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give up more irish sovereignty to try save a failing EU?
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24-11-2011 11:09pm#1
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Not a chance in hell will I vote to give a single letter of sovereignty away, ever again.
Of course, it doesn't matter. If we don't vote the right way, we will have to vote again, in Sarkozy's own words. Even if 100% of the Irish people vote no, it will be rerun and rerun and rerun.
I was thinking this over recently and a hilarious scenario came into my head, whereby they started re-holding the referendum every 2 weeks, every second Friday, and going in to vote no became a routine matter like doing a weekly shop or buying your train tickets.
"What'd you do today?"
"Ah the usual, went to the gym, got some shopping done, voted no on Lisbon 45234346123, took the dog out for a walk and went for a pint with some of the lads. You?" 0 -
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The answer is, I think, that the things you believe are "undemocratic" are things I don't think are undemocratic - they're mostly what I would consider part of how democracy works.
You've cited a number of things there, such as the belief that parliamentary ratification is undemocratic, that repeat referendums are undemocratic, and that the decisions of the Greek parliament were undemocratic. I suspect I could probably add that you believe the formation of a technocratic government in Italy is undemocratic, although you didn't mention that one.
I don't think any of those things are undemocratic - each and every one of them is part of democracy. Arguing that they're undemocratic, to me, simply says that the person arguing it doesn't understand how democratic states function constitutionally, or apparently that there even any possibility of different constitutional forms of democracy. That the same people often fail to understand the nature of the democratic deficit in Ireland (or the EU) just reinforces that view.
So the answer to your question is that I'll see a problem with "democracy being trampled on" when that's actually what's happening.
cordially,
Scofflaw
I don't actually consider parliamentary ratification or repeat referenda as undemocratic, it is the manner in which they are performed which makes them undemocratic.
For instance: When the people flatly reject a document, to openly and literally re-word it so as to remove the necessity for asking the people again, while doing everything possible to preserve the integrity of the document, is in my view profoundly undemocratic. It's bypassing the decision of the people based on technicalities. When the French and Dutch rejected the Constitution, we must assume they were rejecting the entire document, not merely the elements of it which made a referendum necessary in the first place.
Likewise, the issue I have in the case of Greece is fairly simple: The government of Greece announces a referendum, and are immediately attacked on all sides by other nations over the referendum itself, and the wording of that referendum. These other nations even go as far as to propose the wording of that referendum themselves, a wording which is totally removed from the original intention of the referendum, even though as external actors they have absolutely no right whatsoever to dictate what an internal poll in a member state should look like.
In the case of Ireland, we were deceived by lies. I don't need to go into detail on this one as it has, in my view, been done to death on these boards, however I will simply cite two examples:
1: Brian Lenihan after Lisbon II.
Summary for those who can't watch: Brian Lenihan claimed in an interview that "We never promised jobs" (I forget which interview but I'll link to it as soon as I remember), and you will then see many images of him holding "VOTE YES FOR JOBS" signs.
2: We were given guarantees under Lisbon II about our corporate tax sovereignty, yet over the course of the last year this has come up again and again and again as something Sarkozy has attempted to destroy. While this isn't direct dishonesty with regard to Lisbon specifically, it's still incredibly dishonest. We were lead to believe that these guarantees safeguarded our corporate tax regime and that the EU would back off. This did not happen.
I will also give you a simple quote from Sarkozy himself: "The Irish must vote again."
What gives him, or anyone else, the right to tell us what a democratic nation "must" do when their democratic decision doesn't go his way? Oh sure, you can say, as you have before, that Sarkozy doesn't speak for the EU, but that press conference last week on Greece where Sarkozy and Merkel implied themselves as the be all and end all of decision making in Europe begs to differ.and that the decisions of the Greek parliament were undemocratic. I suspect I could probably add that you believe the formation of a technocratic government in Italy is undemocratic, although you didn't mention that one.
It is undemocratic in the sense that the sovereign, elected government of the nation tried to do one thing, and the EU more or less piled on enough pressure to force them to change their mind or get out of office. This is fundamentally despicable. In the case of Greece, after the referendum was announced, the press conference essentially broadcast a message of "either change your decision or GTFO". And I honestly don't understand how anyone who believes in any form of democracy can be anything but appalled over how these events have played out.
In terms of Italy, I'll confess that I need to update myself on that situation, I haven't let it slip by me out of apathy but simply because there is so much going on right now all over the world and I've been playing catch up n several other stories for the last week or two. I'll read up on this one and make an argument about it as soon as I'm clued in.
But my original question still stands. How far does this autocratic overriding of national sovereignty by the EU have to go before it upsets you? Or is it simply that you don't really mind it, and it wouldn't upset you at all?
When I see Merkel and Sarkozy giving a joint press conference and painting themselves as the ultimate rulers of Europe, I see a serious, serious democratic problem there. They certainly had no right whatsoever to attempt to interfere in an internal referendum in a sovereign state.
Back on topic, in this thread we are talking about signing away further sovereignty to the EU. Again I ask you, if you are ok with that, then that's a perfectly valid viewpoint. I'm curious to know, however, where you draw the line, if indeed you do draw any line. At what point will it have gone too far for your liking? At what point will the Irish parliament be so powerless to decide on Irish law and Irish affairs that you can no longer tolerate it?0 -
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hatrickpatrick wrote: »Not a chance in hell will I vote to give a single letter of sovereignty away, ever again.
Of course, it doesn't matter. If we don't vote the right way, we will have to vote again, in Sarkozy's own words. Even if 100% of the Irish people vote no, it will be rerun and rerun and rerun.
I was thinking this over recently and a hilarious scenario came into my head, whereby they started re-holding the referendum every 2 weeks, every second Friday, and going in to vote no became a routine matter like doing a weekly shop or buying your train tickets.
"What'd you do today?"
"Ah the usual, went to the gym, got some shopping done, voted no on Lisbon 45234346123, took the dog out for a walk and went for a pint with some of the lads. You?"
while a lot of peoples initial gut reaction will be to oppose a referendum which seeks to further centralise political descision making , when push comes to shove , people will vote with thier pockets , beit the increase in interest rates which would come about as a result of a euro exit or the cut in wages and wellfare for those who rely on the state for thier income , germany will get what it wants out of ireland
i myself will vote no0 -
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This post had been deleted.
You have to admit that mr greenspan was lauded and I recall people touting a future book of his as an automatic best seller.
Do you seriously think that any business can regulate itself ?
Again the US government may have decided to lower interest rates, but did they make the decisions in the banks to create fancy derivatives ultimately dependent on subprime mortgages ?This post had been deleted.
Fecking hell cheer up it's Friday.This post had been deleted.
Governments can move things forward.
The first government of the state decided on the Shannon scheme and that had untold positive effects.
Lemass I beliebv moved things forward, sadly after that eejit Dev held us back.
He actually predicted that the danger of semi states was that they woud not exist for the benefit of the state and it's citizens but for themselves.This post had been deleted.
Sadly this is true but what or who will be the priority of the French and German leaders ?This post had been deleted.
Ah come on.
I would prefer a cross between Sean Lemass, Michael O'Leary, Shane Ross, Denis Brosnan and Michael Collins, but sadly genetic engineering is not up to it yet.
This post had been deleted.
The pensions timebomb is going to hit the western world, bar maybe Norway.
There are also pension timebombs in the US.This post had been deleted.
Ah come on we know it was obvious that a one size fits all could have problems down the road where one part of the Eurozone was way more productive and fiscally conservative than other parts.
But did anyone foresee that one county would fabricate their books or worst still that no one spotted it ?
Did anyone foresee that the banking establishment within countries could completely meltdown ?
Did you think 8 or 9 years ago that our top two high street banks would face insolvency or that the likes of Bear Sterns or Lehmans would face ruin ?This post had been deleted.
Yes, but as a vehiment rabid anti ffer and anti union, I hate when people tar me as bewing a proponent of them.
It would be like me calling you a socialist.This post had been deleted.
We should have left some of them collapse.
BTW it wasn't meddling politicans in so much as the leaders of the private sector capitalist powerhouses demanding that they be bailed out and threatening argameddon if they were not.This post had been deleted.
Ah come on dragging Africa into this argument is like dragging in Liz Taylor into an argument against marriage.I am not allowed discuss …
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hatrickpatrick wrote: »I don't actually consider parliamentary ratification or repeat referenda as undemocratic, it is the manner in which they are performed which makes them undemocratic.
For instance: When the people flatly reject a document, to openly and literally re-word it so as to remove the necessity for asking the people again, while doing everything possible to preserve the integrity of the document, is in my view profoundly undemocratic. It's bypassing the decision of the people based on technicalities. When the French and Dutch rejected the Constitution, we must assume they were rejecting the entire document, not merely the elements of it which made a referendum necessary in the first place.
There were no "elements of it which made a referendum necessary in the first place". Both the Dutch and French referendums were political decisions, not legal ones. Neither country has any legal trigger for a referendum. They are - how does one put this - not Ireland. They have different constitutional arrangements.hatrickpatrick wrote: »Likewise, the issue I have in the case of Greece is fairly simple: The government of Greece announces a referendum, and are immediately attacked on all sides by other nations over the referendum itself, and the wording of that referendum. These other nations even go as far as to propose the wording of that referendum themselves, a wording which is totally removed from the original intention of the referendum, even though as external actors they have absolutely no right whatsoever to dictate what an internal poll in a member state should look like.
Again, no. The Greek PM called for a referendum on accepting or rejecting the deal being offered by other countries, and were told by the other countries that a rejection of the deal would effectively be a rejection of the euro, because there wouldn't be another deal to keep them in it, and they couldn't stay in it bust. On that basis, the Greek Parliament and Papandreou's own party unseated Papandreou, the only person who had proposed a referendum. He never had the backing of his own Parliament to hold a referendum.hatrickpatrick wrote: »In the case of Ireland, we were deceived by lies. I don't need to go into detail on this one as it has, in my view, been done to death on these boards, however I will simply cite two examples:
1: Brian Lenihan after Lisbon II.
Summary for those who can't watch: Brian Lenihan claimed in an interview that "We never promised jobs" (I forget which interview but I'll link to it as soon as I remember), and you will then see many images of him holding "VOTE YES FOR JOBS" signs.
You weren't deceived by it, so I sometimes wonder who you think was stupid enough to be deceived by it. The answer appears to be the Irish electorate, which makes me wonder why you claim to be more attached to democracy than me when your opinion of the electorate is so very much lower than mine.hatrickpatrick wrote: »2: We were given guarantees under Lisbon II about our corporate tax sovereignty, yet over the course of the last year this has come up again and again and again as something Sarkozy has attempted to destroy. While this isn't direct dishonesty with regard to Lisbon specifically, it's still incredibly dishonest. We were lead to believe that these guarantees safeguarded our corporate tax regime and that the EU would back off. This did not happen.
The guarantee is very simple, although apparently not simple enough. It says that Lisbon gave the EU no new powers over tax. If you confuse "the EU" and the legal powers of the EU with Sarkozy and the ability of another EU nation to push for something it wants, that's because you have comprehensively failed to understand what was said in the first place. Which I'm sorry to say is exactly what you've done. You don't understand the guarantee. It doesn't protect against another EU member state pushing for something.hatrickpatrick wrote: »I will also give you a simple quote from Sarkozy himself: "The Irish must vote again."
What gives him, or anyone else, the right to tell us what a democratic nation "must" do when their democratic decision doesn't go his way? Oh sure, you can say, as you have before, that Sarkozy doesn't speak for the EU, but that press conference last week on Greece where Sarkozy and Merkel implied themselves as the be all and end all of decision making in Europe begs to differ.
Well, no, it doesn't. The whole point of the EU is that France and Germany can only throw their weight around through appropriate legal channels, and with the agreement of the other Member States. Nothing, but nothing, makes France and Germany the same size as us, and nothing conceivable will.
What you're seeing at the moment is largely an inter-governmental Europe, which is what eurosceptics want - the EFSF isn't an EU fund, it's an intergovernmental one, so the bailouts are basically happening through old-fashioned 'diplomacy' and horse-trading. But this is what people who don't like the EU want more of, not less.hatrickpatrick wrote: »It is undemocratic in the sense that the sovereign, elected government of the nation tried to do one thing, and the EU more or less piled on enough pressure to force them to change their mind or get out of office. This is fundamentally despicable. In the case of Greece, after the referendum was announced, the press conference essentially broadcast a message of "either change your decision or GTFO". And I honestly don't understand how anyone who believes in any form of democracy can be anything but appalled over how these events have played out.
In terms of Italy, I'll confess that I need to update myself on that situation, I haven't let it slip by me out of apathy but simply because there is so much going on right now all over the world and I've been playing catch up n several other stories for the last week or two. I'll read up on this one and make an argument about it as soon as I'm clued in.
But my original question still stands. How far does this autocratic overriding of national sovereignty by the EU have to go before it upsets you? Or is it simply that you don't really mind it, and it wouldn't upset you at all?
When I see Merkel and Sarkozy giving a joint press conference and painting themselves as the ultimate rulers of Europe, I see a serious, serious democratic problem there. They certainly had no right whatsoever to attempt to interfere in an internal referendum in a sovereign state.
They had every right to set the results of what the outcome would be. It's like saying that you're free to commit crimes, but society sets a penalty on doing so. Society doesn't take away your free will - the equivalent of democracy - you can choose to be stupid. Whining that someone who sets out the consequences of taking a stupid decision is interfering with your right to decide is idiotic.hatrickpatrick wrote: »Back on topic, in this thread we are talking about signing away further sovereignty to the EU. Again I ask you, if you are ok with that, then that's a perfectly valid viewpoint. I'm curious to know, however, where you draw the line, if indeed you do draw any line. At what point will it have gone too far for your liking? At what point will the Irish parliament be so powerless to decide on Irish law and Irish affairs that you can no longer tolerate it?
I think that's a separate - and interesting - question, and I'll come back to it when I'm not exhausted by consideration of your apparently limitless ability to misunderstand how constitutional democracy works in the real world.
cordially,
Scofflaw0 -
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Like I said temporary arrangements in the face of crises can often turn out more permanent than originally planned or wanted. The Italian setup is due to run for 2 years. As for the Greek setup I quote Merkel "It's not enough that the troika comes and goes every three months. It would be desirable to have a permanent supervision in Greece", so how that goes down in the future may be interesting.
Less democracy over the last decades? We had many EU referendums in this country courtesy of a legal requirement that insists on one if the constitution may be affected. Now we've had and still have wittering back and forth about Lisbon A New Hope and Lisbon the EU strikes back* and no doubt it will continue, but how many other EU member states got the opportunity to vote yay or nay on that treaty? We even got the chance to vote twice on it. Which was nice. That treaty wasn't the only example where treaties were passed without going to the people of other EU countries. Clearly it was a democratic process in this country, so what does one call the lack of that process elsewhere?
Look at the ECB. A very powerful arm of the EU. Last time I looked the president was elected to the post by elected officials, but isn't exactly accountable to them. They don't publish the internal voting or minutes of meetings of the ECB too regularly. Not exactly transparent or accountable.
Lets look at the EU as a whole and european voters as a group. What electoral power do they have today if they chose to voice it? They can vote for or against European parliamentary members, but the parliament is hardly bristling with power. They could vote against local governments to affect changes in the EU, but that's hard to do in a coordinated way EU wide. As more and more decisions are made in the EU that directly affect local policies this electoral power is less than it was over local policies 20 years ago. Especially on the fiscal front. This crisis may well underline that.
My 3 cents anyway.
*couldn't resist. A c'mon it had to be done. Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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The situation in Ireland, Italy and Greece can be characterised as a transition from Democracy to Republic. Less democracy, but ultimately better conditions for citizens.
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