Max McGuinness on some incoherent opposition to the Lisbon Treaty
You may remember Mary Lou McDonald. Back in 2004, when the conventional wisdom held that the Shinners were set to sweep all before them, she was touted as the party's new face – young, attractive, female, Southern, middle-class, and incapable of stripping and reassembling an Armalite. Mary Lou duly won a seat in the European parliament – Sinn Féin's first in the Republic. Since then it has been downhill.
Her reputation for being telegenic quickly died once RTE producers realised that Mary Lou only ever contributes a particularly impenetrable brand of boilerplate to the discussion. Then, in last year's general election, she slumped to an ignominious defeat in Dublin Central, where Sinn Féin's share of the vote fell by over a third despite years of canvassing by the glamorous Mary Lou.
Her op-ed against the Lisbon Treaty in Tuesday's Irish Times, which can be read here, marks a new low. For it proves that Mary Lou has spent four years as a legislator in Brussels and Strasbourg without developing the faintest understanding about what's going on there.
This is reflected in Mary Lou's simultaneous insistence that the EU should be more democratic and that Ireland should have more power within the Union. The most basic awareness of how the EU works would indicate that these two goals are incompatible.
Insisting that little old Ireland should be able to veto everything in sight is clearly the antithesis of democracy.
The absurdity of Mary Lou's position is summed up in her demand that Ireland should have a permanent EU Commissioner. There are currently 27 Commissioners – one for each member state. This is a temporary arrangement widely agreed to be unsuitable because there simply aren't 27 jobs for 27 Commissioners to perform. The Treaty will thus reduce the number of Commissioners to 18. A smaller Commission means more streamlined decision making and less bureaucracy. Now, clearly 27 member states may not all continue to have at least one Commissioner all the time. Does Mary Lou really believe that Ireland, one of the smallest states in the Union, has a unique God-given right to a permanent Commissioner while Germany, France, Italy, and the UK should go without? Or does she believe we should keep all the pointless extra Commissioners just for the hell of it?
Mary Lou also seems to think that the Irish Commissioner is there primarily to fight Ireland's corner, which means she either doesn't know or doesn't care that Commissioners are duty-bound to ignore national interests. Indeed, by and large, Commissioners have a good record of acting on behalf of Europe as a whole rather than their own member states.
Mary Lou says she is in favour of strengthening democracy in the EU. Why then is she opposed to the Lisbon Treaty, which increases the powers of the elected European Parliament? As an analysis of the impact of the Lisbon Treaty by the UK House of Lords puts it:
"The Lisbon Treaty considerably increases the powers of the European Parliament—in particular because of the extension of codecision to a substantially larger range of areas, including agriculture, fisheries, transport and structural funds, in addition to the whole of the current "third pillar" of justice and home affairs—to the extent that the European Parliament will become co-legislator for most European laws. This will have an effect on the balance of power between the institutions."
The House of Lords' analysis is a lucid, unbiased exposition of the Treaty, which is itself quite unreadable for being framed as a series of amendments to previous treaties. The Lords' EU committee responsible for the analysis includes rabid Eurosceptics like Lord Blackwell so there is no doubt about the analysis's impartiality. The whole thing can be read and downloaded here. It is a much more substantial and well-researched account of the Treaty than anything our own Referendum Commission will ever put together.
Mary Lou clearly does not have a clue about how to increase democracy at the EU, which is hampered by small-minded NIMBY defenders of national sovereignty like herself.
There is more nonsense in Tuesday's article, starting with the typical hypocrisy of Sinn Féin's insistence on preserving Irish "neutrality." Neutrality is a myth whose time has long since passed. Ireland should and does contribute to EU missions in places like Afghanistan, Congo and Chad, where Europe is engaged in promoting a moral agenda of democracy, human rights and stability. Sinn Féin have never been keen on any of those things. So what do you expect?
Further, Mary Lou says the EU should be promoting "fair trade over free trade." What the hell does she mean? "Fair trade" is a marginal movement to give producers of commodities in Developing countries a higher price for their goods. It's a form of commercial charity which is compatible with free trade; it is manifestly not the basis of an alternative international economic system. The EU is built on free trade and the essence of the philosophy behind the Union's creation is that "if good do not cross borders, armies will." The EU should extend free trade beyond its own borders to countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The perseverance of the "Fortress Europe" mentality is indeed a valid criticism of the Union. But Mary Lou prefers empty slogans to sincere attempts at positive change.
Since the Dublin constituency has been reduced from four to three seats, Mary Lou has little hope of hanging onto her seat at the next Euro election in 2009. She will not be missed. Hers is the narrow nationalism which the EU was set up to counteract. Mary Lou may be a pretty face but deep down it's the same old ugliness.
Unless you understand every single word in the entire unabridged treaty you should vote No, otherwise you are a danger to the freedoms and liberties inherit to democracy and what the vote stands for.
If you read a concise version and base your decision on that you are giving your power of the vote to the writer of that panflet. To create a concise version requires that information be left out namely in this case the complex parts which will matter the most in the coming years should we follow leaders blindly and vote Yes.
Look into how the Lisbon treaty ties in with our own Terrorism Act.
Posted by: Randomer | May 13, 2008 at 16:41