Irish voters say NO to Lisbon Treaty
The Lisbon Treaty was
signed by the member countries of the European Union (EU) in December 2007.
Before coming into effect on 1 January 2009 it has to be ratified by all the 27
member states of the EU. Prior to the Irish referendum 18 countries had
already done so. On 13 June, the result of the Irish referendum was declared.
On a turn-out of 53 per cent, the Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty by a
majority of 54.4 percent to 47.6 per cent.
This result was nothing short of a bombshell, for
it represented a kick in the teeth of the political and business establishment
of Ireland and the European Union alike and a hammer blow to the morale of the
political elite.
Disconnect between the
elite and the people
The result of the Irish referendum is yet another
proof of the disconnect between the institutions, polices and the direction of
the EU and its people, representing a gulf between the EU business and
political elite, on the one hand, and the popular sentiment of its people, on
the other hand. It is not the first time that the brave and independent-minded
people of Ireland have rejected a treaty concocted by the kings of finance of
the EU. In 2001, they rejected the Nice Treaty, albeit on a smaller turn-out
of 35 per cent. The following year, after a few cosmetic changes to hoodwink
the Irish electorate, the latter were manipulated into voting Yes for
essentially the same document.
Nor are the Irish alone in saying No to EU
treaties. Given the chance, voters have repeatedly rejected EU treaties – from
the rejection of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 by the Danes to the 2005
rejection of the EU Constitution by the Dutch and the French.
These rejections in referenda in the countries
mentioned above, over a period of 15 years, have come about because the people
do not like the direction in which the EU has been heading. By and large
ordinary people are not in favour of the EU’s slow but sure march towards the
achievement of the Franco-German bourgeoisie’s project (shared by the
bourgeoisies of Italy, Spain and some others) of a more closely integrated
(federalist) Europe, resting on the foundation of the monetary union. This
European integration process is encapsulated in the Lisbon Treaty, which in
turn is nothing but the European Constitution (minus the flag and national
anthem) except in name – a constitution already rejected by the Dutch and the
French electorates.
The Lisbon Treaty does, as did the rejected EU
Constitution, provide for a full-time president, a foreign policy chief with
enhanced powers and a fully fledged EU diplomatic service; it strengthens the
role in EU policymaking of the 15-strong group of Eurozone countries (soon to
rise to 16 next January with the accession of Slovakia to this group).
The Irish No is a blow to these ambitions as the
treaty can only come into effect on ratification by all the 27 member states.
Delivering a crushing blow to the ambitions of the bourgeoisie of several EU
countries, especially that of Germany and France, who are determined to create
an imperialist European power, rivalling the US and Japan, contending on a
global scale for markets, sources of raw materials and avenues of export of
capital, the Irish voters have sent shockwaves and shaken and stirred the
political and business representatives of finance capital of these countries.
In saying No, the Irish voters had concerns of
their own, ranging from tax, energy, the environment, sovereignty and
neutrality to the future of public services, rights of working people, the
ever-increasing privatisation of health, education, transport and water. The
862,415 Irish voters (0.2 per cent of the EU’s 497 million population) have
stopped the EU dead in its tracks.
Response of the
establishment
Apart from Sinn Fein, all the Irish political
parties and the entire business elite supported the Yes campaign. European
Round Table of Industry, with a membership of 40 of the largest European
corporations, which has been the driving force behind the federalist European
project, was devastated by the Irish No vote. Equally revealing was the
outburst of BusinessEurope, the European-wide employers association, which
expressed its extreme irritation at the Irish vote thus: “European business
leaders deplore the outcome of the Irish referendum. The business community
cannot afford to be bogged down in another institutional crisis”.
Similarly, the political establishment of several
imperialist countries in the EU has expressed its disappointment and
frustration at the Irish referendum result. “We are incredibly disappointed”,
said Axel Schäfer, a member of the German Bundestag committee on EU affairs. “We
think that it is a real cheek that the country that has benefited most from the
EU should do this. There is no other Europe than this treaty”.
Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian president, was
equally forthright in his disapproval of the Irish No, even suggesting that Ireland be sidelined from the European project. “Now is the time”, he said, “for
a courageous choice by those who want coherent progress in building Europe,
leaving out whose who, despite solemn pledges, threaten to block it”.
The response of the French president, Nicolas
Sarkozy, to the Irish No is reliably reported to be simply unprintable.
Even the president of tiny Croatia, Stipe Mesic, in an attempt to ensure that his country’s impending accession to the
EU will go ahead, castigated the Irish for allegedly being ungrateful. “Now
that they [the Irish] have used the accession and structural funds, when
they developed enormously, I am a little surprised that the solidarity is at an
end”, he said.
Bourgeois democracy
The German Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Anarcho/Trot of
the 1960s turned respectable bourgeois and leader of the European Greens,
characterised the decision of the Irish electorate as undemocratic. “It is
not truly democratic that less than a million people can decide the fate of
almost half a billion Europeans”.
As is to be expected, in his endeavour to do menial
work on behalf of European finance capital, Mr Cohn-Bendit ‘forgets’ that it is
not a million people who are deciding the fate of half a billion Europeans.
More to the point, it is only this million who, because of the compulsions of
the Irish constitution, have been allowed a democratic say on this all too important
question. Had the governments of the other 26 EU states had the courage to let
in their respective electorates on this democratic process, the likelihood is
that the Lisbon Treaty would have been rejected in a number of countries.
After all its predecessor, the EU Constitution, whose provisions were
substantially similar to those of the Lisbon Treaty, were rejected by the Dutch
and the French electorates. European finance capital has so burnt its fingers
by dabbling in that democratic process that it dare not repeat the exercise in
case it gets the same unpleasant result. So, almost all other governments,
including the British, have denied their electorates any say in the question,
on the spurious argument that the Lisbon document is only a treaty and not a
constitution, being of the view that a change of nomenclature changes the
essence of things.
Bourgeois democracy, especially in the era of
imperialism, which seeks domination, not freedom, is saturated with
hypocritical cant. If the results of elections do not suit the interests of
capital, then the electorates much be blamed, or they must be asked to vote
again and again until they get it ‘right’, or new electorates must be found to
replace those refusing to produced the ‘right’ decision. The situation reminds
one of Bertolt Brecht’s poem that if the governments were unhappy with their
citizens:
“Would it not be easier In that case for the
government To dissolve the people and elect another?”
This is precisely what the EU governments are proposing
to do. They have already blamed the Irish, who, the implication is, were too
stupid to understand the complicated provisions of the 287-page document,
written as it was in an impenetrable legalese. It is being further argued that
complex treaties focussing on institutional reform, since they are allegedly
impossible for the average citizen to comprehend, should not be submitted to
popular votes. Doubtless, if the Irish had voted in favour of the Lisbon
Treaty, no one among the leading lights of bourgeois politics and business
would have asserted that the Irish voted Yes merely because they did not
understand this complex document!
Ratification to continue
Be that as it may, the business and political
leaders are bent upon ignoring the Irish veto and getting around this
inconvenient reality. Instead of accepting the Irish No as having killed the
Lisbon Treaty, which is what under the current EU arrangements it has done, the
leaders of the major EU countries, as well as the president of the European
Commission, José Manuel Barroso, have called for the continuation of the
process of approving the treaty. “The ratification process is made up of 27
national processes. Eighteen members-states have already approved the treaty,
and the European Commission believes the remaining ratifications should
continue to take their course”, said Mr Barroso, after the Irish referendum
result.
Within hours of the Irish referendum, a
Franco-German statement declared: “We give the democratic decision of
Ireland’s citizens all the respect that it is due”, which is clearly not
very much as the statement made it plain that the question of jettisoning the
treaty simply did not arise, since it was needed “to make Europe more
democratic and more efficient”. It would appear, then, that the only way
to make Europe “more democratic” is by ignoring the democratic decision
of the Irish electorate! This is precisely what the powers that be are bent
upon doing. If the EU refused to accept the rejection of its Constitution by
the Dutch and the French voters in the referendums in 2005, what prospect is
there that the Irish would get away with their rejection of Lisbon, which, in
the words of Valérie Giscard d’Estaing, who presided over the original
convention, was no different from the constitution rejected in 2005? As far as
European finance capital is concerned, nothing must be allowed to block the
creation of an EU imperialist bloc, streamlined and made ‘efficient’ through
deregulation, liberalisation and wholesale privatisation, as a prelude to
encroaching on the turf of its rival imperialist powers, oppressing further
still the oppressed and super-exploited hundreds of millions of peoples in the
vast continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America and suppressing working-class
dissent at home.
It is precisely for this reason that European
capital, and its political representatives, are determined to reject the
democratic decision of the Irish electorate in the name (you guessed it right)
of democracy! Just as in 2002, the Irish will be made to vote again, and
again, until they come up with the ‘right’ verdict.
Even the British Labour Government of Gordon Brown,
which is supposed to be sceptical of European integration, has pushed ahead
with parliamentary ratification. When Mr Brown attended the Summit of the EU
Heads of State and Government on 19-20 June, he already had this ratification
in his bag. The Czechs are expected to cause some problems, but in the end
they will be ‘persuaded’ to go along with the ratification of this treaty. By
the time the other 26 states have ratified the treaty, the Irish government
will be under almost unbearable pressure to roll over – with a barely disguised
threat to take it or leave it. Between now and the end of the year, the EU
leaders and bureaucrats will be working out some formula, a modified form of
wording, which will in no way affect the essence of things, in order to get the
Irish to endorse the treaty. European capital is pushing for an integrated
Europe in order to be able to project its combined political and economic power
effectively on a world stage presently dominated by US imperialism. If it
cannot get the Lisbon Treaty accepted openly, it will try to do so by stealth.
Oppose this imperialist
project
Equally, the working class of Europe
does not much like this deepening integration, for, in the final analysis, this
process is as much directed against it as against the rival powers of the
European bourgeoisie and the oppressed people. The working class of Europe almost instinctively, not consciously with any degree of clarity, understands this.
It is therefore not surprising that in Ireland, while the business and
political establishment were on the side of the Yes to Lisbon Treaty, the urban
working class, the rural poor and the progressive elements of society were on
the No side – the Catholic right opposed to abortion, being the exception. A
division along similar lines exists in other EU countries. It is the job of
the proletarian revolutionaries to expose the imperialist essence of the
federalist project, to enhance the understanding of the working masses as to
the true essence of the integration process, and oppose it.