admin @ May 22, 2008 # One Comment
“France was just ahead of all the other countries in voting No. It would happen in all Member States if they have a referendum. There is a cleavage between people and governments…There will be no Treaty if we had a referendum in France, which would again be followed by a referendum in [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # One Comment
“The State may ratify the Treaty of Lisbon signed at Lisbon on the 13th day of December 2007, and may be a member of the European Union established by virtue of that Treaty. No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by membership of [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # One Comment
A new and different European Union:
As is clear from the first of the two key sentences above from the proposed amendment to the Irish Constitution which we shall be voting on in the referendum, the Treaty of Lisbon would create a quite new Federal EU which politically and constitutionally would be fundamentally different from the [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # 3 Comments
Lisbon would give the EU a Constitution indirectly rather than directly: The two basic European Treaties which are currently in force include all the previous treaties from the 1957 Rome Treaty to the 2002 Nice Treaty. The EU Constitution which the French and Dutch said No to would have repealed these two treaties and replaced [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # 4 Comments
Lisbon would make the new Union Constitution superior to the Irish Constitution in all areas of EU law: The Irish Constitution would still remain, but Declaration 17 concerning Primacy, which is attached to the Lisbon Treaty, makes clear that the law of the new Union would have primacy over and be superior to the Irish [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # 3 Comments
Lisbon would give the EU the constitutional form of a supranational European Federal State. It would turn Ireland and the other Member States into regional states of this Federation and would make us all real citizens of it for the first time. It would do this in four legal steps: (a) giving the new European [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # 2 Comments
Lisbon sets out the extensive powers of the new Union it would establish: The new EU’s powers would be conferred on it by its 27 Member States, for they would voluntarily have agreed to obey the EU’s superior authority in the policy areas surrendered, which nowadays cover much the greater part of government. The remaining [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Lisbon would shift influence over law-making and decision-taking in the EU towards the Big States and away from the smaller ones like Ireland: It would do this by replacing the voting system for making EU laws which has existed since the 1957 Rome Treaty by a primarily population-based system which would give most influence to [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Lisbon would remove Ireland’s right to a permanent EU Commissioner: The Treaty proposes to reduce the number of EU Commissioners from the present 27 to 18 (Art.17.5 TEU). Ireland would therefore have no member on the Commission, the body which has the monopoly of proposing all EU laws, for one out of every three Commission [...]
admin @ May 22, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Lisbon would give the European Union the power to make laws in 32 new areas which would be removed from the Dail and other National Parliaments: These new areas of EU law-making include civil and criminal law, justice and policing, public services, immigration, energy, transport, tourism, space, sport, culture, civil protection, intellectual property, public health [...]