Libertas.org

10. Summary
 
It is hard to think of any major function of a State which the new European Union would not have if the Lisbon Treaty were to be ratified. The main one would seem to be the power to make its Member States go to war against their will.  The Treaty does provide that the EU may go to war while individual Member States may "constructively abstain".

The obligation on the Union to "provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies"(Art. TEC/TFU 269 a), which means raising its "own resources" to finance them, may be regarded as conferring on it wide taxation and revenue-raising powers, although these would require unanimity to exercise.   Currrently public expenditure and the tax measures needed to finance it remain overwhelmingly at national state level. This is because such social services as health, education, social security and public housing, as well as defence, policing and  public transport -  the government functions which cost most money - are still mainly at this level.

However the new European Union would have its own government, with a legislative, executive and judicial arm, its own political President, its own citizens and citizenship, its own human and civil rights code, its own currency, economic policy and revenue, its own international treaty-making powers, foreign policy, foreign minister, diplomatic corps and United Nations voice, its own crime and justice code and Public Prosecutor.  It already possesses such normal State symbols as its own flag, anthem, motto and annual official holiday.

The peoples of Europe do not want this kind of highly centralized Federal European Union whose most striking feature is that it is run virtually entirely by committees of politicians, bureaucrats and judges, none of whom are directly elected by the people. The Constitutional Treaty setting it up has already been rejected by the French and the Dutch in 2005.  As French President Nicolas Sarkozy has admitted, the Prime Ministers and Presidents have agreed among themselves on no account to have referendums on the Renamed Constitutional Treaty, for that would be rejected everywhere again.

Irish people would be striking a blow for democracy and showing their solidarity with their fellow-Europeans across the EU by resoundingly rejecting the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution in this country too and telling the EU's Prime Ministers and Presidents to go back and think again.

As the Former President of Germany Roman Herzog put it:

“People have an ever increasing feeling that something is going wrong; that an untransparent, complex, mammoth institution has evolved: divorced from practical problems and national traditions; grabbing ever greater competences and areas of power; that the democratic control mechanisms are failing - in brief, that it cannot go on like this.” (Die Welt, March 2007)