Lisbon vote October 2nd - How do you intend to vote?

lykoris wrote: »

a. referenda occur at a state level in Germany all the time and are 100% legal. While at the federal level they are not legal it would be possible to have state wide votes.

so you're completely incorrect to state that "referenda are illegal in Germany."

b. I don't speak Italian but this would suggest that legislative & constituional referenda can occur in Italy under certain circumstances

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Italy

so the blanket statement that referenda are illegal in Italy is another point you have made that is incorrect

It would have been worth reading the full article there, though:

It is forbidden to call a referendum regarding financial laws, laws relating to pardons, or the ratification of international treaties:

What's actually in the Italian Constitution is:

A referendum is not permitted in the case of tax, budget, amnesty and pardon laws, in authorization or ratification of international treaties.

lykoris wrote: »

These are two countries for which solutions could be found if they wanted to put the question to the people of Europe. 2/27.

So, no - referendums are, for the purposes of ratifying Lisbon, illegal in both Italy and Germany.

lykoris wrote: »

I read numerous sentences in various posts (by Irish people living in Ireland) whilst I paraphrase, Europeans are all pro Lisbon and all want the Irish to vote yes.

The one point I wanted to make was to give the impression from my local perspective here that the above 'European perspective' isn't at all accurate.

I've been living/working here(Luxembourg) for the past 7 years and have friends/colleagues throughout the European institutions here in Luxembourg/ quite a few in Brussels also and it is not all pro lisbon the way the prior messages would appear to tell you.

It's not all negative either or anti-Lisbon.

In retrospect, perhaps I should have directly addressed what was being said and stated it is audacious to state you know what the people of Europe think. Not that I claim I do but given I read the media coverage of Benelux plus France/Germany (and have lived here for 7 years) I would have a more informed opinion of what Europeans think than some guy in Cork(purely as an example) that only speaks English.

In fact, those posts are usually in answer to the claim that everyone in Europe wants Ireland to vote No. I think it's pretty obvious from the results of previous referendums that there isn't a single European opinion one way or the other - it would be extremely surprising if there were. However, that hasn't prevented regular claims that "the only people in Europe who'll be upset by an Irish No are the politicians". That's patently false.

cordially,
Scofflaw

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Representatives are supposed to represent the people. If they are pushing a policy which the vast majority of the people are opposed to, they are not representing the people at all.

Representing the people doesn't simply consist of following the opinion polls. Indeed, as we all know, that's a recipe for disaster, and considered, quite correctly, to be pathetically weak government.

The government's job is to do what is best for the country. They may or may not be good at it, and you may or may not agree with their view on what is best for the country, but that is, nevertheless, their job - not simply to follow the people, but to provide leadership. On occasion, that will involve a policy that is unpopular but necessary or beneficial - such as higher taxes, service cuts, learner drivers requiring to be accompanied, the plastic bag levy, the ban on non-smokeless fuel in Dublin.

Nobody can seriously argue that the government should spend its entire time in office following opinion polls. Therefore the claim that the government isn't "representing the people" always boils down to "they're not doing what I think they should do".

cordially,
Scofflaw

Freeborn John wrote: »

Democratic legitimacy depends on the 'consent of the governed' which plainly does not exist for a federal Europe as per Lisbon. That is why there was a NO in Ireland in 2008 and in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Europeans engaging with illegitimate Brussels rule will not make it legitmate. What is needed is to reduce the EU's power. A real reform treaty that did just that would win support, but Lisbon does the opposite in perpetuating the old 'integration by stealth' agenda. It is a treaty which deserves to fail, and i am increasingly confident it will finally be killed of on October 2.

Your post, as ever, is full of assumptions you believe to be above challenge - that there is no "consent of the governed" (where are the riots? why do people vote in European elections?), that "Europeans engaging with illegitimate Brussels rule will not make it legitimate" (why not? isn't that the "consent of the governed"?), and that "reform" should only mean "reduce".

While your position is entirely legitimate, it makes your criticisms of the EU redundant. You don't want it, you think it should go away - that's fully understood, even if you sometimes fail to make it clear - so any comment you might make on the EU starts from the assumption that it's wrong, and works out from there to exactly how it's wrong (answer: it's illegitimate!). A long and futile exercise in circular reasoning, of the usual faith-based sort, rendered all the less interesting by its tone of hysterical indignation. "Anti-EU of Swindon" writes...

I have no problem with the legitimacy of the EU at the European level. I don't see it as a replacement for national government, and I don't think it's trying to be. I would like the additional democratic measures that Lisbon brings in, and I am simply going to discard your arguments against it on the basis that they consist of a flat refusal to recognise the legitimacy of an elected Parliament whose legitimacy I accept, and to whom I give legitimacy both by electing a representative to it and by engaging with it in the role it actually occupies.

regards,
Scofflaw

Freeborn John wrote: »

A high turnout in elections for illegitimate government does not make it legitimate. Turnout in Iraq to vote for Saddam Hussein was near 100%.

Scofflaw is deliberately confusing two things; a vote to decide IF the power of the EU is legitimate (which is what the vote in June 2008 was) and a vote to decide WHO exercises power (which is what that for the EU Parliament is about).

Scofflaw is certainly not confusing those two things - you are. The European Parliament is entirely legitimate, within its remit, because people vote for it, just as they just have. There is no other real test of legitimacy. The vote on Lisbon was a vote on changes to the EU, not on the legitimacy of the EU.

Honestly, you really just live in your own made-up world, don't you? There's people out here in reality with opinions different from yours.

slight regards,
Scofflaw

Freeborn John wrote: »

Did those who voted Sinn Féin in elections to the Westminster parliament regard it as legitimate?

No, because in a way, it's vote saying it is illegitimate as their MEP's do not sit there.

Even SF MEP's sit in the European parliament.

Freeborn John wrote: »

Indeed, but scofflaw is incorrectly claiming that the very fact someone votes in elections to the EU Parliament legitimates whatever power the EU has.

By his logic the regime in North Korea is legitimate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_North_Korea

...because there's no difference at all between free and unfree elections. Sure. Right. Uh-huh. Next up - Zimbabwe. Then Nazi Germany. Oh, wait, those were referendums.

laughing - at you, not with you,
Scofflaw

Freeborn John wrote: »

You are in denial. There is a severe EU crisis of legitimacy as confirmed by the failed ratifications of Lisbon in Ireland, France and the Netherlands and the certain knowledge it would be defeated in many more countries if the voters of those countries had not been denied a say. It was not me that caused all those defeated referendums, so there is no way you can say this legitimacy crisis is a figment of my imagination.

You however have no explanation for all these defeated referendums. Instead it is you that invents a fiction that has no other purpose than to obscure the established facts of their results; namely that elections that are about something else (who your MEP is) give the EU a legitimacy which the peoples of multiple countries refuse when asked directly at every opportunity they are given.

We went over the claim of a "severe EU crisis of legitimacy", which was found to be false, based as it was then was on the claim that the fall in EU parliamentary election turnout had fallen drastically. In fact, it turned out that there was a slight fall, very much in line with the fall in general and local election turnouts, and that the apparent "fall" was based on the entry to the EU of post-communist countries with no democratic tradition and turnout rates of 20%. That argument having been disproven (and using, as it did, the European election turnout as a measure of EU legitimacy, something you now deny as meaningful), we find that you have moved on to referendums, where you are about to get another hiding.

The defeat of two referendums recently hardly suggest any crisis of legitimacy, any more than the defeats of Nice and Maastricht did, and for the same reasons - that referendums are largely about other issues (see, for example, all the campaign issues raised by the No side, and indeed by the official Yes side, virtually none of which had anything to do with the EU, let alone the Treaty), and that when you look at the total of votes cast, you find that the balance is in favour, not opposed. Nor are such referendum defeats new, as also shown by Nice and Maastricht. Finally, it would be impossible in any case for them to show a problem with the majority view of the EU, since they are only held in a minority of countries.

That there are certain countries in which the EU is not popularly considered legitimate is undeniable - you're living in the most obvious example, the UK, which probably colours your perception. However, the obvious solution to that isn't the dissolution of the EU, but the withdrawal of the UK.

regards,
Scofflaw