The Treaty That Dare Not Speak Its’ Name

Blimey, it’s a good thing I don’t get paid to do this. While my vacation from tending to this here blog would give that of a Dáil representative’s a run for his money, just because I’ve been dithering like the Prince of Denmark’s personal procrastination guru doesn’t mean I’ve been following the way of the world any less closely.

One thing that I’ve found particularly remarkable of late is the truly dire level of public discourse, in this country and beyond. In America, the idea of giving healthcare  to uninsured people is so unseemly it’s causing catatonic fits in town halls around the country, fuelled by vested interests propagating mind-bending truth contortions and, in some cases, just plain making shit up. And so, what would appear to be a pretty rational attempt to try and insure nearly 50 million Americans has been hijacked by those who swear blind that the government are drawing up death lists and marching old people to gulags.

The most frustrating thing about arguments like this is that logic or well-informed opinion are no match for an iron-clad conviction, whether it’s passively assumed from the talking head who shouts loudest on the TV or radio,  or pulled from whichever orifice these ideas come from. As Jewish Congressman Barney Frank said to that now infamous woman who castigated him for supporting a “Nazi” policy, you may as well argue with a dining room table.

I wish to hell this type of thing was restricted to an “Only in America” guffaw file, but no joy, alas, because we’ve got Lisbon Treaty II: Beyond Thunderdome to misrun and misrepresent soon. Not perhaps since Toto Schillachi has a European creation caused so much ire on this island of ours, and with October hurtling at us at untold speed the rhetoric is only going to be dialled up from here. Now, speaking as a bit of a Europhile, in the interest of fairness I must say I’ll be voting yes, but it’s not as if I have a problem with the No side by default, it’s the lack of any decent rational argument against the treaty that gets to me.

In fact, so tired was I by claims of us losing our Commissioner, our regional influence, our neutrality, our minimum wage, our tax bands, our ethics laws, basically everything short of our bloody car keys, that I took that most drastic of steps, and read The Lisbon Treaty, to see once and for all.

First of all, while it’s not going to be a best-selling paperback classic, it’s certainly not the inscrutable drivel it’s been claimed to be. Yes, it’s lengthy and complex, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a law of this magnitude that isn’t, and yes it makes continual references back to previous paragraphs and treaties, but if you can follow a Tarantino film, you can follow The Lisbon Treaty.

As for the objections, well it’s fair to say that a great deal of people on either side of the No side are going to be so against it by default for their own political positions. On the left, Sinn Féin have repeated broadly the same concerns to every European treaty since 1973, and Joe Higgins’ principled brand of socialism is irreperably at odds with the pragmatic nature of the EU, and indeed governments in general. On the right, you have Eurosceptics inherently opposed to the whole project, and the religious right, eminently audible in this debate, who aren’t so much opposed to a European wide confederation as they are to the fact that it’s not administered from The Vatican.

But for the myriad undecideds, all 25% of them, who have no particular feelings towards the EU, have been put off by the spin or whose vote is just generally up for grabs, well consider this:

“The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.”

That’s how the Lisbon Treaty starts out, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anything objectionable in that. While the Treaty deals with a great many things, syntax changes are amongst the most prominent, replacing the word “assent” with  ”consent”, important with vital, that kind of thing, but even the substantive changes aren’t indicative of a sinister EU land grab. Take as an example the language around one of the No side’s centrepiece arguments, defence:

“The Union shall respect the equality of Member States before the Treaties as well as their national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government. It shall respect their essential State functions, including ensuring the territorial integrity of the State, maintaining law and order and safeguarding national security. In particular, national security remains the sole responsibility of each Member State.”

So EU conscription isn’t exactly on the cards with a statement like that, especially so when you consider the right to conscientious objection is enshrined in the Fundamental Rights Charter. But while the title “Common Security & Defence Policy” may understandably raise eyebrows, it clearly states that any defence decision would have to be taken unanimously and within the confines of existing UN and NATO  rules. It spells out what such common policies may entail here:

“…joint disarmament operations, humanitarian and rescue tasks, military advice and assistance tasks, conflict prevention and peace-keeping tasks, tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-making and post-conflict stabilisation.”

Needless to say, Irish soldiers have been doing exactly that domestically and internationally for years already. And if you’re wondering about that clause that suggests that in a time of international crisis we’d be compelled to throw every weapon in our arsenal behind a collective solidarity:

“If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.”

On that other hot button topic however, abortion, it’s harder to offer a defence with citations. Mainly, because references to abortion are non-existant. There is literally more in The Lisbon Treaty about space exploration than there is about abortion. In fact, the only thing I could find resembling anything close was in the first two articles of the laudable Charter of Fundamental Rights:

“Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected.”

and

“Everyone has the right to life”

Which, frankly, are two sentences you could see in an edition of Alive! at any given stage. Perhaps my favourite section in the whole Treaty though is on the topic of regional development, and one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of the EU in the first place:

“Among the regions concerned, particular attention shall be paid to rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition, and regions which suffer from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps such as the northernmost regions with very low population density and island, cross-border and mountain regions.”

The effect that the EU has had on rural Ireland these past 36 years, through Development Fund-funded infrastructure, CAP-funded agricultural competitiveness or Peace-funded youth and community projects, has arguably been worth the admittance fee alone, and it’s a commitment that puts our own government to absolute shame. But of course, none of this guarantees a Yes vote in the slightest.

Be it through an aggravated frustration with the government or politics at large, ideological entrenchment or, in some cases, a weary, baseless stubborness, debate on the merits or detriments of the Treaty itself has been hijacked by those who are projecting their own issues onto a materially unconnected surface. The lobby group Cóir, for example, presumably suggested the new minimum wage could be €1.84 after Lisbon because it sounds at least 75% Orwellian, and their deposing of the Easter Rising signatories into their argument is nothing short of cheap emotional manipulation. Ireland only won any measure of freedom when Griffith, Collins and the other envoys plenipotentiary sat across the table with the British and hammered out a deal. We did not win it by putting ourselves under siege.

Ultimately though, no matter who endorses it or abhors it, the Treaty’s fate rests in the hands of the people who show up on polling day. And while it’s nearly as lengthy and difficult as this article, it is incumbent upon everyone who votes to make up their own mind with the facts at hand, and not singularly on the advice of a local representative, lobby group or flippant postering. With the range and scale of the problems we face today, complexity is no excuse. There is no Lisbon Treaty for Dummies available, because it isn’t meant for dummies. The Lisbon Treaty will be nothing short of pivotal for Ireland’s future  whether it succeeds or fails, but unless we can get back to a position where we debate the facts intelligently and not water our arguments down to ill-informed slogans, we’re in big danger of losing something a lot more precious than anything Europe could take away.