[Comment] On Friday Ireland votes on half-truths

PATRICIA MCKENNA AND JENS-PETER BONDE

02.10.2009 @ 06:53 CET

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - On Friday 2 October the Irish voters will be voting Yes to membership of the European Union. Both the Yes side and No side are for membership. No one is calling for Irish withdrawal from the EU.

The open question is whether they also approve of the Lisbon Treaty, because it has hardly been up for debate.

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There is not one poster in Ireland favouring the Lisbon Treaty. The Yes posters only favour Irish membership in the EU.

The former President of The European Parliament, Pat Cox, has established a very strong "Ireland for Europe" campaign. One youth organisation is called "We belong," another "Generation Yes." There are unlimited millions of euro on the Yes side and no one is asking where all this money comes from.

The Cox-posters ask the citizens to chose between "Ruin" and "Recovery" and call the Nay-sayers liars. Ryanair boss Micheal O'Leary calls them "losers."

There is no forum in which Cox and colleagues discuss the important changes in decision-making under Lisbon.

The Government, the "independent" Referendum Commission and the European Commission have agreed to put a range of half-truths in their leaflets, paid for by all tax payers, and sent to all voters.

They threaten Ireland with the loss of the Irish Commissioner, if the Irish vote No. But Article 213 in the Nice Treaty says the opposite: Each member state will keep its Commissioner until the member states unanimously agree on a different composition. The aim is a smaller Commission but the method: Unanimity. So, Ireland can only lose its Commissioner if it agrees to the loss.

On the contrary, the Lisbon Treaty would reduce the Commission from 27 to only 18 members - until the member states unanimously agree to another solution. There is merely a political compromise to continue having one commissioner from each member state, at least until further enlargement.

There is legal guarantee for an Irish Commissioner with a No vote, there is a political promise with a Yes vote. This simple truth is turned around by all players on the Yes side and most media who support a Yes.

All official information hides the core of the Lisbon Treaty, which will reduce the voting power of the small countries. Twenty one small countries will go from having 51 percent of the vote to less than 30 percent. The six largest member states will go from 49 percent to more than 70 percent.

Ireland's vote will be halved from 2 percent to 0.9 percent. This is treated as though it was a state secret and even often denied.

The official leaflets, including that of the Commission, guarantee low Irish corporate tax. They ignore the new clause in Article 113 and Protocol 27 about "distortion of competition" – a clear invitation to outlaw the low Irish tax.

The official information also offers a social guarantee in spite of the Treaty copper-fastening the Laval and Ruffert verdicts in the EU courts, which forbid trade unions to strike for higher wages than the statuary minimum wage. They also permit 53 Polish workers to work for 46 percent of the minimum wage for construction work, fixed by the German state of Niedersachsen.

The Yes side may win the re-run this way. They also risk a popular reaction to all the threats and half truths.

But they may at the same time ruin their reputation and trustworthiness for many years.

Patricia McKenna and Jens-Peter Bonde are former MEPs