy about along with ‘global-warming’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘cultural-diversity’. Appropriately all of these are bunged into Lisbon 2 (‘it will fight global warming!’). Let’s cut out this crap for a minute. The treaty seeks to double the vote of the larger European countries in the European Parliament and halve that of the smaller countries. This could be interpreted as a nod to one-man-one-vote; but is clearly an inequitable arrangement whereby the juggernauts of France, Germany and Britain will determine what pan-European laws are passed (along with Italy they form an absolute majority in parliament). If these votes were divided, although the Irish strength would be irrelevant (3 votes versus Germany’s 50), at least we could be assured that the left-right divide in Parliament would dissect any bills that came into its jurisdiction. Maybe, but this has clearly not been the case with the ratification of Lisbon, and the prospect of votes being determined by nationality is a worrying prospect.

At least we might be able to keep our (unelected) commissioner. We have been given a (verbal) guarantee that our commissioner will be present most of the time for a while, at least, after Lisbon is passed. Although, of course, this proviso must itself be illegal as it contradicts the Nice treaty which was previously passed? Never mind, let’s not rock the boat on that one.
Do Europeans want Turkey in the EU? European politicians certainly do, and they will force the issue whether it is popular or not. After all ‘global warming, terrorism, cultural-diversity’. And how can they force it? Well, the Lisbon treaty over-turns the cap on new states entering the Union as outlined by Nice, so the rest is plain-sailing (the Ukraine and Iceland are also short-listed for membership by the way).

So, back to Lisbon. It is designed to streamline the legislative process and produce cohesion. Produce, as it were, a single cohesive body (with an unelected president, of course). Now, as I said, democracy is over-rated, and Lisbon certainly seeks to undermine democracy (the fact that we are even talking about Lisbon II is indicative of this). This might be a good thing, who knows? But our experience of dictatorship throughout modern history augers badly for it.

Whether it is legal or not? That hardly seems to matter by this stage…[/SIZE]

sink

RandomName2 wrote: »

Even though it has become a clichéd attack used by the 'No' side, Lisbon does seek to make constitutional amendments (and hence is a constitution).

Let me stop you there bud, i'm not even going to read the rest of your post. The referendum we a are voting on amends the Irish Constitution to allow the ratification for of the Treaty of Lisbon. The Treaty of Lisbon itself does not amend any constitution, it's therefore asinine to call the Treaty a Constitution. And let me remind you that all the previous referenda on European treaties we have voted on were also to amend our constitution so by your failed logic, the Accession Treaty, The Single European Act, The Maastricht Treaty, The Amsterdam Treaty and the Nice Treaty were all constitutions. Ridiculous :rolleyes:

turgon

This ground has been trod so many times. A few points:

• The constitution is not the same as the Lisbon treaty. Just because it would suit your argument that they would be the same doesn't make it true. Crying a mis-truth 100 times does not make it any truer.
• The votes in France and Netherlands were token anyway, asfaik. The government didn't have to put them to a vote.
• The French did say Yes to Lisbon when they voted Sarkozy as president, given that one of hies election promises was to ratify Lisbon.
• Having a second referendum is the most "democratic" thing to do, when you think about it for more that 5 seconds. Give people another chance to consider the options as it were.
• You were the one said that the Hitler comparison was "ridiculous." So why did you even bring it up? It certainly did not add any gravity to your argument.

Scofflaw

Aye up, here we go again. Rehash of exactly the same old arguments. Lisbon is legal, the second referendum is legal, it has nothing to do with the 1930s, it's definitely not a cunning plan by Herr Hitler because he's dead, the vote-counting trick is very clever, well done, the guarantees will be written down on paper before the second referendum, Turkish accession has been blocked for years by several member states, not least Greece, your calculations of voting weight are both crude and inaccurate, and I'm very sorry you're upset we're voting again.

I hope you get over it, but this is a discussion forum not your blog, and all of those points have been discussed here already. Please choose the appropriate threads.

A small bit of further explanation to clarify the above. The OP is a long post, covering multiple points in polemic form. This is soapboxing - the use of the forum to stand up on your soapbox and orate. It's not conducive to discussion, because there are invariably too many points to be answered...and this is a discussion forum.

moderately
Scofflaw