Which are…

1

We’re told the main reasons for the Lisbon Treaty are to:

A) Create clearer structures to allow for the increased number of member states. This is proposed to be addressed by changing the way in which Commissionerships are awarded. Right now, ‘established’ member states are each given a Commissioner. Were this practise to continue to include all new member states, the number of EU Commissioners would become so large as to be meaningless. What Lisbon is proposing to do is have a fixed number of Commissioners and rotate their nationalities so that each country would have a Commissioner for five years and would then go without a Commissioner for the following five years.

A far better way to address this particular problem would be to establish an upper house of the European Parliament which would comprise (say) three directly elected senators per member country regardless of size. The new Upper and existing Lower houses would have the traditional, time-honoured relationship to each other.

The process of awarding Commissionerships simply on the basis of nationality could then be dropped. The executive role of the Commissioner would be developed with each selected on the basis of their experience and ability. In addition, some of the powers of the Commissioners to generate legislation would be passed on to the newly designed legislature.

B) Improve the sense of engagement between European citizens and the organs of the Union – i.e. reduce what’s commonly referred to as the democratic deficit. This is mainly to be addressed by having the Council of Ministers meet in public (right now they meet in Private).

The proposed measures don’t go nearly far enough to make the Union more accessible to the citizen. The roles of the Council of Ministers, The Commissariat, the European Parliament, etc. (not to mention the Pillars of the Union, which no one ever discusses), and their relationships one to the other remain hard to grasp. Obviously a certain amount of complexity is necessary to allow the countries of Europe to cooperate on different levels on a wide range of issues. But any structure designed to facilitate this should be grounded on the principle that only those given a clear democratic mandate to generate legislation are allowed to do so. In Europe this is currently not the case. The EU Parliament has the least power of any of the European institutions to influence decisions.

2

Any Treaty document is necessarily going to be complex but the Lisbon Treaty is unnecessarily complex. Bad enough that it’s not one single document which can be read from beginning to end (it’s the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht plus some Amendments which you, the reader, have to insert), the language is impossibly obtuse. This isn’t because the authors are talking legalese but because, ironically, they aren’t – throughout the various Amendments, loose and ambiguous phraseology is used which could be interpreted in any number of ways. I suspect (not trying to sound smart here) that elements of the text have been translated from other languages with emphasis placed on the meaning of individual words and with less concern for what they collectively communicate. So that, after having read a particularly difficult sentence a number of times, it’s hard to get a sense of what its trying to say.

3

The Lisbon Treaty is being put before us as a means of revising and consolidating EU structures. However, the very same document, with some minor differences, was presented to the French in 2005 as the new ‘European Constitution’. This, I think, explains why the Treaty lacks any sense of resonance. Viewed one way it can be read as a constitution, viewed another way it’s an idea about restructuring. I don’t mean to appear nasty to those who put in a lot of time and effort into producing it, but The Lisbon Treaty comes across as the work of a large committee of people, none of whom are particularly sharp on the nature of political/social structures, yet each harbouring idiosyncratic ideas of what the Treaty is about. Personally, I feel let down that work of this quality should be presented to me for consideration. If it were the work of a first year political science student, not only would I give it a fail, I'd suggest to the author that they consider their suitabilitly for the subject.

So. There you have it. Nothing to do with tax harmonisation, neutrality, euthanasia, Libertas or the WTO. Just what’s in the document.

Except I have to admit that I arrive at any Euro debate from a particular perspective. I happen to believe that the Irish Republic is a very much still a work in progress. Quite apart from the obvious problems we have with infrastructure, public service, social exclusion, etc., I believe we’ve yet to get to the core of what our society is about. In my general day to day business, I’m often struck by how the Irish social machine is part 'Post Colonialism', part 'American Individualism' and part 'European Social Liberalism'. There’s a big chunk of Irishness in there too, but it’s more under the surface, part of the psyche. The task we face is to examine this element of our make-up and forge a society which is in our own image. Until we do, we’ll continue make decisions about our future which aren’t rooted in a firm sense of identity.