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THE SESSION COMMENCED ON 10TH APRIL 2008 AS FOLLOWS:
Opening remarks from Chairman Maurice Hayes
Concluding remarks from Chairman Maurice Hayes
Our theme today, the 91st plenary meeting of the Forum, is the Institutional Arrangements under the Treaty of Lisbon. It is the second of our series of focussed discussions on key areas of interest to Ireland under the Treaty. It is clear from our series of public information meetings around the country that people generally want to know and understand the arrangements, the proposed changes and the implications of these so that they can form a judgment for themselves.
I am very pleased to welcome both our speakers today to the Forum.
David Byrne was Attorney General from 1997 until 1999. In September 1999 he was appointed European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, with particular responsibility for food safety, public health and consumer protection. He served in that capacity until 2004 dealing with many issues which directly affected the health and well‑being of people across Europe. He has spoken at the Forum before, including, most recently, at a session in Cork last November.
Susan George is a distinguished author of more than a dozen books, translated into many languages. She is well known for her studies in global poverty, food insecurity and the impact of debt on the developing world. Her latest book is Highjacking America, How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think. She is chair of the Planning Board of the Transnational Institute, a decentralised fellowship of scholars living throughout the world whose work is intended to contribute to social justice and who are active in civil society in their own countries. She is based in France and is a leading opponent of the Treaty of Lisbon.
I will call first on David Byrne to speak, then Susan George. Then, as usual, I will take a range of questions and bring the speakers in, take another range of questions and give each of the speakers time at the end to respond and to give their own reflections on the debate.
So I have great pleasure, indeed, in asking David Byrne to begin.
Mr Chairman, if I may be permitted, before I go into the meat of the discussion, to recall the day that is in it, the day that we are meeting, 10th April, which is the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. We don't often remember where we have been ten years ago but I reflected on this, this morning, remembering that's where I was ten years ago, in Belfast for the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. And reflecting on that, I am cognisant of the fact that there were many participants and many people who gave their time and efforts and inspiration to the Good Friday Agreement, not least Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair but also, let me say, the European Union. I believe the European Union requires acknowledgement, is entitled to acknowledgement for the work that it has done. And not just in the provision of funding in the peace programmes after the Anglo Irish Agreement in 1995, but also in the inspiration that it provided in how decision making can be undertaken with layers of governance, whether it is Member State level or Brussels level and this, in fact, was the genius of the outcome of the Good Friday Agreement in Belfast ten years ago. This awareness that layers of decision making, the inter‑weaving layers of decision making was the way to go; whether it was the power sharing executive in Northern Ireland where there was the North‑South ministerial body, the North‑South implementation bodies, decision making in London, decision making in Dublin and, indeed, decision making in Brussels. These different layers of decision making tend to dissipate the conflict, conflictual situations and allow a more consensual outcome to be achieved in situations such as the one that I am describing. So, let me just acknowledge that today and say that one of the inspirations for the resolution of conflict in Northern Ireland, in fact, was the European Union, and indeed to recall the foundation of this great enterprise that we are involved in, where the vision of Monet and Schumann, the establishment of the Economic Coal and Steel Community, that inspiration was to ensure that there would be no more wars, there would be peace in Europe and to find that was again part of the inspiration for the Good Friday Agreement ten years ago is something that I think needs to be acknowledged and to appreciate.
In any discussion on the EU Reform Treaty I think we probably must start with a reference to the preamble and drawing from the preamble we find the values of the European Union clearly expressed there, being human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law, respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. This is something that we may discuss during the morning, particularly with reference to the inclusion in the Annex to the Reform Treaty of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and, of course, the capacity now for the EU to sign and ratify the European Convention on Human Rights.
I think that when we discuss the Reform Treaty, we must acknowledge that the purpose of this piece of legislation, draft legislation, relates to the EU institutions. These are the core elements of that document. It is not focusing on the central economic policy, frameworks remain largely untouched, such as the single market, the CAP and the EMU. This is an institutional issue. And the issues; there are some innovations in relation to this and the institutional arrangements, but the balance of the institutional relationships remain unaltered, and significantly the interests of small Member States are properly and effectively protected.
The institutional arrangements that are contained in the Reform Treaty, in fact, repeat and echo what was contained in the Constitutional Treaty, which was negotiated during the Irish Presidency in 2004.
I am afraid there is a bit of mathematics involved in any discussion on the institutions of the European Union and I am sorry to have to bore you with this, but perhaps we might just skim over this fairly quickly. I think it is important to acknowledge that the Nice Treaty already identified that we needed to reduce the membership of the European Commission on the arrival of the 27th Member State. We now have got to the point where we do have the 27th Member State in the European Union. And there was a realisation that we needed to reduce the number of Commissioners, for a number of reasons. First of all, there were probably insufficient portfolios to go round, so there was an element of restraint involved in that, and also there was an element of it being ineffective if there were too many people round the Commission table. I remember when I was there on enlargement on 1st May 2004, the biggest enlargement when ten new Member States arrived, there were already twenty Commissioners sitting at the table at that time on the then configuration of two from the large Members States and one from the small Member States, there were twenty of us in existence. Ten new Member States arrived, there were 30 of us sitting around the table. I can tell you this was a fairly large and, to some extent, a fairly unwieldily configuration. The fact that it is now going to be reduced in this proposed Treaty seems to me to be the right way forward.
The idea now is that there will equality between all Member States. There will be rotation of members. Each Member State will have one Commissioner and will occupy the chair in two Commissions out of three. So in any fifteen year period where there are three Commissions of five years each, each Member State will have a Commissioner at the table in two of those three. So, ten years out of fifteen. And each Member State, large or small, will have an equality of treatment in relation to that.
I don't believe that this, in any way, reduces the impact of Ireland at the European Union. It should be emphasised that the Commissioner is specifically precluded from making national points. I remember a couple of my colleagues sitting around the Commission table would never refer to their own Member State by name, but would rather make comments like: the country I know best, or the Member State that I know best. This is, I suppose, a verbal recognition of the reality, the legal situation which is that we don't make points that are intended to advance the interests our own Member State. And my experience was that if anybody tended in that direction that it was not well taken and other members around the table saw it for what it was and, to some extent, discounted the point that was being made.
I should emphasize that each one of us, and it still is the case when you become a Commissioner, you must attend the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and sign an oath that you will not take instructions from any Member State, including your own. So that really, therefore, you are a European, you are not there representing your own Member State. There are plenty of others to do that. That is what the Council of Ministers is for, and indeed also those people who are MEPs elected from their own Member States, they are there to look after the interests of their own Member State. That is not a function of the Commission. So I think this new configuration emphasises that.
The next issue I want to touch on is the President of the European Council. At present we have a situation where the President is the head of state or head of government of the Member State holding the Presidency for the six month period, so that the President of the European Council changes every six months. This was regarded as not being a particularly efficient or coherent way to go about business, although the idea now is that there will be a President of the European Council appointed for a two and a half year period, renewable once and his function, or her function, will be to be to be a chairman rather than a CEO, as it were. It is not a particularly powerful function but it provides coherence in the sense that the role of the President will be to prepare and chair all the European Council I should say. It is not a decision‑making role and the role will be coordinating the functions of the European Council with the Member State governments.
The next visible important official in the European Union is the, I am going to refer to as the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The role here is to conduct foreign affairs and security policy, to represent the Union in political dialogue with third countries, to chair the foreign affairs council and that individual will also be a Vice‑President of the European Commission and sit in the Commission. This is the first time that that's going to happen where you have this kind of cross‑over between the European Commission and the Council.
Then the European Parliament: The role of the European Parliament has been extended. The numbers are being increased from 732 to 751, including the President. There will be a minimum of six from each Member State and a maximum, a ceiling of 96 from the larger Member States. Germany will have 96.
The representation will be as they describe it, digressively proportional. By that I mean it reflects the population, the number of MEPs reflects the size of the population, but it is skewed in favour of the smaller population countries. So to give you an example, in Ireland there will be twelve MEPs, Germany will have 96. So that for Ireland that will be one seat per 358,000 people. In Germany it will one seat per 854,000 people. So that the representation that Ireland is getting per head of population is a good one and that is the way it has been set up.
Assuming that the Reform Treaty is ratified, this arrangement will be in place for the elections in 2009 next year for the European Parliament for the period 2009 to 2014.
Let me say something briefly on the decision making in the Council and the QMV issue; qualified majority voting. We know, of course, that each Member State does not have just one vote. There has to be a recognition for the population size, so there were weighted votings. When I was there up to 2004 there was one system. After I left a new system was put in, and now they are looking at a better, a more transparent and better system. In summary, it is called the double majority. So that any proposal being put forward by the European Commission for debate or being passed into law in the European Council requires at least 55 per cent of the votes of the Member States. In this configuration of 27 Member States that means 15 Member States must be for and it needs 65 per cent of the population. So that is a second part of it. So this reflects, in my view, the dual nature of the Union, being a union of states and of peoples. So, in effect, that is 55 per cent of Member States, 65 per cent of the population, representing 65 per cent of the population. And an important issue for those who are working this system is that a blocking majority, for a blocking majority to stop something going through you also must have at least four Member States involved. So that you couldn't have a situation where, let's say, where three of the large Member States, let's say Germany, France and the UK achieving a population size that might, in fact, amount to a blocking minority, that can't happen because there are too few Member States involved. That adds to the democratisation of decisionmaking at EU level.
Unanimity is retained in all sensitive areas, such as tax and defence and the extension of the QMV, qualified majority voting, is only in certain, small number of areas; incentives in relation to cultural affairs, incentives in relation to sporting issues, the statutes of the European Court of Justice, some areas in the freedom, security and justice. There are a number of others which we can discuss if people would like to talk about them later.
I believe that QMV is necessary for the functioning of the European Union decision making and if we didn't have that we would have to invent it.
I am conscious that I don't want to take up too much time, Mr Chairman, but there is one important thing that I would like to refer to and that is that one of the key purposes of the Reform Treaty is the increasing of the democratic accountability. The European Parliament, the role of the European Parliament has been considerably extended. They will now have a co‑decision function with the Council of Ministers, which they already have but it is now extended into areas like the budget, the extension of areas of co‑decision in 50 other areas. They will have a function in the election of the President of the Commission. The President of the Commission was never elected before, but now you are going to have the elected representatives of the 500 million people of the European Union electing the President of the Commission. There is an element of democracy involved in that that I think you can quite readily appreciate and it is an important function of the Parliament.
In my time there I saw the power of the Parliament extending all of the time and that has happened even more so since I left in 2004. And they will have a more visible role and a more important function under the Reform Treaty.
The national parliaments are going to have a role. Their role will be extended in underpinning the principal of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity and proportionality are two of the fundamental principles in law making in the European Union. I always felt, frankly, that the subsidiarity element of it was probably not looked after as well as it should have been.
Now this Reform Treaty is going to give some substance to that because it puts in place what has been loosely described as an early warning system. This will work in this way; that whenever there is a proposal, whether it is a green paper, a white paper, draft legislation or any policy initiative coming from the European Commission it will have to be sent to the parliaments of all of the Member States of the European Union. They will have eight weeks then in which to consider that and if they believe that the proposal in any way is undermining or offending against the principle of subsidiarity, which, in effect, means that the decisions should be taken at national level, if they can be, rather than at EU level. If they feel that is being offended they can make that point known, they can send what has been described as a yellow card to Brussels, and if nine parliaments do that it means that the Commission must take note of that. It will either amend or withdraw its proposal or, if it sticks to its guns, it then goes before the Council and the Parliament and if either of those institutions agree with the nine parliaments, then that proposal gets knocked. So that gives another important function for the members of the national parliaments of the Member States of the European Union. Each Member State will have two of those votes and 19 votes will precipitate this procedure. The vote in Ireland will be one vote from the Senate, one vote from the Dáil. So that brings the national parliaments more and more into the decision making process at the European Union.
In addition to a yellow card there is also a red card. How does that work? This means that, again, individual national parliaments ‑ if they feel that there is a drift from unanimity to QMV in any particular policy area and that they don't like it, they can send this red card to Brussels and that will have to be reviewed and if enough people are involved in that exercise, it will have to be reviewed very seriously.
The third increase in the democratic accountability I would like to draw attention to and that is the Citizens' Initiative. This is a provision whereby individual citizens can gather together a petition and if there are one million signatories to that, they can send this to Brussels and ask the European Commission to take account of this in bringing forward some proposal, policy proposal or proposal for legislation.
I think this is another important initiative in the increase of the democratic accountability of the European Union in the sense that the citizens have an awareness that they themselves can have a direct involvement with the activities and decision making at a European Union level. Just as an aside, being a lawyer I am interested in this, that is that they have widened the scope of application of the areas where an individual citizen can make application to the European Court of Justice: so again giving the citizen more central play.
Finally, I just want to make brief reference to the Charter of Fundamental Rights. That was initially included in the Constitutional Treaty. It is now there in the Reform Treaty as an annex. It has the same legal status as the Reform Treaty itself and in this document there is a list of the rights that are set out there in the annex to the Reform Treaty. The rights are addressed to the institutions of the European Union and to the Member States only when they are implementing Union law. So the existing jurisprudence of the courts or the ECJ, of course, is taken into account in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and it is all there in one document telling the citizens these are your rights when you are relating to the institutions of the European Union, or when you are relating to your own, the government of your own Member State, when that government is propounding or exercising its competences or the competences of the European Union.
Finally, finally, Mr Chairman, may I just make a brief reference to the fact that the European Union will now have power and will be acceding to the European Convention on Human Rights and that is a document I am sure you are all familiar with, because it has been in existence now for a long number of years, with a huge jurisprudence for the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the European Court of Justice will now have a jurisdiction to deal with those issues, the rights that are contained in the European Convention on Human Rights, so that these two aspects together give a clear indication to the citizens that the European Union is taking seriously the issue of fundamental rights, the rights of the citizens. From this point of view, I believe that the setting down of the rights in a document that can be clearly accessible and, indeed, is easily read ‑‑ I know there is some criticism that this document, that the Reform Treaty is complex, but certainly the Charter of Fundamental Rights is perfectly easy to read. So that fact and the fact of the increase in the democratisation of Europe and access of the citizen to the decision making of the European Union, in my judgment, leads to a situation where the Reform Treaty has a number of considerable bonuses in addition to the institutional ones for the citizens of Europe.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. (Applause). Well now, Susan George, please.
I should explain that I was born in the United States, that I have lived in France for just about 50 years now, that I am a French citizen, that I was very active in the campaign for the No vote in France, as a vice‑president of the organisation called ATTAC. I am going to continue to defend the same point of view.
I understand that in Ireland you have been told that either the French voted against the Treaty by 55 per cent because of Turkish accession. I have to say that was a very small part. The only person who campaigned on that basis was Philippe de Villiers, who regularly gets 2 per cent of the vote for Presidency. I also hear that you have been told that the French didn't understand the Treaty, which is somewhat insulting because this is the biggest debate that we had ever had in France since May 1968.
About nine hundred to a thousand collectives sprung up all over the country in villages, in towns, in departments, in regions that brought together a great many interest groups that organised a huge number of debates. I have never seen such turn outs for any political issue. It was the first time in 13 years we had been asked our opinion on anything and it was thoroughly discussed and friends and lovers were fighting over the dinner table because they might be on opposite sides. It was a genuine debate and the French, if they didn't read the entire document, they had at least read summaries and they knew what the principle articles were. So this was a reasoned vote. It was 55 per cent to 45. Usually French elections are decided by 50 point something to 49 point something and 70 per cent of the population turned out, which is to compare with 46 per cent who, a year earlier, had turned out to vote for the European Parliamentary elections. So this was a very big participation and people were really passionate about the issues.
So we did know what we were doing and we voted ‑‑ really if you look at statistics on a class basis, the only class that was entirely in favour of the Treaty and voted as a majority was the upper management class and the professional class. Everybody else was on the side of the No. I use the example of Neuilly, probably the richest community in Paris, which was a suburb, 80 per cent for the Treaty for the Constitution and a working class suburb of Roan, which was 80 per cent against. So that gives you an idea.
I am going to try to make ten points in the ten minutes that I have, but I may take a little bit longer because David Byrne took a little bit longer, so I am going to ask for equal treatment before the law.
The Lisbon Treaty, what is this? Well this is exactly the same thing as the Constitution minus a few provisions like the flag and the Beethoven hymn. Valerie Giscard D'Estaing whom, as you know, was the principal architect of the Constitution said in public: this new treaty has only cosmetic changes; I quote, "in order to make it easier to swallow". We have also many, many comments from people like Angela Merkel, whom I understand will be speaking to you next week, Mr Barosso, your own Prime Minister, An Taoiseach, who have all said that this text is the same thing that was in the Constitution.
So in France we feel our vote was confiscated, that we were not treated with any respect, but this did not surprise us particularly because after the French and the Dutch votes, the Vice‑President of the Commission Mr Günther Verheugen had said we must not give in to blackmail, which gives an idea of his view of universal suffrage and democratic votes, which is rather distressing to say the least. This was showing, I think, a lot of contempt for citizens, but the aim of this Treaty, according to the Belgian Foreign Minister and according to Guiliano Amato, who was Giscard's second in command, the point of this Treaty was to be unreadable because, I could quote Amato, if you will allow me, he said "it was decided that the document had to be unreadable because that means it is not constitutional. If people could understand the text on first reading, then you would risk getting calls for referendums". Karl De Gucht, the Belgian Foreign Minister said: The aim of the Constitution was to be clear. The aim of the Treaty is to be obscure, it is successful.
So you are not meant to understand what is going on and I think the minimum that one can ask in a democracy is that the citizen can understand the text that is going to be governing them. That is not granted us.
The third point is that economic detail is enormous. It was in the Constitution and it is again in the Treaty. I know of only one other document that goes into such detail on economics and that was the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, written by the Politbureau, not same economy, of course, but huge detail. This is a text which speaks of the market 63 times, of competition, usually accompanied by the adjectives undistorted, 25 times. It speaks of social progress three times and of unemployment not at all.
In France we like culinary metaphors and we speak about lark pate. A lark pate is made of one horse and one lark. So here we have an economic and competitive market orientated horse and we have a social lark in this pate.
My fourth point is the Charter of Fundamental Rights: I can't, I am afraid, be as enthusiastic as David Byrne because this Charter is really below the level of rights that are granted by most national constitutions, the one that I know being the French Constitution, which guarantees the right to work. This is important because the right to work means that you also have a right to unemployment compensation if you do not have work. The Charter of Fundamental Rights gives only the right to engage in work, which is not the same thing at all. If you can find a job, yes, then you can work, nobody is going to prevent you. But this is not what I would call protection for the citizen. In the same way there is no gender equality mentioned. There is no equal pay for equal work mentioned. That is in the French Constitution. It may be honoured sometimes in the breach but at least it is there and it is a goal to work for. There is nothing said about unemployment benefits, about pensions and so on. So it is far less comprehensive. And, in any case, the Charter, quote "does not establish any new powers or tasks for the Union nor does it change the powers and tasks defined in other parts of the Constitution". So one wonders why they went to the trouble.
A big problem in point five is the separation of powers. I was born in America. I studied Constitutional law while I was there and, as you know the American Constitution, which is very short, it is 5,000 words, easy to understand, although infinitely interpretable, does spend a great deal of time on checks and balances and on the separation of powers, and I think that was very wise of the founding fathers, and many other constitutions have tried to imitate this.
In the European Constitution we have a hugely powerful Commission, we have a very weak parliament which has no right to initiate legislation, much less levy taxes. We have a completely independent central bank so that there is no parliamentary control or even Council or Commission control over monetary policy. There is only one mandate to the Central Bank and that is to control price stability, in other words, inflation. And in a period where we are going towards a very grave financial crisis, it seems to me this can be extremely dangerous, particularly if you have as rigid a personality, I don't want to comment on personalities, but might I say that Jean‑Claude Trichet is a very rigid sort of person who is obsessed with inflation, and that is his mandate.
So the separation of powers was remarked upon by the employers union of Europe, UNISE, Business Europe now, as it is called, and they were pleased, I quote "that UNISE's demand for a strong Commission keeping the exclusive right of legislative initiatives has been kept. And UNISE was also very pleased about many of the other institutional arrangements.
My sixth point is on NATO and militarism. This, I think, must be examined by Irish jurists. I don't feel competent to do it myself. But you are a neutral country and I think you have got to look at the implications of the military provisions that are contained in the new Treaty, which obliges us to, quote: progressively increase our military capabilities. And that is for every country. And you will be assessed tax‑wise, to pay for military missions and for European defence. The Treaty allows military missions in third countries to combat terrorism on their own soil” unquote. There is a special protocol on NATO which makes it very clear that Europe will never have a security and defence policy that is different from NATO which remains, as the text says, the foundation of their defence, that is of the Member States. It also provides for greater structural cooperation between Member States that want to go faster and further in the military area, although this is made very difficult, this kind cooperation in other areas. So that is something that I would be very worried about signing on for, the policies of NATO, which we don't know what they will be in the future. What we do know is that the American Commander in Chief will also be the Commander in Chief of NATO.
I am moving on, I hope, fast enough.
Eastern Europe, the newly acceded countries. Well I am very pleased they are there because I think they are European. You visit them and you can feel that you are in Europe. However, they are not going to be getting the same structural funds that Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece received during the time of their accession and, therefore, they are being used, de facto, as a reservoir of cheap labour. And don't believe me on this, believe the European Court of Justice which has made already three decisions, including one last week, in which it approved and gave reason to the companies from Eastern Europe supplying services on the territory of Sweden, Finland and, most recently, Germany. In the last case they were paying workers at 50 per cent below the agreed minimum wage and this was defended by the European Court of Justice. So I think we can see that we are organising the race to the bottom and that European workers are going to be forced to compete with each other for work and there is always someone who is ready to work for less than you.
Eighth point, the public services. This is again, I think, a very dangerous move. They are specifically subjected to competition. There is a special protocol about them. The services, well public services are never mentioned in the text, as you probably know. What is spoken about are services of general economic interest and services of general interest, but these are never defined. So one does not know where health and education fit in. What we do know is that distortions in competition will apply to public services and it will be services of general economic interest, and that it will be probable, given the direction of the Commission, that they may very well decide that subsidies should and can be considered as distortions to competition. This is reinforced by the new provision for a single legal personality of the European Union which it did not have before.
Here again I am not a lawyer, but it seems very much the case to me that this means that, for example, in the General Agreement on Trade and Services under the World Trade Organisation ‑ a text that I worked on a great deal, the GATS, as you know, contains education, health, culture, water; all human activities except for the army, the police and the courts. Now, with the single legal personality, the European Union will be able, without consulting the Member States, to put any subject it wants on the table and say to other countries negotiating in the WTO: we have a market of 450 million people ‑‑ more than that now ‑‑ and we can offer openness of whatever service we like, and that can be health, that can be education. Up to now it is every country that has been able to say: I offer this, I restrict that, I refuse to offer. So this is worrisome to me.
The trade policy, which is the exclusive competence of the Commission is now a trade policy which is going after any market in the world and this is very dangerous for our development policy and our cooperation policy with other countries. There is a new clause in the Reform Treaty that says one of the goals of Europe is to integrate all countries into the trading system, but that means, under the present rules, and Peter Mandelson, the Trade Commissioner, is going all out to remove any restrictions to foreign direct investment, to have access to government procurement in all of the States he is negotiating with, and to get rid of what he calls beyond‑border barriers. But those can be consumer protection, environmental protection measures, whatever. Any government measure can be considered a beyond‑border barrier to trade. So trade does not stop at the frontiers any longer. This is also very worrisome to us.
So my final point and my conclusion is why care? Why care? Why should this bother the Irish or, indeed, any other European people? Well, simply because between 80 and 90 per cent of all of the legislation that is going to be applicable to your country, as to mine, will be coming from Brussels. It will not be coming from the Dáil and from your government, but from Brussels. I feel very European. I would consider myself a fervent European. I did not vote No and I did not campaign for the No because I was against Europe. I am very much for Europe. I want a democratic, social, ecological Europe, but I don't think that there is any chance that we will get that with this particular Treaty. So I consider it my patriotic duty, as a European, to say no if I were given an opportunity to say No, which I am not. And otherwise to encourage other people to consider their vote very, very carefully. Thank you. (Applause)
CHAIRPERSON: Well thank you very much indeed. I will now take questions and comments from the Forum. If people could confine themselves to a few minutes, it means that I will get everybody in who has signified, and also give the speakers reasonable time to respond. Mr Michael McGrath, please.
DEPUTY BYRNE: Thank you, Chairman. It is myself.
Just a couple of questions, Chairman. I am conscious of what you said last week.
I think Susan George is making comparisons between the national constitutions and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and she makes another comparison between the United States constitution and the EU Reform Treaty and I think that that is an erroneous comparison to make, because we are not talking about a nation state in the Europe Union, and that is something that the No campaign certainly in Ireland are trying to make us afraid of a nation state. We are not talking about a nation state, we are talking about a super‑national body made up of Member States and I think that is a very important point to make; that the Yes campaign are not looking for the characteristics of a nation state, we are not look for a parliamentary democracy in Europe, we are looking for countries to work together, so I think the comparisons are not correct. I think this also leads to another point, as well, about the role of the national parliaments, which again is on this point, you know, it is supremely enhanced now if the Lisbon Treaty is passed, and David Byrne alluded to that, and I think that again emphasised the point that this is not a nation state of the EU, it is a community and a union of nation states, of the nation states of Europe and I just want to comment on that.
Just another thing, I didn't think we were going to be talking about NATO today, but I think we just have to be very, very clear that in relation to NATO and the Treaty, it does say that NATO, for those states which are members of it, remains the foundations of their collective defence. And the treaty, in the Article that Susan talks about, goes on to say that the provision about NATO shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policies of certain Member States. And again it is something I always go back to in the debate, the actual words of the Treaty. NATO will have nothing to do with our foreign policy. Any activities of the European Union in the field of defence are subject to unanimity and, in Ireland, the triple lock procedure that we have. So it is very, very important to recall that and to get back to the actual text of the Treaty and this NATO red herring which, unfortunately, comes up at every referendum is not relevant. But thank you for speaking so clearly and concisely and precisely.
CHAIRPERSON: Mr Alan Dukes, please.
MR DUKES: Cathaoirleach, I find it rather disappointing that Ms George should try to repeat so many of the canards that we have heard from the No side in this debate in this country so far. I felt one single factual reference in what Ms George said and it was a reference to the Charter on Fundamental Rights. She said, quite rightly, that it gives no new tasks for the Union; it does not change existing tasks in the Union. That, as far as I know, is the first time that anybody on the no side has ever admitted that. I think for that alone it is useful to have heard that. But the rest, I am afraid, was as tendentious and as unjustified by anything in the text of the Treaty as most of the arguments that we hear on the No side. And, of course, it leaves out, in many cases, most of the relevant considerations in the argument.
Ms George said, for example, that this Treaty will leave us with a weak parliament which has no right to initiate legislation and no right to levy taxes. That, I suggest to the Forum, is an utterly tendentious, incomplete and misleading presentation. I would ask what parliament in any one of the Member States has a right itself to initiate legislation? Answer, none. What parliament in any one of the 27 Member States has the right, of its own movement, to levy taxation? Answer none. Parliaments of the Member States operate only because proposals are made by governments.
The difference with the European Parliament is that whereas in national parliaments, and I am going to simplify in the extreme, governments come along, they say, here is our proposal, we have the majority to walk this through the lobbies, that is what is going to be done. That does not happen in the European Parliament. In the European Parliament a proposal is presented which goes to the parliament and the European Council, the Council of Ministers which then become equal partners in the legislative process. The European Parliament has a negotiating capacity and right under the treaties unequalled, unparalleled in any parliament in any one of the 27 Member States. It has a budgetary power unequalled, unparalleled in any parliament in any one of the 27 Member States.
I spent 21 years as a member of Dáil Eireann and I had far less opportunity to influence the detail of legislation or the budget in this country than Members of the European Parliament have in the current institutional process.
That being the case, I submit to this Forum that allegations of a democratic deficit in the European Union are entirely tendentious, misleading and without foundation.
Let me also say that Ms George's presentation of the economic side of this Treaty is again entirely fallacious. She suggests that there is something wrong with having an independent central bank that is not controlled by any parliament. Show me the Member State, any one of the 27 Member States, that does not have an independent central bank. Show me a Member State, and there are many of them, that has moved from having a central bank that was a creature of the government to having one that was independent and that made progress on the head of it. France is one of them. France is a relatively recent convert to having an independent central bank and French people and French economic policy gained thereby. The United Kingdom is another relatively recent convert to having a central bank that was not the creature of the treasury. And economic policy and citizens of the UK gained thereby.
What we have done in these treaties, and it has been done before now, has been broadly to replicate for the Euro the kind of system that we know in the central banks of our Member States. And it is utterly misleading of anybody to present that as being, in any way, a flaw in the institutional structure of the European Union.
Yes, the Charter on Fundamental Rights does not include detailed prescriptions about unemployment benefits or pensions. Why? Because the Member States will not agree to give any competence in those areas to the European Union. That is something that the No campaign people here will never tell you about because they are all obsessed with this idiotic proposal that in some way the European Union is out to get democracy in every one of the Member States. It is crafted by the Member States in order to improve the functioning of liberal parliamentary democracies in the Member States.
The final point, Cathaoirleach, that I make is this; that for Ms George to bring in comments into a debate about this Treaty, about the facts that the new Member States feel aggrieved at how badly they have been treated on structural funds is again utterly irrelevant. This Treaty has no function in setting the amount of structural funds going to new Member States. That was the outcome of a political negotiation on the basis of rules that are well set out. Personally I think she is right. Personally I think the new Member States were given a bad deal in 2004. But that is a matter of current economic policy and political negotiation. It is not something that is in any way determined by anything in the structures of these treaties and I would invite people who are reading these treaties and going to vote in this debate to ignore that kind of argument.
The last point I make ‑‑
CHAIRPERSON: I thought the last one was your last point.
MR DUKES: Cathaoirleach, I must say this. We have heard a lot of political indignation about the way the rest of us look at the French referendum. That may well be justified, I don't know. But I think it is useful to point out that at the same time that Constitutional Treaty was ratified by 18 Member States, including a number of them that ratified it by referendum and they are entitled to at least the same respect as we give to the French and the Dutch results. Thank you, Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Ms Niamh Bhreathnach, please.
MS BHREATHNACH: A Chathaoirligh, fáilte roimh ar son Páirtí an Lucht Oibre.
I want to, first of all, thank David Byrne for, a man who has come with the experience of the Commission, who has reassured us that there are not secret powers being exercised by the Commission, even if you are called Peter Mandelson. I think your expression of knocking the Commission into shape on behalf of the parliaments and the European Parliament is worth saying and I would say it has spelt out for us an increase in the democratic role in the EU that wasn't there before this.
Ms George, I am sorry. You see where you see a plot, I see is a plan and I can tell you now, and I will spell out my feelings and the feelings in the Labour Party on this, but actually, sadly, I know won't convince you at all so I hope, Chairman, I'm addressing those who are accessing the Forum site and who are actually willing to listen to both sides of the argument.
I would say in France and French society the vote against was as much a vote against Chirac as it was vote for Sarkozy. But far from me to comment on the political environment in which that no vote was taken in France. It is relevant what is happening today. I would think the feisty interjection by Deputy Byrne there as much reflects the change in our political environment and I would say to you where we were at the last meeting and our fears for the Lisbon Treaty has actually changed because by 7th May, which will be before the vote of this Treaty, the political environment has changed ‑‑ I can't say utterly, but I think it has change sufficiently for those of us who are anxious for a yes vote in the Lisbon Treaty to be assured that all sections of all the main political parties who are campaigning for a yes vote will be doing it with great enthusiasm.
I would also say to Ms George why we are campaigning. We do see an EU that was set up for seven states now dealing with 27 states who needs to take its articles of organisation and to make a working document for those who have to address the huge problems that face us, about globalisation, about climate change, about development and about security. We have spent too much time looking in on ourselves trying to harbour deals really with a Constitution that was never built to deal with that many players at the negotiation tables.
I will say to you, as somebody who has also played my part at Council level, that for the EU, the funding that was made available, on the education side, here in Ireland, it wasn't interfering with our national entitlement to manage our compulsory education, but it was available to make sure that we levelled the playing pitch. I would say to you, as a student who came through school in Ireland where we were reassured in Eleanor Mary Burke's document; we were a peripheral island without natural resources, we were able to turn our attention to investing in our human capital and that has contributed to a community now which is the envy of some of our partners in Europe.
So I would just say to you, Ms George, I am sorry I can't convince you, but I do hope that those who are listening to both sides of the argument are ready to be reassured by the contributions by Mr Byrne here today and by people like myself and Alan Dukes who have exercised within this EU and who have seen Ireland flourish and we have a role to play. Thank you, Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Daithi Doolan, please.
I think it is important to reflect where we are at today, ten years on from the Good Friday Agreement. It was a milestone in our history and if you compare how the current proposed Treaty of Lisbon is being debated to how the Good Friday Agreement was being debated, the Good Friday Agreement was debated at all levels. It was discussed. It was accessible. It was circulated. Unfortunately, the proposed Lisbon Treaty is neither accessible or circulated to anybody. I think it is very unfortunate, it is a missed opportunity for democracy that the government haven't taken a brave position and actually circulated the Treaty to homes and made it accessible in libraries. Unfortunately, you have fork deep into your pocket to pay for a copy of the Treaty, if you can make your way to Molesworth Street for government publications and I think that makes a farce of the debate, to be honest.
David Byrne's opening comments, and I paraphrase them in relation to the Treaty, you said it echoes the content of the EU Constitution. This is exactly true, it does. Those of us on the no side would say it underlines the content of the EU Constitution, minus bells, whistles, flags, emblems and anthems. It is, and we are being asked to vote on it and we are well up for the campaign. Sinn Fein will be leading a very proactive, positive campaign on the No side, pointing not only to the faults of the Lisbon Treaty, but also an alternative view of Europe. I think that is what we saw from the top table, two different views of Europe; one centralized, focused on business and enterprise and neo liberalism, the other more a social Europe where the people, the people's needs are met by the economy rather than the economy being met by the needs of the people. I think they are the two different visions that are being debated this morning in Ireland.
I think in relation to the Commissioners a lot of the debate comes back to the whole issue of Commissioners. And if I may, Cathaoirleach, point out that if you could extrapolate from David Byrne's contribution that why rotate the Commission at all if there is no vested interest in having people representative of the different States in the EU? Why not have a stagnant operation? Why not choose the number of Commissioners and leave them as is? Because you rotate them to give every State access to that important round table. So it dispels the myth, it dispels the myth that having somebody at the table does not give extra leverage at state level. It does give extra leverage to those states because otherwise you wouldn't rotate it. And also, at a time when big decisions are being made, smaller countries, smaller states like our own need the Commissioner at the table batting for the interests of smaller states, while it is far more difficult to ignore the interests of Britain, Germany or France if their Commissioners are not represented at that moment.
Also, more fundamental than that, is why not increase the number of Commissioners. We are being told on the no side it is simply unmanageable, yet not two miles from here, in Leinster House, they hand out ministerial and junior ministerial positions like confetti at a wedding. We now have over 30 ministers and junior ministers at central government level, representing a state of no more than three and a half, four million people yet we are expected to believe they can't have 27 commissioners representing hundreds of millions of peoples' interests across a growing EU. So I think that dispels a myth around the Commissioners.
I would like to compliment Susan George's contribution for dispelling the myth about the content of the Treaty. The content of the Treaty is not about reinforcing democracy, accountability and transparency. It is quite the opposite; it is about a drive towards centralism and big business. Also I think that she once and for all, for those who care to listen that is, dispelled the myth around the French campaign. The French campaign was about democracy and anyone who cared to follow it in some detail, like many of us did, would know that. If you looked at the number 1, number 2, number 3 best sellers at the time, they were all books related to the Treaty. There were study groups set up in every community, street and house, even though the comment you made about friends and lovers arguing over the Treaty, I hope I can keep that outside my front door because I have enough to be arguing about other than the Treaty at my dinner table, to honest, with my friends and lovers.
So I would say is that, what I would say is that people need to look at ‑‑ the French public voted against the Treaty for the same reason I firmly believe the people in this State will vote against it, because of lack of democracy and accountability. It is not equated with fair play for everybody.
Finally, if I may just before I ask two very simple questions, Cathaoirleach. The issue on the accession states is important, it is important because those of us who campaigned against the Treaty of Nice said exactly that; that the accession states would not be accepted on equal footing as Ireland was accepted in the early '70s. They were not brought in as equals. They don't have freedom of movement. Their markets are simply opened up and stripped bare to allow big business to step in there and take in cheap labour. That is why the accession were brought in to the EU, and I think our point was proven by those who are promoting a yes vote here.
Two minor questions, Cathaoirleach, if I may. To ask what would the impact of a no vote be? Because we are told that if we voted No, we will all face the dole queue and emigration and back the '80s with bad hair cuts and Boy George, which I don't think will happen. I think a no vote would strengthen our position in Europe. I would like to have the top table's view on that.
Secondly the power of the national parliament and ‑‑ I ask Susan George particularly ‑‑ how, if it is accepted, will the Lisbon Treaty undermine the power of the national parliament very specifically? Because there is a lot of myths being perpetrated by the Yes side and I would like to hear yourself giving a very clear view.
Thank you very much for both contributions. I certainly leave here more enriched in my knowledge of the Treaty from both contributions. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Deirdre de Burca, please.
SENATOR DE BURCA: Thank you, Chairman. Chairman, I would like to welcome both speakers to the Forum and to thank them for their presentations and also to welcome the opportunity to discuss the institutional arrangements under the Lisbon Treaty. I think most of us would agree that a large part of the Lisbon Treaty is about introducing new institutional changes within the European Union. A lot of these changes are about making the European Union more efficient, about streamlining decision making and so on, about recognising the impact that recent enlargements have had on decision making processes within the Union, and also possibly anticipating and trying to provide for future enlargements. Obviously making the European Union efficient enough to be able to accommodate its membership and make decisions and so on is important and the Lisbon Treaty does facilitate this.
But there is often a trade off between efficiency and democracy, and I think the concern of people who are looking at the changes in terms of efficiency that are being made is they don't want to see the quality of democracy being diminished and perhaps that is why people who are arguing on the No side very often look for some of the characteristics of the nation state, the systems that they are familiar with, of parliamentary democracy within the nation state, to be replicated at a European level. Because there is a concern that as you move into the 21st century that we don't want to see the quality of democracy within the systems of governance that we experience, we don't want to see that diminished.
However, I do think there are important concessions and important moves in the direction of greater democracy contained within the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. Not enough and the Green Party would certainly like to see much further moves in the direction of democratising the European Union. But one of the important ones I think is worth mentioning here today is the fact that the co‑decision making powers of the parliament, the European Parliament are significantly extended. That does strengthen the parliamentary dimension of the European Union. It does mean that the democratic legitimacy, I would say, of the Union is enhanced overall and it reduces the exercise of executive power within the Union because I think to date it would be true to say the power that is exercised by the Commission could be described as executive power. Similarly the Council of Ministers operates like a cabinet, so therefore it is, in effect, executive power that is being exercised. So the extension of the co‑decision will see much greater emphasis on parliamentary democracy, much more open debate and discussion about all of the directives and legislation that is being considered by the European Union and I think that has to be a good thing.
I think a very welcome provision of the Lisbon Treaty is the fact that the European Parliament can now elect the President of the Commission. I think this means that the European Council will have to be careful and consider the weightings of the different parties, political groupings I should say, within the European Parliament when it is proposing a candidate for President of the Commission. I think this is a point that we should be making in the run up to the European elections next year to the citizens of Europe is that who you vote for and if there is a sufficient representation, let's say, of left leaning political parties or right leaning, that is going to influence the kind of President that is elected to the Commission and, therefore, the kind of legislation, because we know that the Commission retains the right of legislative initiative. So I think it is very important that the parliament has this new power, not just to assent to the President but to actually elect the President of the Commission.
I know people have spoken in terms of the institutional arrangements proposed, that they are concerned about the loss of a Commissioner per Member State. That basically was proposed by the Nice Treaty but it is certainly re‑emphasised within the Lisbon Treaty. I don't think it is going to be such a problem that each Member State is not recognised. I think if you accept that the European Commission is supposed to represent the European interest and not the specific interests of individual Member States, then I think not having a Commissioner for five years out of fifteen is not such a problem. But I do think one of the things that probably needs to be considered is whether the cabinets that are serving the Commissioners have adequate representation of officials from all of the Member States so that the perspectives and the interests of each Member State can be recognised and accommodated by the Commission and can inform the thinking of the various commissioners within their portfolios. The last point ‑‑
CHAIRPERSON: Could we perhaps leave it at that, if you wouldn't mind.
SENATOR DE BURCA: Could I make one just last point, Chairman?
CHAIRPERSON: If you would do it briefly, please.
SENATOR DE BURCA: Okay. I think there is a concern again, because of the fact that there is a move much more towards population‑based voting system, both within the Council of Ministers, the numbers of seats are being decreased and are more in keeping within the Parliament with the population of Member States and the fact, I suppose, that Member States are losing an automatic right to a Commissioner, there is a concern on the part of smaller states and I would just like to ask both speakers whether they would envisage, at any stage in the future, some kind of institutional arrangements similar to the US Senate, where there is equality of representation. There is some kind of institutional accommodation of smaller states where there is equality of representation from all States within the Union? Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Senator Fergal Quinn, please.
In order to encourage the debate, I welcome the debate today. I think it was very useful. We are talking about institutional arrangements today, or that is the basis of it. I was impressed by an article I read in The Economist, who are not big friends of Europe, last month where they talked about the decision making in Europe is a little bit like Solomon had to decide when he was asked how best to decide who owned this baby. Solomon, as you know, made an offer which came to a good solution. The Economist suggested that Europe has done the same in a number of areas that they said when it came to it, let's divide the baby.
I have a problem with TLAs. And in case David Byrne isn't too sure what a TLA is, a TLA is a three letter acronym and the number of three letter acronyms that have turned up with Europe and perhaps he could just sort out one or two of them for me, because it seems to me that when the EU was faced with two proposals it says yes to both of them.
Tell me, the Foreign Affairs Council, that is an FAC. The General Affairs Council, that is a GAC. Then there is a four letter acronym, five letter, General Affairs External Relations, GAERC as well. Now it seems to me that the number of these overlap, plus the fact that I have confusion about the presidencies, the two different presidencies that we are going to have now and a foreign minister as well. So perhaps he could answer that in some form or other and put my mind at rest a little bit like that.
The other area that concerned, most of the questions have been answered that concerned those people who are thinking of voting no and I have listened to them. Certainly those in regard to tax, the unanimity seems to have solved that to a very large extent, although I was concerned yesterday with the report in the paper that the French Foreign Minister, who is making a proposal about harmonisation of tax and it was suggested that there was some sort of agreement between those in Europe not to bring anything up contentious until after the Irish had had a vote, had had our referendum. I hope that is not correct. I hope there is not some sort of viewpoint being held back; don't bring up contentious issues until after that.
The other area is defence and I gather unanimity and defence seems to have put at rest the minds of those who are concerned there. The ones that are coming up much more clearly now, and I welcome from Susan George and from David Byrne; the area to do with family. Have we got unanimity required here in regard to abortion, quickie divorce, adoption, same sex adoption particularly, education; areas like that, could you put at rest the minds of those who are concerned in this vote about topics such as that? Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Ms Patricia McKenna, please.
MS McKENNA: Thank you, Chairman. First of all, I would like to welcome the two speakers. I have to say I was very enthused by Susan George's presentation, because I feel as one of the sort of minority groups here on the No side it was really refreshing to hear the arguments being put so succinctly, particularly in relation to the French referendum. That is exactly what is happening here, it is being misinterpreted. People didn't know what they are voting on. They voted for all sorts of reasons, but that is the usual case when you get a No vote, that they analyse it, saying the people didn't know what they were voting, but you never have an analysing of the Yes vote as to why people voted, because they are afraid of being left behind or being out of Europe or whatever.
There are a few things keys things you mentioned in relation to the Constitution. Yes, I mean this whole idea of separation of powers, even if you do have a constitution, you should have clear separation of powers and that is something that is not in this so‑called Treaty which is really a constitution in disguise.
The issue of the new Member States in the European Union. We argued very strongly during the Nice referendum campaign that this is what was going to happen, second class members of the European Union. They were not being treated equally, the same as we were when we joined. You mentioned the two recent judgments in the European Court of Justice, and it doesn't bode well for European Court of Justice deciding our rights in the future considering what they base their decisions on.
I was a bit concerned about what Thomas Byrne of Fianna Fail said. He said in relation to Susan George's arguments that we are not looking for parliamentary democracy. Well maybe Thomas Byrne isn't, but a lot of us are looking for democracy. That is the reason I have been campaigning on this for so many years.
I just wanted to come back to something David Byrne said about the mathematics involved and about the size of the Commission, because I really think David Byrne's credibility on this issue is lacking because I just want to quote back to what you said at the Nice Treaty. You said it will take up to 130 years before Ireland lost its seat on the Commission and then it would only be for five years. You accused the No campaign in the referendum of spreading misleading information which could be considered dangerously misleading and some of which was totally and utterly false. And you went on to say that the change in the Commission would not come into effect until the 27th country joined when the 26 member Commission would be filled on a rotating basis every five years. And you said 26 by five is 130. I wonder do you still stand over that claim? You also went on to say that it was going to take some time before the EU reached the 27th country or the 27th country joined. Well I think you have been proven wrong on that.
One of the things you did say, this was during the Nice referendum, that I would agree with you on. You said that the only Member State in the EU, as we were the only Member State in the EU to hold a direct referendum, that was on Nice I, that the people of Ireland would not be speaking just for themselves but also for the citizens of Europe. And you said: we have an opportunity to give voice to the aspirations of so many who remain voiceless. Now that is the situation today, that the vast majority of people throughout the European Union have been denied a referendum and political leaders have openly admitted that they have conspired against their own people to deny them a referendum because they cannot trust the way they would vote. Now we in Ireland have an opportunity to vote for all the citizens of Europe and to look for a democratic and accountable Europe, and one that, I think listening to what Susan George had said, that the rest of us would aspire to. But I do think these misleading and alarmist kind of quotes and distorted quotes that were coming out at the time of the Nice Treaty have been proven wrong. 130 years indeed. Just look at what is being proposed. It is far from 130 years that we will be out of the Commission. And not only will it be only for five years, it will five out of every 15. The impression given that it would be 130 years until Ireland would be out of the Comission and then another 130 years until we would be out of the Commission again; that is far from the correct and factual information that the public need.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Carol Fox, please.
But I must respond to the assertion that it is bonkers or crazy to say that the strategy in defence area in the European Union is to be compatible with NATO's. First of all, look for the word neutrality or non‑aligned in the Lisbon Treaty and you won't find it, but it is absolutely laced with references to NATO.
I will just do two quick quotes. One is when the Solana Security Strategy was adopted, the European Council, in 2004, under the Irish Presidency, reporting on it said in terms of the EU's links with NATO and the EU NATO permanent arrangements, which you have said "enhance the operational capability of the EU and provide the framework for the strategic partnership between the EU and NATO in crisis management". That statement then went on to say that the operational doctrines of the EU military forces will be, quote, in coherence with NATO.
In the Lisbon Treaty itself, as I have said, NATO is mentioned a number of times in terms of coherence and compatibility of security policies, but under the protocol on permanent structured cooperation it says the following:
Recalling the common security and defence policy of the Union respects the obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty of those Member States which see their common defence realised in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation which remains the foundation of the collective defence of its Members and is compatible with the common security and defence policy established within that framework. Convinced that a more assertive Union role on security and defence matters will contribute to the vitality of a renewed Atlantic Alliance in accordance with the Berlin plus arrangements sharing EU NATO assets.
So we are compatible with NATO in our defence that is being developed within the European Union and I don't see how with 21 members there from NATO we are going to have anything but.
One question to former Commissioner Byrne on this issue is, you mentioned the Good Friday Agreement, how the hope there was to end war and to bring more peaceful cooperation, I wondering what your views of the continuing militarisation and putting up more military structures onto the European Union and to the pledge now, for the first time, in the Lisbon Treaty, that we will achieve a common defence when the European Council decides and that that permanent structured cooperation element of it is very much seen as the forum for an elite group to get together and start to push towards that common defence? So I am wondering what your feelings are about the European Union moving in that direction?
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Ms Mae Sexton, please.
I would like to ask Mr Byrne if he might explain, perhaps in a little more detail if he has the time, in relation to the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and, in particular, the authorisation procedure and how that, if at all, affects our neutrality? Because I think this is an area which causes a lot of difficulty for people who are listening into the discourse of the debate. It seems to be honed in on constantly, particularly by the No side. I still think it is worthy of being discussed and elaborated on.
Could I just address Ms George and say that I would like to hear you explain why a vote is not taking place in France on this Lisbon Treaty in your opinion, because, you know, in true revolutionary French form, I would have anticipated that had the French people been as exercised as the No campaign who have now come over here to debate it with us to ensure that we get a No campaign up and running here that will, perhaps, you would like to see that it would be rejected. I just wonder if you might explain to me why that spirit is not evident from the French people to demand that their government hold some kind of a vote? I say that because I feel your contribution today, and I think it was articulated extremely well by Alan Dukes and I couldn't better it, but you and indeed the No campaign consistently, primarily throws in the same argument, spurious claims which are not factually based at all when they are broken down.
But at the moment you are using the French rejection and indeed the Dutch one and saying that it was rejected by them and you are using the lovely word of the democratic deficit. But the No campaign prior to that and indeed prior to every other treaty has used the exact same arguments. They have virtually not changed at all right through them and all of this cloudy language like: Well it might happen, it may happen, and, you know, possibly could happen, have all been said before, long before the rejection by the French and the Dutch.
I am just going to finish, Mr Chairman, by saying, and I keep saying it here at every opportunity when I speak, that basically Europe only has the competences which will be conferred on it by its Member States and that to me is democracy, true democracy. Each Member State gives competences to Europe and only those ones which they wish to give and they ensure that they are tied up in a way in which Europe cannot just take off on its own without approval of the Member State. Thank you, Mr Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I am going to bring the two speakers in now for about ten or twelve minutes each and then I will try, if people are brief, to get other people who have asked to speak and bring the speakers in again. So Mr Byrne would you like to.
MR BYRNE: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I will try and deal with the questions that have been raised as quickly as I can. Reference was made to legal personality and the question of the European Union being concerned with trade and how does that blend with the development agenda. Of course there is a Director General in the European Commission dealing specifically with development aid issues and there is a strong message coming from all sides that trade as well as aid, and trade specifically is an important issue. Ask India. Ask south America. Ask Vietnam where I remember I ensured that there was a transfer of considerable funds to Vietnam to enable them to raise their standards for trade in food safety with the European Union. And, of course, there is the everything but arms proposal that allows for the lesser developed countries to trade with the European Union, so I think that has to be taken into account.
It was specifically stated, I think, by Susan that there is no gender equality in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. If I misheard that I am sorry. But I have to disagree with that proposition if that is, in fact, what you said. Chapter 3 specifically deals with equality between men and women.
The separation of powers issue. A number of people have mentioned this. Separation of powers is sometimes, I think, probably a little bit misunderstood. I think it is very clear what the powers are in relation to the various institutions in the European Union. The Commission has its functional role that is contained in the treaties, the right of initiative that is the civil service as well as the executive body of the European Union. It develops the policy, it drafts the legislation and then it brings it before the Parliament and the Council of Ministers. Those two institutions are the law making institutions, not the European Commission. So talking about unelected elites is a failure to understand how the separation of powers operates in the European Union. And if the Commission goes outside in drafting legislation or if the Parliament or Council passes laws that are outside the competences conferred by the Member States on the European Union then, of course, a case can be brought to the European Court of Justice and that law struck down. And that does happen from time to time in the normal state of the things.
Criticising the Reform Treaty because it is too long and comparing it with the US Constitution, well that was written in 1787. It is a short document I recognise that. But also remember that a short constitution requires a sophisticated judicial structure to interpret it, as happens with the US Supreme Court. Now I don't know what you feel about democracy, but I am not so sure that a modern constitution reflects the kind of democracy that we want. Do we want nine unelected people who are sitting in a court to determine, in fact, what the constitution actually means? I think to get more clarity into the thing where you get a front ended engagement by those who are the elected representatives of the people saying what should be in the Constitution is a better way of doing this.
It was also criticised that the European Union had, the Commission retained the sole rights of initiative and this was something that UNISE applauded. I applaud it also and so should anybody from a small Member State applaud it because, in fact, if you don't have that, you have the risk of the large powerful civil services of the large Member States initiating policy without the opportunity for the smaller countries, with smaller civil services, being able to handle that. This is a guarantee of equality. This is a protection of the interests of the small Member States to have that sole right of initiative in the Commission. It is critically important to ensuring that the European Union works well and works in the interests of all Member States. So UNISAE are right about that and I would applaud their view in relation to that. And just because they come as representatives from big business doesn't mean to say their views are wrong. I don't have any patience, I have to say, with that kind of argument.
It was also suggested that the Reform Treaty does not have any reference to ecological Europe. Well, in fact, that is not so. One of the very, very few new competences that are going to be included in the Reform Treaty is on climate change. That is being added as a competence.
My friend from Sinn Fein makes reference to the comparison with the Good Friday Agreement, says that was more clear than this document is. The Good Friday Agreement was a complex series of documents; the multi party agreement, the British‑Irish Agreement, the interlinking of these, the necessity to amend Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution. I was Attorney General at the time. I drafted Articles 2 and 3 that are now in the Constitution today and I know there is a complexity involved in that. In fact, I had meetings with representatives from Sinn Fein, including Rita O'Hare, to explain the issues in relation to the Good Friday Agreement and they were then able to make those issues clear to their own members to enable them to sign up for the Good Friday Agreement. So I have to say I was involved in that and I am involved, I have been involved in the workings of the institutions of the EU and I can tell you that these issues are not easy. When you are reducing these complex policy issues to agreements and to legal texts, it can't often be made easy but there are explanatory documents that go with it, as go with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which make it absolutely clear what is involved in the situation.
I was also asked about the Commissioners at the table and that there were junior ministers in the Irish government. The junior ministers don't sit at the table, they don't sit in the cabinet and really you need a certain size of a committee or cabinet to make it work effectively and well and I don't accept that there is a lack of accountability or democracy having regard to that fact.
The question was also asked what is the impact of a no vote? Well it is very difficult to say. It is very difficult to say. I suspect our friends in Europe, if they all ratify, the 26 ratify and we don't, I suspect they may ask us: well what do you think we should do now? That is a question we are going to have to answer. And I am not saying this in any (inaudible) effect, but one of the issues that is contained in this Reform Treaty is the capacity for a Member State to leave the European Union. That is there for the first time.
Cabinets. Deirdre de Burca had a very interesting point about the Commission and the formation of the number of members at the Commission table and in the smaller Commission, in the new configuration, that there should be, it should be assured that there are members in the cabinet from all of the Member States, so the kind of reflection of those ideas come through the system and I think that is an excellent idea. In fact, that operates to some extent at the moment. I mean I was required by a rule of practice, to ensure that, there were two things, that I had to have a minimum of three Member States represented in my cabinet and I had to have gender equality and I did that. My deputy chef was a woman in all cases. So that is something that is there in the psyche of the European Commission at the moment and I imagine it will have even greater importance as you suggest in a new configuration.
Patricia McKenna asked me about separation of powers. I think I have answered that. And then she said I was misleading some years ago and I am interested, Patricia, that you follow my words so closely but, you know, I am out of politics now so it is a compliment that you are still following what I am saying. I have to say if anybody is being misleading in this whole thing, I have to say I see it coming from the No side.
I agree fully with what Alan Dukes has just said. It seems to me that the many of the spokespeople on the No side either don't understand the issues, or if they do understand the issues are being deliberately misleading. That is a serious issue really, because it is extremely important that the people of Ireland understand these issues and I am convinced that if they understand the issues the way a lot of people have spoken about around this table here today in this room today that they will vote yes because it is designed to ensure that the European Union works more effectively, more efficiently and with greater coherence.
The final issue was, Mae Sexton asked me about the common foreign and security policy. Our neutrality is guaranteed in relation to that for a number of reasons. First of all, there is unanimity in any decisions in the CFSP and, of course, we have also, since the last referendum ‑‑ I think it was the last one ‑‑ we have included in the Constitution, now, the triple lock so that you can't get involved in any of these decisions from Ireland unless the government is in favour, the Dáil is in favour and there is a UN resolution to favour the involvement. So that triple lock gives extra security and extra comfort, I think, to citizens in voting for this Treaty.
Finally let me say many, many of the arguments that I have heard from the No side do not address the issue as to whether we should vote Yes or No to this Reform Treaty. Many of the things they say, most of which I disagree with, even if they were true, should not lead you to vote No. Why would you vote No because of these issues in relation to, let's say, development aid or foreign trade? It will have no impact on the issue unless you feel; vote No and make life difficult for everybody. But, you know, our population size is four million. We are less than 1 per cent of the population of the European Union; I think we should really get real on this.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Ms George, please.
In the mid '70s the added value that went to labour was 74 per cent. These are fairly complex calculations but I will just give you the numbers. And capital, therefore, 26 per cent. By 2004 labour was receiving 60 per cent of the added value and capital 40 per cent. So there had been a definite shift in who was receiving the most benefit from the economy. Look at the OECD figures to see that everywhere in Europe, as well as in the United States, transnational corporations are contributing far less to national taxes than they were a decade or two ago, which means that the tax burden falls upon local citizens, local businesses, people who have a fixed address, and on consumers, because the transnationals are not contributing their fair share to the tax burden and everything, as far as I can see in the EU, particularly at the trade commission, which is the one I know the most about, is being organised in favour of European transnational corporations. And the links between the trade commissioner and UNISE and other business groups who are pushing, of course, for this line are extremely close.
You did not mention the under-paying of workers. Do we want our workers to be in competition with each other? Irish workers in competition with people who are willing to accept lower wages coming from the new countries? I think our purpose in Europe ought to be to bring everyone up to a decent and dignified level of remuneration. We know also that inequalities have been growing by leaps and bounds in Europe and that this is because of neo liberal policy.
So, I am not going to try to refute everything that you have said because I think it comes mostly from a world view which is extremely different. I think that we should be aiming for more equality. I do not think that Europe should be imitating the United States model.
I have just come back last week from the US and I see, once more, the deficit in health insurance, the desperate straits of many, many families being turfed out of their homes, et cetera. That is a model in which the market reigns supreme and I don't think there is any argument that the European Union is encouraging privatisation everywhere it can. It is encouraging a market based model. I repeat the figure that the market is in the Treaty 63 times and competition, accompanied by ‘free and unhindered’ usually, is in there 25 times. It seems to me that there is a reason for this.
It is a weak parliament but I think that that has been defended by other people. And the independent European central bank at the level of its independence is equaled nowhere in the world except in New Zealand, at least that is what I have read.
The representative of the Progressive Democrats asked why there was no new vote in France. Simply because, as the President said and was quoted in the Daily Telegraph to this effect, he said to European MPs of his political persuasion that the people, there was a cleavage between the people and their governments and that if the French were allowed to vote again they would again vote No. And since that was totally impossible, he would not allow a referendum.
So it is rather complex the way it was arranged and there was cooperation from the Socialist Party so that they ratified these very minor constitutional changes on dates that had to be changed to three‑fifths majority and the Socialists contributed so that once that change was made so that the Constitution said: and France is a member of the European Union under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty of such a date instead of the previous treaties, then the President could choose to have either a referendum or a parliamentary vote. It was clear that he was never going to choose the referendum because he knew and had said what the outcome would be, and many other people had said the same thing. So that is why there wasn't a vote.
What should we do now? Let's say what if the Irish did vote no? What if there was a huge debate and many people were persuaded and suddenly ‑‑ well what you should do then is to have an elected convention. A constitution written by an elected convention with universal ratification on the same day in the 27 Member States.
The kind process that we have had so far, I think, does show a democratic deficit and that we are subject to increasing democratic deficits. Perhaps I can't predict, but I can fear, I can have concerns because the text allows too many unfortunate developments.
I won't speak about NATO because the representative Ms Fox from the Peace and Neutrality Alliance has spoken very eloquently on the point of view of NATO. But that is what the text says and you do have to worry about that.
So, I think that I will stop there. I have not, at any time, tried to be deliberately misleading. I have tried to read the text as closely as I could and I have tried to signal various areas where more debate and less simply slogan waving is needed. And I welcome this opportunity and I think that the Forum is playing an extremely beneficial role in allowing this kind of debate and in allowing arguments of people like me to be heard. So thank you very much once more.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I am now going to take the other speakers in. And if I could ask people to stick to two minutes, two minutes please this time, I will get everybody in and I will get the two speakers back in again. Mr Paschal Mooney, please.
I might add that in very brief response that Ireland does not want a new constitution. Secondly, I think what is emerging here, and again last week, the question that a lot of people ask about what will happen if Ireland votes no? I think that David Byrne has succinctly put it, as indeed last week the same question being asked, that it won't be a question of Ireland asking Europe what is going to happen next, it will be Europe asking Ireland, and I think that is a very key issue.
Could I ask these two questions. In relation to checks and balances and it is rather interesting that Susan makes reference to the American Constitution, I couldn't help but reflect that the right to bear arms is certainly not something that I would be welcoming as an indefinite type of a section of a constitution which is constantly and being particularly reinterpreted by nine people, as David Byrne quite correctly said. Would you accept that in the context of checks and balances that this is a genuine attempt by the Member States to rebalance the relationship between the Commission and the Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Europe and, crucially, the national parliaments, that the Treaty is a benchmark document pointing the way forward and that, in practice, Member States will continue to ensure that their vital national interests will continue to be protected, and where their transnational issues require a shared sovereignty that they will proceed under QMV and that there is a difficulty, and perhaps David could answer this, as a lawyer, there seems to be a difficulty on the no side to accept the concept of shared sovereignty, despite the fact that we have been sharing sovereignty since we entered in 1973? It constantly keeps coming up but under different guises.
Finally the democratic dimension to the Treaty is regularly dismissed by opponents, as again here today, as cosmetic and window dressing. Again to David, as a former Commissioner, what, in your opinion, will happen if the yellow card and the red card is implemented? If one million signatures from the citizens of Europe arrive on the Commission desk, will they ignore that? Will they ignore it? Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr John Cushnahan, please.
CHAIRPERSON: I think we could leave that, please.
MR CUSHNAHAN: ‑‑ Sunningdale Agreement ‑‑
CHAIRPERSON: Concentrate on today's business. I am anxious to get everybody in.
MR CUSHNAHAN: Can I put two questions, one directly to Commissioner Byrne. I agreed with everything he said, so I want to use the benefit of his experience as a former chief law officer for the government and a very important question which was asked by our Senator but not answered. Is he aware that despite the fact that Pope Benedict XVI in addressing the diplomatic corps, welcomed the Lisbon Treaty as building the European home, but some religious extremists, particularly those in the Cóir organisation have issued advertisements under the heading of a Godless empire, saying Article 48 of the Treaty allows the Irish Constitution to be overruled whenever our EU masters decide and we will no longer have the right to decide on issues such as abortion, et cetera? Bearing in mind your expertise as a former chief legal officer of the government and your knowledge of the protocol which was attached to the Maastricht Treaty, could you give us your definitive legal view on how the Lisbon Treaty will impact on the issue of abortion?
To Susan George I note that you said that the Charter does not go far enough and you mentioned, in particular, equal pay and issues of gender discrimination, which Mr Byrne said are already in Chapter 3. But let me also point out that issues like that are already dealt with under existing EU law and many people have taken successful cases regarding those problems in Ireland and, indeed, other EU Member States. And given your misgivings let me ask you a very simple question on the Charter. Does it or does it not strengthen the right of EU citizens, even though you think it does not go far enough?
Another statement you made regarding your view about the increasing military tendencies of the EU, you said that the Lisbon Treaty will oblige tax payers to pay for military expenditure. Let me say unequivocally there is no requirement for Ireland to increase our military expenditure. There are no specific commitments regarding levels of expenditure nor any procedures introduced for imposing them in the future. And with regards to the comments of Ms Fox about NATO and your own endorsement of them, what this Treaty says is that it respects those countries, EU Member States that have NATO obligations and respects those countries that prefer a situation of neutrality and those positions are reinforced and therefore would you not accept that the Treaty, also in relation to the whole debate about militarism strengthens the EU capabilities in conflict prevention and crisis management which is an attempt to reduce militarism on the world stage?
CHAIRPERSON: Eoin O Broin, please.
The reason why I am not going to compliment you is because of your final sentence. You said that those of us that argue against the Treaty either don't understand or are deliberately being misleading. That means that I am either stupid or I am lying. Now I completely accept that you have read the Treaty, that from your particular point of view and your experience you have a view of it and that you have an absolute right to articulate that view in any argument. But so do I. And part of the difficulty in this debate is that people like me are constantly being told that I am either not telling the truth or I am stupid, as opposed to the fact that I have a different view of the world, a different analysis of this Treaty or a different set of political principles and I think that is the wrong way for any of us to be conducting this kind of debate.
My specific points deal with the issue at hand, which is the changes to the institutional arrangements. And David, respectfully, I just want to disagree with a couple of comments that you made, and I do it in the spirit of debate. The first that you said, the need to reduce the number of commissioners is clear. I don't think that is the case. We are told that post enlargement with the ten new Member States there is a need to reduce the size of the Commission to make it more efficient, yet since enlargement the volume of legislation going across the Commission table has significantly increased. There is no blockage in the system. There is no difficulty with getting the Commissioners to agree to certain types of proposals. So I don't see any reason and I have not heard one and I am interested to hear from yourself why it is, in concrete terms, that we need to see the Commission reduced.
I also have to say while you are right that Commissioners do take an oath and aren't meant to address their national interests, the reality is in many of the discussions and many of the agreements, national interests do find their ways on to the table. Sinn Fein's view, of course, is there needs to be a reform of the Commission because it is unaccountable and there needs to be some mechanism for Member States to have some intervention at the level of the drafting of legislation, but that is an argument for another day.
You also said that there has to be a recognition of population size in the calculations of QMV and I have to say I do fundamentally disagree. We have calculations of population size in the distribution of MEPS. It is not completely proportionate, as you said and I think that is a good thing, but I don't see any reason why smaller states should be treated less equally than larger states on bodies such as the Council. I mean, for example, and I am not making an argument that we should have a constitution like the US, but there at the Senate level you have an equality of states and at the Congress level you have an equality of voters. So I think you can find ways of doing this.
The crucial thing, of course, about the changes in QMV is that this State and other small States' voting strength is reduced by 50 per cent and larger States' voting strength increases significantly. So I don't see how you can say, or certainly I don't agree with your proposition that the interests of smaller States are protected.
I also want to address the parliament, because I think this is really fundamental. There is a democratic deficit at the heart of the Parliament. The average turnout across EU Member States for parliamentary elections is 45 per cent. In 2004 five of then fifteen Member States had turn outs of less than 30 per cent. This does not indicate that unlike, for example, the Oireachtas that it has widespread democratic legitimacy across the EU.
On the yellow cards and the red cards, the difficulty ‑‑ and the devil is in the detail and I don't think they will think ever be used because the procedures are so convoluted.
On the Citizens' Initiative, to answer the question that was asked, it is very clear what will happen. If the Commission doesn't like a proposal it will oppose it, as we have already seen the case.
My concluding remarks, Chair, are this. We have heard about neutrality and we have heard about the triple lock and I suppose what I would say to the colleagues who have mentioned it is this, is that the triple lock only applies to the deployment of troops. It does not apply to other internationally recognised definitions of neutrality, such as funding. Article 28 has three specific clauses on funding, not only to increase our own military capabilities, but also to contribute to a start up fund for military actions that have yet been specified, and a rapid appropriations procedure. They are the mechanisms in this Treaty for the European Union to access funds for things that have not even been agreed.
Why vote No? Very simple. Because it is a bad Treaty. It is not in our interests, the European Union's interest or the interests of the world and if we vote No, we can have a real and democratic debate about the kind of Europe we want in the future and I think that is as good a reason to vote no as you can think of.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Tony Brown, please.
The reference to the economic content of the Treaty is interesting because, with the exception of certain adjustments in relation to the role of the Euro zone, the entire economic content is the content that has been there from the very beginning. The reference to undistorted competition is from Article 3 of the Treaty of Rome and this country has benefited and prospered under the terms of those treaties for nearly 40 years and I see no reason why that should not continue to be the case.
In the military area I think it has been fairly clearly dealt with, but there is just one point that strikes me, this is the argument about compatibility with NATO. That, I think, would be something that would be extremely useful to our 450 troops in Chad that they may able to actually have compatible communications with their French comrades. But the key point I want to make is this, this Treaty, as it was first envisaged in the Convention and through the whole process, is to provide a framework for the Member States, the democratic, sovereign Member States to work together to meet an agenda which is huge, and my colleague Niamh Bhreathnach has referred to this and I don't need to go into detail. It is also a framework for real politics both at the European level and nationally. The issues that have been raised about recent judgments of the European Court relate almost entirely to the transposition of existing European Directives, such as the Posting of Workers Directive in the different Member States, and this is a matter of basic politics.
I want to agree with something that was said by Senator de Burca, which I think is critical, certainly to people in my part of the political spectrum. It is critical that in national elections, but particularly in the European Parliament elections that those of us who push for progressive policies get out and get the people to vote for them. If there is a rightwards trend in the Commission and elsewhere at the moment it is because that is what people voted for and if we want to change that, we have to persuade them to vote for other policies that are more in line with our aspiration.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Maire Ni Bheaglaoich, please.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much indeed. Mr Blair Horan, please.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights, yes, it is not a new document. It derives from pre-existing documents, but that does not mean that it is not an important development. We have to bear in mind that international human rights law is evolving, the absolute sovereignty that derived from the Treaty of Westphalia has been set aside in the last decade in relation to genocide and crimes against humanity. Bringing together civil, political and social and economic rights in the one document, in the one charter, which wasn't the case with the UN Declaration on Covenants is an important development. It does allow the potential for social and economic rights to develop as human rights. That is not just what I am saying, the Irish Human Rights Commission also takes the same view. Now I am not a lawyer, but for the last 20 years I have been dealing with European Court of Justice case law on the gender equality field. We have taken cases there ourselves. Now it is my view that the potential to develop a human rights discourse around non discrimination and anti discrimination in the work place has potential from that Charter, it will have to develop as a discourse. But if it does, it will allow the potential to have a higher test for indirect discrimination against women than currently the test of objective justification does.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Michael Geary, please.
However, even more importantly, to meet the challenges in other areas, neither the EU in its present mode or any individual country, in its own right, can address things like climate change, human rights, trafficking, poverty, migration, world development. These are massive issues going forward for future generations and they won't thank us if we do not provide for them. These issues will arise, as opposed to some of the other issues that have been discussed here this morning that might possibly arise. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Ms Bronwen Maher, please.
MS MAHER: Thank you, Chairman. And welcome to Susan George and David Byrne here today. I think it is very interesting listening to the debates here about the powers of the new institutions. I definitely see a change in world view developing in the EU and it is away from the social democratic model that developed in Europe after World War II towards a more economic liberal model. Now when the European community was established, it was basically an economic cooperation and that was needed at the time. But as we are acceding, giving away more and more of our decision making, our fundamental social democratic ideals and things that people, the average citizen in Europe holds very dear is being pulled away from national parliaments and I think it is of concern.
I want to move on now to one of the particular areas of concern that I have and that is on the whole area of the common foreign and security issues and the more enhanced mutual defence cooperation that is outlined in Lisbon. At home here in Ireland, and it has been repeated by a number of contributors here today, and we are told we have no need to worry about this enhanced mutual defence because our neutrality is defended. But our neutrality is absolutely not defined or codified. It is a vague aspirational position that is trotted out any time anyone raises any issues around defence. There is no ‑‑ we have no formal non‑aligned status either.
I think we need serious debate at home here in Ireland, irrespective of what the outcome of the vote is in May, on the implications of this Treaty on the EU arms industry, Ireland's involvement in this industry, do we want to go down the road where employment is dependent on supporting this industry? We also need to look at tax implications for greater mutual defence obligations. And it has been underlined by a number of speakers here today that this is going to be a fact. I have problems with Lisbon, but I also have major problems with what I see is a fear and unwillingness to openly discuss this in the Oireachtas. I think that is a dereliction of our duty as elected representatives and I think our neutrality is a really important ethos for the average citizen and that is why it has been mentioned again and again by people who are urging a yes vote. But I say our neutrality is only an aspiration and it is not defended. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Ms Una McGurk, please.
Because David Byrne has given such a clear, practical exposition based on his considerable experience of the workings of the EU institutions and because he has made such a very strong, powerful case for their reformation under the proposed Lisbon Treaty, I don't propose to ask him any questions. However, I have two issues which I would like to raise with Ms George, if I may.
At the outset, Ms George, you indicated that we were told that there were two reasons why the French voted against the previous Constitutional Treaty. One was that there was a fear of Turkish accession and the second one was that it was claimed that they didn't understand the Treaty. But, in fact, what we were told, from our many observers and monitors on the ground, including many journalists who were present in France at the time and who were monitoring the situation on a daily basis and speaking with French citizens at that time, was that a very significant reason as to why the French voted against the previous Constitutional Treaty was because they wanted to register a protest against the then President Jacques Chirac. This has already been alluded to by Niamh Bhreathnach, so perhaps you would comment on that because we certainly were told that and I think many of us believe that to be true.
The second issue that I want to raise with Ms George is the fact that she, in her many criticisms of the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights stated, and I quote, "that there was no gender equality mentioned". Well, as I understand it, under Article 23 of the Charter there is a specific reference, and I quote: that equality between men and women must be ensured in all areas including employment, work and pay.
Now I think we have to get give credit where it is due and that equality between men and women is one of the fundamental principles of the European Union and we have had, as I am sure you know and agree, very many, very important Directives in that area which have not only changed the law, but raised consciousness in this area. But there is perhaps one area where I would accept there is a problem and that is where women are, at the moment, unfortunately under‑represented when it comes to areas of senior decision making, but that that is effectively and, perhaps unfortunately, still a matter for individual states. Thank you very much.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Thomas Slowey, please.
CLLR SLOWEY: Thank you, Chairman. Can I thank both speakers for their very clear contribution. My question is to David Byrne. I recognise the need to reduce the number of Commissioners, as outlined in the Nice Treaty. I can understand why this was necessary with a Europe now of 27 members and probably a fragmentation of portfolios, with some countries having multiple Commissioners and a loss of efficiency in the Commission. I think you clearly outlined that each country will have a Commissioner for ten out of a fifteen year cycle and that each Commissioner swears an oath to be impartial and not to lobby for their own country. I understand and agree with all of that.
However, there is a perception out there, I think in Ireland and indeed in other EU countries, that a country that does not have a Commissioner in some way will be disadvantaged. Could you address that? Thank you, Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON: Madeline Taylor‑Quinn, please.
MS TAYLOR‑QUINN: Chairman, I would like to thank both speakers for their presentation and compliment, in particular, David Byrne for a very clear, concise explanation in relation to the weighting in QMV in relation to the strengths of the parliament, and the weighting, in particular, in relation to the smaller Member States. I think if I were a German citizen I would be none too pleased to think that 358,000 people would be represented by one MEP as against 858,000 as you have clearly outlined. So I think that is a very big advantage as a small Member State that we enjoy and we must recognise that.
My questions, particularly, are to Ms George. Initially when you spoke you referred to a number of men who had quoted the unreadability and the lack of understanding of the Treaty and the obscurity of it. Could I suggest to you that those gentlemen obviously underestimated the intelligence of the electorate when they stated that. You made, in my view ‑‑ and I agree with Deputy Byrne ‑‑ a very erroneous comparison and, I felt, disingenuous comparison between the Lisbon Treaty and the American Constitution. Quite frankly to compare them is totally ridiculous because you are talking about two entirely different situations 200 years apart; two entirely differently circumstances, 27 Member States with varying history, culture, background, linguistic, language, the entire lot, all with their own varying constitutions so you are not comparing like with like by any means so I think that is rather disingenuous.
In relation then to the specifics, I would like to ask one question and it is the issue which you raised in relation to a recent European Court of Justice judgment in relation to ‑‑ you stated about the reservoir of cheap labour coming from the eastern Member States into the western Member States and that a Court's decision was made in relation to either Norway or Sweden where these people were getting 50 per cent of the minimum wage. Now could you explain to us specifically where in the Lisbon Treaty that has relevance? How that is significant or how it is part, in any shape or form, of the Lisbon Treaty? My understanding, and I am not familiar with the specifics of the case, but my understanding would be that that is one‑off specific to a specific case but not for universal application to all Member States across the European Union. And maybe Mr Byrne may care to comment on that case as well if he is familiar. But I don't believe that it is included or part of the Lisbon Treaty and to draw it in again is disingenuous. Thank you, Chairperson.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. That is the ‑‑ everybody who has asked to speak has been given the opportunity. Thomas, quickly, please. Or, sorry, Michael.
MR McGRATH: Thanks, Chairman, I will be brief. I would like to thank both speakers, as well, for their presentations. I think it is ironic that the No side have been very consistent in their criticism of the European Commission as an unelected bureaucratic institution as they refer to it, and yet, on the other hand, one of the thesis that are putting forward against the Treaty is that we will be losing our automatic right to a Commissioner for five out of every 15 years. So I think they should make up their mind on the effectiveness of the European Commission and the importance of Ireland having a representative there while acting on behalf of all of the European Union.
Just one of the key points is in relation to the interests of smaller states and the view being put out there that in some way the Treaty represents a diminution in the power and the role of smaller states and I think that former Commissioner Byrne has dealt with that very comprehensively. Personally I believe that it is a huge sacrifice for the larger countries, such as France, the UK and Germany who previously had two commissioners to now go to a situation where they have one commissioner for ten out of every 15 years on an equal basis with Ireland and other small countries. He has dealt with the issue of the population per MEP, the advantageous position that that puts us in. And also the fact of QMV, that even in the limited areas that are being transferred from unanimity to QMV, 15 Member States would be required and to me that is a very strong safeguard which is there to protect the smaller Member States and one which we will use along with our colleagues.
Finally, Chairman, the issue of neutrality. I think it is very disingenuous to put forward the view that in some way Ireland is going to be forced to participate in missions or that in some way is going to come under the umbrella and will be bound by decisions of NATO. That is completely untrue and the Treaty makes that very clear under the common foreign and security policy there. It is a matter of unanimity. We have our constitutional protections in place. We have the triple lock and please don't put forward that view because it is disingenuous. Thank you, Chairman.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Well, as I say, now we bring in the speakers again and I'll ask them to deal with the additional questions that have been asked and to make what valedictory remarks they wish to make themselves. So perhaps, Ms George, you would start off this time.
I would like to make a few points on issues that have been raised several times. The Citizen Initiative, what does it say? It says if a million people sign a petition they can ask the Commission to take into account their views, but that initiative can only concern the application of the Constitution. It does not concern changing what the Treaty says. So you can only ask the Commission to change something if you think they are not applying the Treaty but you cannot have an initiative to change it. That is not on. So I think we have to read the whole article.
On climate change it has been noted several times that this somehow strengthens the Treaty. I don't think that is so. We already had the provision for promoting measures, I am quoting, "at international level to deal with regional or world wild environmental problems" and all the introduction of climate change does is to add six words which are "and, in particular, combatting climate change", but it does not give any new powers to the Union. So if the Union wants to combat climate change it could do it without that small change which really does not change anything.
I stand corrected on gender equality. I thank you for that. I must have, I undoubtedly misread but it was not an intention to deceive.
Does the Charter strengthen the rights of citizens? Compared to the French Constitution, no. No, it does not strengthen the rights, it weakens them if that is to supercede ‑‑ no, I mean I gave the example of the right to work or the right to engage in work, and that is a very important part of the rights granted by the French Constitution. There was also a right which was inscribed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789 which says: society has the right to demand an accounting from all public officials for their administration. We have a very difficult time demanding accountability from the European public officials for their actions. I could tell you stories of having tried to do this, particularly in the area of trade, with Pascal Lamy. But it does not strengthen the rights of citizens. I am sorry, it does not.
A representative of Labour, Mr Brown, was a member of the Convention and he says he did not defend something I have said which I have quoted, but let me give you the full quote:
All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Now that is not Karl Marx, that is Adam Smith who was commenting on the owners of capital. I think Adam Smith knew one or two things about capitalism and he was saying that if you allow people to capture wealth to that degree, they will follow, maybe not individually, but as a class they will follow the rule of all for ourselves and nothing for other people. And I think that that is what has been happening over the last 30 years of neo liberalism.
The Chairman mentioned a book that is coming out next month called Hijacking America which is about how that transfer was made, how it was bought and paid for by American neo conservative, neo liberal elites. They spent over a billion dollars on the production and the dissemination of ideas. I have another book, which is available here, which is called We the Peoples of Europe in which I am arguing at much greater length than I am able to do today.
I am sorry if the reference to the US Constitution was misinterpreted. All I was saying was that it is a short document and it is understandable and that I do not want, I don't want the US model. I think there is a social model in Europe. One chapter of my book I devote to how that has been measured by the International Labour Organisation which shows that in the area of work and livelihood, Europe comes out consistently ahead of countries like the United States. Great Britain is lower, but basically all of the members of the European Union, including some from Eastern Europe, are doing better, graded by respect for labour rights than is the US and certain other neo liberal countries like Australia. There is a measurable European model. I do not want to see it destroyed and think that the move towards a US model, an all market privatisation, low tax, free market model is a dangerous one.
The question about the Court of Justice decisions. The most recent case is the Ruffet v Neidersaxon case, which was the one I quoted, where the Polish work force was paid 50 per cent less than the agreed minimum wage for that branch. They justified their decision by "the freedom to provide services", which is all over the Treaty - the free movement of goods, services, people and capital comes back all the time in the Treaty. This is a basic thing and the Court of Justice used the argument of the free provision and unhindered provision of services to justify its decision. So you can read the case on‑line.
Now let's see what else was there. Somebody mentioned migration and climate change. This was the Chambers of Ireland representative. These are clear and present dangers. I think that Europe needs to examine, very closely, its own policies in this area. You can look at European policies as they are now being practiced in both North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa. You can take agricultural policies, fisheries policies, debt cancellation or lack of same, commodities payments, et cetera, and you can see that, in many cases, European policies are contributing to cutting off all avenues for people in those countries except for migration. You don't risk your life for nothing. And more and more people are risking their lives.
We should not be surprised when we see these boats going to the Canary Islands and sometimes not arriving and losing a great many of the people, and even those who survive are going to meet with racism and xenophobia and poor wages and so on. But why are those boats available? Because European Fisheries have completely demolished the quantity of fish that those boats can take and owners of those boats are selling them, and they are selling them to these organised gangs that promise to take people safely to the Canary Islands. We have to look, you know, at the beam that is in our eye before we look always at the moat in others.
Ireland is not going to be forced to participate in NATO missions. I didn't say that. I said that Irish tax payers will be contributing to the budgets to do that and that the overall military capacity, but the woman from the Alliance for Peace and Neutrality said this much better than I did, that we are going to have a compatible policy with that of NATO. We don't know now what those policies are going to be, but we will have to go along with it as Europeans.
Also I had no opinion in particular on no Commissioner for five out of fifteen years. It seems to me that David Byrne's arguments on that are quite coherent. What worries me, once more, is not so much these institutional arrangements; it is the general tendency to move towards a model which is not going to favour 80 per cent of the people who live in Europe. It will be very beneficial to the elites. It will be very beneficial to corporations, but I want more scope for people to intervene in the discussion and well beyond this sham Citizens' Initiative, because I think we are going to be moving into a dangerous period for European citizens and Europe could be a beacon to the world. It could be a beacon of social values, ecological values and of treating its citizens as full human beings and it could be a beacon in terms of development but we are not going in that direction.
I have a very high opinion of Europe. I would like to see it fulfill what could be its destiny. I think it is the only political entity on earth that could do that now. Certainly not the United States, not China and so on. So Europe has a huge responsibility and I would like to see it accept and fulfill that responsibility. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much indeed. Mr Byrne, please.
MR BYRNE: I am conscious of the time so I will be as quick as I possibly can.
John Cushnahan asked me the important question in relation to the status of the issue of abortion which is currently in the Constitution, is that going to be in any way undermined or affected by the Reform Treaty? Well, let me just harp back to the fact that the Maastricht Protocol, which was included into the Treaty at that time specifically provides that nothing in the EU treaties or any future treaties amending them shall affect the application in Ireland of Article 40, sub‑article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution of Ireland. That is solid. It is rock solid. There is no issue on that. That is an issue that I think anybody who has a concern about that and there are who have legitimate concerns I understand that, but I think it is important to make it clear that the way this is structured and the way it has been dealt with in the past creates a situation where there cannot be any change in that situation of that kind.
John Cushnahan also talked about the number of equality cases that are before the courts thereby giving effect to the Social Charter in the European Union. And I had forgotten to mention this myself but I can give some evidence in relation to this because when I was a barrister the biggest case I ever lost was a social welfare case where I appeared for the State in the High Court, Supreme Court and in the Court of Justice in Luxembourg where the courts decided, and it was the Court of Justice that made this decision in Luxembourg, the Court decided that the Plaintiffs were entitled to win their case and achieve equality in relation to a particular part of social welfare law. This resulted in the Irish Government having to pay compensation or back payments to the Irish women plaintiffs to the extent of 300 million punts, is my recollection at the time.
Eoin O Broin then raised the question of me talking about and expressing myself in a way that might be construed as being offensive, and I am sorry if he has taken offence in that. I probably expressed myself perhaps a bit over robustly. But what I really want to say is this, that my concern in relation to the misleading nature of the points that have been made by the no side have got to do with the fact, and somebody mentioned it, that many of the issues that are raised are not relevant to the Reform Treaty. Now it may be an expression of a world view and we were all entitled to our world view and there may be people who may take the view that the European Union should be run differently, we should do it differently, but that is the democratic process. You have your MEPs, you have your Council of Ministers. You have all the other methods of systems by which your views can be expressed through the democratic process and try and seek change. But voting No to the Reform Treaty is not going to change that situation. That, I think, is probably an expression of frustration in relation to this issue. As I said, we are all entitled to our world view. But I want to make this point, and once again I don't intend it to be offensive to anybody in saying this, but I tend to find that those who vote No or advocate a No vote always seem to advocate a No vote. I never seem to find those who are the No side ever on the Yes side and that, to me, proves, certainly the conclusion I draw is that those who are on the no side have a world view that I don't share and that many people in this country don't share. That is fine, because that is, once again, the democratic process. But, you know, it is unfair of those who have that world view to say therefore you must vote no to this Treaty and thereby undermine the effectiveness of what is trying to be achieved in the establishment of a stream‑lined set of institutions of the European Union.
I think it is worth pointing out, and somebody did mention it a moment ago, that the European Union is the exponent of soft power in the world. We should be proud of that. That is the world view that I see in the European Union that I find attractive.
There is just one other point. I was asked by two people about the number of Commissioners and will we be disadvantaged? I don't believe we will be disadvantaged. I think, in fact, that there may be something to be said for the European Commission being seen to be holding the rein, moving to a position where it is more communitaire. That is my view. There are others who may take a different view. Those who have more of a nationalist view about the relationship between Member States and the European Union may not be entirely comfortable with that, that is fine. But I happen to have that view and I also believe, I also believe this strongly, that the extent to which we move to a point where there will be a Commission without Commissioners sitting at the table from all Member States, I am convinced with what I have seen already by sitting there that anybody who makes a personal national point will be severely criticised. It will become the very thing that you can't do, because not everybody is, as it were, represented around the table. I did see it. There were a number of people in the Commission that I sat at who tended to drift in that direction a little bit, but we all knew them and the points they made were listened to and taken for what they were worth. But they had no power in the sense of being a representative of their own Member State in seeking an outcome that they wanted for their own State. It just didn't work that way. And I think the consequence of this will be that there will be a further drift in that direction; that it will be regarded as unprofessional conduct, as it were, for a Commissioner to behave in that manner.
I don't want to comment much on the Court of Justice cases really as I have not followed it very closely on the payment issue. I have to say this though. I have appeared in the Court of Justice on a number of occasions. It is a court of considerable rigour. Very, very high class work. Their judgments are absolutely superb. Nobody has ever, ever suggested that their judgments are in any way skewed in one direction or another to produce a particular outcome. What may be happening in this, and I am not an expert and I have not followed this closely, but what may be happening in this issue is a question of the gradual convergence of some Member States who don't have a standard of living or a cost of living like some of the other Member States have, and this may be a convergence issue. I put this out as a suggestion. I have not thought about it, I may be wrong but it may be an answer.
Finally, I want to respond to the very interesting question that I think goes to the heart of everything that Paschal Mooney asked, and that is the question in relation to ‑‑ well first of all the lesser question, the smaller, more detailed question about what will happen if there is a yellow or a red card. I believe that the institutions must respond to it. It is in the Constitution and there will be enough people there to ensure that there has to be a proper and adequate response to deal with the issues that are raised by, either the Citizens' Initiative or by the parliaments of the European Union. Nine parliaments make this point and send a yellow or red card to Brussels, that will have been to responded to because it can't be possibly ignored. It is too big an issue and it is goes to the heart of now the new democratic order of the European Union, the drift in the direction of greater democracy. It will be something that the European Union will be seeking to show is an icon of democracy and, therefore, I believe will respond and respond positively to it.
The important question you asked about shared sovereignty and why are people uncomfortable with it. I think this goes to the core of a lot of what we are saying here, and getting back to what I was saying earlier about the world view and there are some who are not comfortable with the shared sovereignty, the pooling of sovereignty which goes to the heart of how the European Union works.
I had an experience when I left the Commission, I took up the job of a special envoy for the World Health Organisation in helping them negotiate a thing called the International Health Regulations. It is the second time only that the WHO brought forward law. And the reason why I was engaged was to go and visit various member states of the WHO to get them to sign up to the IHR from a political point of view. And the reason I was asked was because I was a lawyer. I had a health portfolio and this was a health issue and I was from the European Union. I knew how pooling of sovereignty worked. I went from Iran to the United States to China, to Japan, I was everywhere. And the message I was sending there was; give a little get a lot. The pooling of sovereignty is critically important and what the IHR was designed to do was to give the WHO some powers so that if they identified or got information that a particular member country had a public health emergency of international concern, the WHO could go there, tell them that that is their information and ask two things; one confirmation and two collaboration to see if they could rule out this problem and deal with this problem.
Inevitably giving that right to the WHO was an intrusion into the sovereignty, even in a small way but to some extent did, into the member states of the WHO and that was what I was there to try and get people to agree to. In some instances it was slow. In some instances there was a difficulty, but they signed up to it. And one of the reasons they signed up to it was they looked at the way the European Union works, they saw that the pooling of sovereignty worked and they signed up for it, and we now have that law which protects the citizens of the world from global communicable diseases. That was the purpose of the exercise.
I don't have a difficulty with the pooling of sovereignty. I have seen it work. A lot of people around this table and in this room don't have a difficulty with it, you have seen it work. I detect there are some others in this room who have a difficulty with it and I understand that too. But, if that is the case they must examine their conscience. Are they voting no because of what they don't like in the Treaty or are they voting no for their world view? That is the question. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Could I ask you to express your appreciation to both speakers. (Applause)
We have run on a bit. I am sorry for that. But a lot of people wanted to speak and I think it was important that views be aired. I am particularly grateful to the people in the last round of interventions who kept so well to the time.
We have two plenary meetings next week. On Monday 14 April Dr Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, will address the Forum in Dublin Castle. On Thursday, 17 April we will hear from the President of the European Commission Mr José Manuel Barroso. Both of these meetings will take place in Dublin Castle and they are both afternoon meetings.
Today is the closing date for public submissions to the Forum and we will have a Submissions Day on 29th April. As always you will find the transcript of today's proceedings and a podcast through the website forumoneurope.ie, as well as details of all our meetings. You can also see short video clips from the public information meeting in our YouTube channel.
Sin a bhfuil, go raibh míle maith agaibh. Slán abhaile.
THE SESSION CONCLUDED
National Forum On Europe, Fóram Náisiúnta um an Eoraip © 2010