NationalPlatform.Org

HOW THE LISBON TREATY WILL AFFECT…

YOUR PAY

1. Lisbon will copperfasten the December 2007 Laval/Vaxholm judgement of the EU Court of Justice, which makes it illegal for Governments or Trade Unions to enforce pay standards higher than the minimum wage for migrant workers. At the same time Lisbon would give the EU full control of immigration policy (Art.79 TFEU). This combination threatens the pay and working conditions of large numbers of Irish people. A new Treaty Protocol is needed to set the Laval judgement aside.

2. Lisbon will amend the existing EU treaties to give the EU Court of Justice the power to rule against Ireland’s 12.5% company tax rate if it decides that this is a “distortion of competition” in the EU’s internal market as compared with Germany’s 30% rate (Art.113 TFEU). This low rate of tax is the principal reason for foreign firms coming to Ireland and staying here when they come.

3. It will give the EU the power to impose its own EU taxes directly on us. The EU Prime Ministers would have to agree this and it would have to be approved by National Parliaments, but if that is done no further referendum would be needed in Ireland (Art.311 TFEU).

YOUR SAY

4. Lisbon is a power-grab by the Big States for control of the new post-Lisbon European Union. By basing EU law-making primarily on population size, the Lisbon Treaty would double Germany’s say on the EU Council of Ministers from 8% to 17%. France’s say would go from 8% today to 13%, and Britain’s and Italy’s from their current 8% to 12% each. Ireland’s voting weight on a population basis would be more than halved to 1% (Art.16 TEU).

5. It removes any Irish voice from the EU Commission, the body which has the monopoly of proposing all EU laws, for five years out of every 15 (Art.17.5 TEU).

6. It abolishes our right to decide who the Irish Commissioner is when it comes to our turn to be on the Commission, replacing it by a right to make “suggestions” only for the Commission President to decide (Art.17.7 TEU).

7. Lisbon will establish a legally quite new European Union in the constitutional form of a Federal EU State. This new EU based on the Lisbon Treaty would have the same name but would be fundamentally different from the present EU, which was founded by the 1993 Maastricht Treaty. Lisbon would turn Ireland into a provincial or regional state within this new Union, with the EU’s Constitution and laws being made superior to the Irish Constitution and laws in any case of conflict between the two. It would be the end of Ireland’s position as an independent sovereign State in the international community of States (Arts.1 and 47 TEU; Declaration No.17 concerning Primacy);

8. It will turn us all into real citizens for the first time of this new post-Lisbon European Union, owing obedience to its laws and loyalty to its authority over and above our obedience and loyalty to Ireland and the Irish Constitution and laws. One can only be a citizen of a State. We would retain our Irish citizenship, but it would be subordinate to our EU Federal citizenship, as is normal for citizens of Federal States such as Germany, the USA, Switzerland, Canada etc. (Art.9 TEU).

9. Lisbon is a self-amending Treaty which would permit the EU Prime Ministers to shift most of the remaining EU policy areas where unanimity still exists, to majority voting, without need for new EU Treaties or referendums (Art.48 TEU).

YOUR WAY OF LIFE

10. Lisbon will give the EU Court of Justice the power to decide our rights as EU citizens, including such matters as the right to life, the right to strike, the rights of the child, the right to fair trial etc. Ireland’s Supreme Court would no longer have the final say (Art.6 TEU).

11. It hands over to the EU the power to make laws binding on us in 32 new policy areas, such as crime, justice and policing, public services, immigration, energy, transport, tourism, sport, culture, public health, the EU budget etc.

12. It will militarize the EU further, requiring Member States “to progressively improve their military capabilities”and to go to the defence of other Member States in the event of war (Art.42.7 TEU). This would make a mockery of traditional Irish neutrality and any pretence to an independent Irish foreign policy.

“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly … All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.” – V.Giscard D’Estaing, former French President, who helped draw up the EU Constitution which the French and Dutch rejected in their 2005 referendums but which is now being implemented through the Lisbon Treaty; Le Monde, 14 June 2007
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Issued by The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, 24 Crawford Ave., Dublin 9; Tel: 01-8305792; Web-site: nationalplatform.org; Secretary Anthony Coughlan. Please photocopy and pass on to others.