The Lisbon Treaty

A New EU Constitution?

Recently the Heads of State in the EU approved a draft "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe". If this Draft is adopted, it will repeal all the European treaties up to the Treaty of Nice. Until now, the EU has been a free association of independent nation-states. But this Treaty will abolish the sovereignty of the individual member states and establish, with all the force of law, a new nation-state — the EU — in which the existing Member States are reduced to the constitutional status of regions or provinces of a superior single “ European State”.

To make this quite clear: the proposed EU Constitution will hand over our national sovereignty from Ireland to Brussels. Ireland, long a Nation, will be "A Province Once Again". The Constitution of this new EU proclaims itself to be superior to the Constitutions and law of its Member States, effectively in all areas of public policy.

This would be a profound change from the present European Union, where EC law operates mainly in the relatively narrow area of economics; the individual states still have independence in other areas of national life such as foreign and security policy, crime, justice and home affairs, health, education, social security etc – although subject to innumerable "EU Directives". Already the nations of the EU have less independence from Brussels than the States of the USA have from Washington.

Our legal sovereign will be this new EU — NOT the Republic of Ireland. Under the Constitution we would become real citizens of the EU for the first time, not just as an honorary title, but with rights and obligations direct to the EU Institutions rather than, as present, through our own national institutions.

But do the peoples of Europe really want their countries to be demoted to this subordinate status?

Not one of the 25 EU State parliaments was given the opportunity to discuss beforehand whether the EU needed be founded on its own Constitution like this, or to discuss the implications of such a step.

Where did the idea for this Constitution come from? Opponents of the growing centralisation of the EU have been warning for many years that the free trading association of European nations was in danger from forces that would try to take more and more power from the individual states.

In 2001, the Laeken Declaration of EU Presidents and Premiers was given the mandate of making proposals to tackle the EU's lack of democracy, to consider restoring powers from Brussels to Member States and to consider "the possibility…in the long run" of the text of a possible cons-titution. A 'Convention on the Future of Europe' was called. But instead of following the mandate, the Convention rushed headlong into drafting this Constitution that •centralises the EU into a State, •removes important remaining powers from national parliaments and citizens, and •does not propose to return one single power from Brussels to the Member States — the very opposite of the purpose for which it was called.

The new EU constitution cannot take effect unless it is ratified by all member states. Many countries will require only the assent of their politicians. Thanks to our existing Irish Constitution, this kind of change cannot be imposed upon us without a National Referendum. But if we vote "Yes", it will be our last referendum on Constitutional Change – we will have voted away our own right, at present protected by our National Constitution, to be consulted.

Is this what the peoples of Europe asked for?

[For further info, see <http://www.teameurope.info> and The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, 24 Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9. We thank Anthony Coughlan of the National Platform for permission to use information provided by him].