The Irish Times reports that the Lisbon Treaty has been defeated in a referendum held in the Republic of Ireland. The Lisbon Treaty is a new version of the proposed EU Constitution, which had previously been rejected by the voters of the France and the Netherlands. This time, the French and Dutch governments refused to allow a popular vote. In the U.K., the Labour Party had promised a referendum, but that promise was broken. Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing explained: "Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly... All the earlier [EU Constitution] proposals will be in the new text [Lisbon Treaty], but will be hidden and disguised in some way."
Treaty proponents lamented that Ireland, with only 1% of the EU population, could derail a 27-nation treaty. But the very fact that only 1% of the EU's population was allowed to vote on a treaty which would massively reduce national sovereignty and democratic accountability was itself an illustration of the enormous "democratic deficit" of the EU in general, and the Lisbon Treaty in particular. According to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Lisbon Treaty would be defeated in every EU nation if referenda were allowed.
The referendum debate in Ireland involved some Irish-specific issues, such as the Treaty's impact on farmers, its threat to Ireland's official foreign policy of neutrality, and the danger that Ireland might be forced to raise its low corporate income tax rate of 12.5% (which almost everyone agrees has been an essential part of the economic success of the Celtic Tiger). But the broader opposition seemed to stem from the sheer incomprehensibility of the Treaty. Even Taoiseich (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen admitted that he had not read the Treaty, which is over 400 pages long and deliberately written to be obscure. Treaty proponents included both of the two largest political parties (Fianna Fail and Fine Gael), and they appealed to the Irish people's strong support of trade with Europe, and to Ireland's optimistically internationalist orientation.
A group named Libertas was formed to lead the opposition, and Libertas agreed with the principles of international trade and Ireland's integration into Europe. But Libertas was successful at convincing Irish voters that the Treaty was perilous threat to the democratic sovereignty which is the glory of European civilization, and for which the Irish had struggled for so many centuries to win for themselves.
More coverage at the excellent British site EU Referendum (which astute readers may remember for its outstanding work in exposing media complicity in cooperating with Hezbollah to create staged pictures of the alleged Israeli atrocities at Qana, Lebanon).
How the Irish Saved Civilization, Again
Couldn't a similar claim be made about the ratification of our Constitution and/or the 14th Amendment?
Yes. But there is one key difference between the ratification of the US Constitution and the attempt by the EU governments to pass the Lisbon Treaty without a popular ratification: the men elected to vote on the ratification of the US Constitution were chosen in special elections called specifically to address the issue.
In other words, the voting public had an opportunity to vote specifically on the issue of ratification. By allowing the elected members of EU governments to vote in their national capacity, you allow the voice of the people to be diluted on the issue of sovereignty.
The thing to keep in mind is that sovereignty rests with the people alone, not their elected representatives. The elected representatives are trustees of the people's sovereignty and have no rightful authority to abrogate that sovereignty for the people. It would be like me selling your house for you while I was house sitting on the basis that I was occupying it at the time of sale.
Only the people can rightfully give up any part of their sovereignty to a different entity.
And these special elections were open to all people living in the former colonies, and not just a minority, right?
This idea that our government rests on the sovereignty of the people who ratified the Constitution needs to be recognized as the legal fiction that it is.
Euh, where to begin. This post is so slanted and wrong it's just not funny anymore.
This time, the French and Dutch governments refused to allow a popular vote.
Correction: There's no such thing as a referendum in Dutch constitutional law, the 2005 referendum was a one time thing. In France, holding a referendum is optional, at the discretion of the president, if memory serves. No rights or laws were voilated.
Also, with all due respect for a great European, Giscard D'Estaing was wrong. The big difference between the Constiutional Treaty and the Reform Treaty was that the latter explicitly did not purport to create a constitution (which is something only sovereign states have), and generally avoided the suggestion that the seeds of Federalism were being planted. This puts the Reform Treaty solidly in line with the previous amending treaties.
What do you mean democratic deficit? Directly elected European Parliament, a Council of Ministers akin to the US Senate pre-17th amendment and a Commission answerable to those two. If the EU is undemocratic, than so was the US before the 17th amendment.
À propos incomprehensibility: that's what you get if you try to construct a careful compromise between 27 sovereign states about a vast array of issues. Since the Constitutional Treaty, which was simpler, was considered too vague and therefore suspect (it left too much space for competence creep), everything had to be hammered down so that it would be clear what the EU would and would not have the competence to do. And yes, that leads to a document only lawyers can understand. That doesn't mean the document is faulty, it simply means it is a bad idea to hold a referendum about it. (Referendum about NAFTA or WTO, anyone?)
So, yes, I'm very disappointed at the result in Ireland. Still, you won't here me advocating a revote. We should just follow the rules laid down by the Nice Treaty, including its protocol on enlargement (which says the number of Commissioners can be reduced to a number lower than the number of Member States, by a unanimous vote in the Council). Let's not talk about amendments for at least 5 years, and focus in the meantime on explaining the dream of European Unity ("an ever closer union among the peoples [plural!] of Europe", a phrase that was shamefully absent from the Constitutional Treaty) to voters throughout Europe.
The detailed results from Ireland are here.
Yes lost by 862.415 vs. 752.451 votes or, less importantly, by 33 vs. 10 constituencies.
The lovely Valery's view of the Treaty was hardly an outlier:
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish Prime Minister - Jyllands-Posten, 25 June 2007
Dermot Ahern Irish Foreign Minister - Daily Mail Ireland, 25 June 2007
Karel de Gucht Belgian Foreign Minister - Flandreinfo, 23 June 2007
Angela Merkel, German Chancellor - European Parliament, 27 June 2007
@Brian Mac: The quotes from Rasmussen, Ahern and Merkel are true, if one agrees with them about what should be considered the true core of the Constitutional Treaty. The vast majority of substantive law would have been the same after the Reform Treaty as it would have been after the Constitutional Treaty, no question.
De Gucht, pardonnez le mot, is an idiot. (There's a reason why we Dutch always tell jokes about Belgians.)
Don't be misled by martinned's blizzard of irrelevant technical details. He knows very well what's happening. The citizens don't want a stinking unification and except for Ireland they are denied the right to express their preference. You are seeing attempts to replace the nation state with the market state. We are also told that somehow it's not fair that your place of birth should determine your nationality so isn't everyone an American? Shouldn't everyone be able to go anywhere they want and collect welfare? And of course anyonr voicing opposition is immediaely labeled a "xenophobe" or a "nativist" if not an out and out bigot. Why present arguments when you can name call. Hate speech is not free speech.
@A.Zarkov: Given the knee-jerk reaction in American law to anything that reeks of supranationality, I think your scenario is extremely unlikely.
As for what European Citizens do or do not want, the question is really whether they can be said to want anything at all. In a recent poll, less than half of European Citizens knew that the European Parliament, for which elections are held every four years, is directly elected. Being an economist as well as a lawyer, I'm thinking rational ignorance here, but I guess mentioning that is immediately going to get me labelled an elitist. As if that's a bad thing.
I hope I didn't bore anyone with all these technical details...
A.Zarkov is an uber troll. Don't bother responding to him.
But that is different from creating an entirely new constitutional order, which is what the EU is now attempting to do, without direct input from the sovereign authority.
@Bretzky: Yes, that's exactly the point. In its advice to parliament, the Dutch Council of State (akin to the Privy Council), whose job it is to give advice on all bills before they are sent to parliament, emphasised that the difference between the two treaties is less about substantive law, and all about whether it purports to "create an entirely new constitutional order".
While the treaty that was now voted down had implications for the constitutions of the Member States (which is why the Irish had to have a referendum), it did not purport to change the fundamental nature of the European Union.
I think those elections were open to a larger number of people than you think. The elections were held on the basis of eligibility to vote in elections for the lower house of a state legislature, which, in all but a few states, included all white males above a certain age. And, in a few states, included all women and free blacks who met certain property qualifications (New Jersey is one that comes to mind).
According to the 1790 census, males totaled 50.9% of the white population. I'm not sure if that held for those above the minimum voting age and if those women and free blacks who could vote would have pushed the total above 50% on the citizen eligibility statistic given that there were states (like South Carolina) that restricted even white male suffrage.
My estimate is that around 40% of citizens were eligible to vote in the special elections.
I won't claim myself to be an expert on the Lisbon Treaty. I have actually "thumbed through it" a little bit though.
Given all the words expended in the document discussing the EU Parliament, Court of Justice, and similar institutions, I wouldn't blame Europeans for thinking that the Lisbon Treaty was a constitution by another name. It seems to be a consolidation of power at the EU level.
I'm not making any comments on whether such consolidation is good or bad from a practical standpoint, but it does seem to me that such a consolidation should be voted on directly by the people. The only reason that EU governments seem disinclined to hold such elections is because they believe the people will vote no. Not holding an election because you think you will lose is the worst possible reason to do so.
I should have said my "guess" instead of my "estimate," as I don't have hard numbers in front of me.
When someone tells me "this really isn't that important" while simultaneously insisting "you really should sign it!", it's time to get a lawyer.
Or, if you cannot afford a lawyer, just walk away.
Anyone who, without a shred of facts backing himself up, disparages another commenter as a troll for taking the time to present his [very rational] views in detail, is actually the troll.
That's you, Per Son. Get it? You are the troll ... or is it 'uber troll'?
People pushing a statist agenda, like martinned and Per Son, should look here and listen to a former KGB agent to see exactly where they fit in, and the part they're playing.
And CONGRATULATIONS to the great Irish! They have more sense than the rest of the EU put together, and they just demonstrated it by a comfortable margin. Kudos!
@Bretzky: Fair enough. But all those institutions have existed since the 1950s. The only significant change in the EC's institutional setup since then is the fact that the Parliament has been directly elected since 1979. The Constitutional Treaty and the Reform Treaty both made some additional changes, such as reducing the number of members of the Commission to the point where no longer ever Member State had "their own Commissioner", a change that was in any event already possible under the Nice Treaty, and the creation of the post of President of the Council. (The creation of the position of EU foreign minister was an extension of the current position of High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, a position created in 1992 at Maastricht. Upon reflection, I suppose that could count as a second big change in the last 50 years.)
The current treaties are indeed very much of the nature of a constitution, especially if you compare them with the constitutions of federal states such as Germany, which are also based on the principle of conferred powers. This is something that has been recognised by the European Court of Justice as early as the early 1960s, in the landmark cases of Costa v. ENEL and Van Gend &Loos. Then again, the same can be said for the WTO treaty and the UN Charter, albeit with a more limited scope.
And yes, thinking you will lose can never be a reason not to have a vote. Which is why I am against referendums of any kind, always. (Although not so much so that I did not vote in 2005.)
@Smokey: I very much resent the accusation that I have a statist agenda. On the contrary. I think between the EU and the Dutch government, they should stop doing at least half of what they're currently occupied with. I also think, though, that the question of what should be done by any government is a separate question from the issue of which level is the best level for a given policy field, or the question of democratic accountability at each level.
Maybe you could explain what Ireland is saving the EU from rather than regurgitating the talking points of the organization whose entire goal was to derail the treaty in the first place.
So what was the referendum vote in the United States on the Treaty of Versailles, UN Charter, North Atlantic Treaty, NAFTA, etc? We don't have referenda on treaties, either.
[i keed! maybe.]
Anyway, I was upset by the troll, not you. Sorry.
The point is that often when I defend the EU in this kind of discussion, I'm put in a position where I'm expected to defend all its stupid statist overreaching overbroad laws. As far as I'm concerned, those are two separate discussions, and I definitely reserve the right to disagree with specific EU policies.
Um, care to explain that one?
Bravo, I say. Bravo.
A.Zarkov is an uber troll. Don't bother responding to him.
Thank you for the post as it exactly confirms my assertion that many without an argument start name calling.
"@A.Zarkov: Given the knee-jerk reaction in American law to anything that reeks of supranationality, I think your scenario is extremely unlikely."
Currently I think you're correct. I'm looking to the future. But notice how you implicitly discount the idea that Americans should want to retain and even protect their sovereignty. What's the problem with that? Tell us why it's to the advantage of the US to merge with Central America.
I'm not surprised that most Europeans don't bother to wade through hundreds or even thousands of pages of dense legal material. They instinctively know they don't want a super national European state and their past votes against the EU constitution confirms that. That's why the European parliaments don't want a referendum. I think Europeans attitude is one of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Obviously the European elites want this supernational state because it means more power and money for them. Otherwise they would give up. And we see they won't give up. Stay tuned for round three.
As for the benefit of giving up one's sovereignity, I can say it no better than Thomas Hobbes:
While one can definitely disagree with Hobbes' idea of these "articles of peace", it is clear that his analysis applies, mutatis mutandis, to states as well as to individuals. The last 350 years have shown that while the Westphalian system is an improvement compared to the previous system, it is still fatally flawed, in that it continues to lead us from one war to another. Since the peoples of Europe had enough of war, they decided to try the grand experiment that is European Integration. It's not perfect, and no one knows exactly where it's going, but it's the only hope we have of making sure that the 21st century turns out less bloody than the 20th. (Other suggestions are welcome, of course.)
Just think about it. With Kosovo independent, we now have 203 sovereign states, by the count of Wikipedia. The way we've been going, it's easy to see how that number could continue to go up, but very difficult to see how we could ever have two or more states become one, except slowly and gradually in the manner of the European Union. So either we start thinking about the end of the notion of a sovereign state, or we end up with everyone their own state. (And yes, that's what we call a hyperbole.)
You didn't tell me why it's to the advantage to the US to merge with Central America. It might be to their advantage, but I don't see the benefit to us. Instead you quote a rambling abstract discourse, which is what one generally gets from the multi-culturalists. Don't get specific, present a series of vague platitudes.
You're right a super state could prevent war. Look at the old USSR. The member countries were nominally at peace with one another, but the price for this peace was a brutal dictatorship. And that's the fear of a European super state.
Please don't get me wrong, it's a pity the US didn't win in Vietnam, and it's a pity you probably won't win in Iraq, but to quote Hobbes once again, "For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy
with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe." (aka Even the strongest man must sleep.) At some point, and at a sad cost of human life, the US will discover that no amount of military might is enough, as long as it stands alone. And if the US want to avoid standing alone, it needs to accept international law, starting with the UN Security Council and NATO.
And please don't make the fallacious analogy with the USSR. The EU is a democratic polity, as it is, and the Reform Treaty would have made it more democratic still by strengthening the role of the national parliaments.
When the supporters of this document did everything in their power to avoid direct referenda...
When the supporters of this document state their belief that direct referenda would defeat the document...
And when the document gets signed ANYWAY by a handful of powerful people, I think it's fairly clear that we are not looking at a democracy.
You keep not answering my question. I ask about Central America, and you write about Korea and Vietnam. Treaties to help keep the peace are quite different from a surrender of national sovereignty. A merger with Central America would be a kind of transaction where one party benefits more than the other. What rational person or nation would enter into such a transaction? Now if you want me give you a big list of the negatives to the US of such a merger, I will, but you and many others won't like it.
"And if the US want to avoid standing alone, it needs to accept international law, starting with the UN Security Council and NATO."
The UN is a useless organization for keeping the peace and NATO is essentially the US. Europe failed in the Balkans and NATO had go in to bomb the Serbs into submission. But those bombers were mostly re-painted US planes.
"And please don't make the fallacious analogy with the USSR."
It's not fallacious, the EU was originally designed as a plug in for a USSR-Europe merger. Seizing a rare opening Bukovsky was able to copy classified documents from the Soviet government. Here they are. You might also want to read the transcript of Bukovsky's Brussels talk.
Finally Europe looks more and more like the old USSR with thought crimes and restrictions on speech. Every day it get uglier.
Yes, I know, all those thought crimes are evil and the US are a paradise of civil liberties. Little off topic, maybe, so let's save that one for another time.
Finally, I have nothing to compete with the extreme reliability of Sovjet sources when it comes to ascertaining why Jean Monnet and the others created the EEC, except maybe this. Why not quote it in full? I'm pretty sure there's no copyright on this.
The Schumann Declaration:
@qrstuv: You're confusing the question of how such a treaty is to be ratified, which is a matter for the member states, with the question of how democratic the polity is that is created by said treaty.
If the US Constitution had been anywhere near as unpopular as the EU one, it would not have been ratified. It was not ratified against the voters' wishes.
Sounds like somebody wants to overthrow the US government.
If the rulers make the decisions without listening to what the people they supposedly represent want, as is the case in Europe, then I'd say "democratic deficit" is a very mild way of describing the situation. "Oligarchy" might be more apt.
"The point is that often when I defend the EU in this kind of discussion, I'm put in a position where I'm expected to defend all its stupid statist overreaching overbroad laws."
Goodness me, I can't imagine why such a thing should happen!
Is it not the case that the EU is stupid, statist, overreaching, and over broad? It's a socialist construct from top to bottom.
More seriously, the first dude was right about not feeding Zarkov. He's crazy.
Countries can trade without relinquishing their sovereignty. And BTW thanks for providing yet another example of someone who has no argument and must resort to name calling.
martinned:
"@A. Zarkov: As I wrote in my previous comment, at present, as long as the US thinks it's winning, it has nothing to gain from looking for an alternative for the Westphalian system ..."
I'm not sure what "winning" is this context means, nor can I see how Central America is going to rescue the US if it starts "losing" as I suspect they will be even bigger losers.
"Yes, I know, all those thought crimes are evil and the US are a paradise of civil liberties."
So far the US unlike Europe is not prosecuting people for writing books and articles or giving speeches. Look at what happened to Oriana Fallaci. Prosecuted for writing a book The Force of Reason. Then we have Brigitte Bardot fined 15,000 Euros (her 4th conviction) for writing a letter to the French Interior Ministry arguing Muslims should stun animals before ritual slaughter. Funny thing about these Europeans they put people in jail for being critical of Muslims, but look the other way when Muslims actually incite violence against Jews.
You bet, America is a paradise of civil liberties compared to Europe.
A citation might be nice. In my experience, it is rare that a powerful figure boasts in a public forum of the cleverness of his evil machinations -- that is, outside of a James Bond film.
(In case you were wondering, the classic five, which don't have very much to do with human rights but which are a good example of not banning things unless there's a good reason to, are abortion, euthanasia, weed, prostitution and gay marriage.)
@SIG357: Of its own the EU is nothing either way. It is a polity, to use the most neutral term, and those that sit in its governing bodies can make policies that they think are wise within the limits of the powers that have been conferred by the Treaties. (Unlike, say, my national government which is only restrained by human rights. No conferred powers there...)
And yes, just to say it again, the EU needs to stop talking about amendments and start talking about why it is such a good thing. It started out being wildly popular, and to this day most countries that join the Union do so with a large majority popular support, but among the existing member states, it has an image problem.
What I've been thinking about fixing that image problem:
In Europe, one can think Iraq was a just war, or not. (Actually, I suppose that possibility exists pretty much everywhere outside of Texas, but never mind.) If one considers Iraq to be a just war, it is an argument for the grand experiment because the point of it all is to make such bloody interventions unnecesary. The EU is about encouraging and maintaining democracy, rule of law, etc, about making the world safe for democracy. (Think of countries like Spain, Greece or Portugal, that have very little in terms of democratic history, but nevertheless have never wavered since they joined the Union.)
If one is of the opinion that Iraq was not a just war, Iraq is also an argument for the grand experiment. After all, it is equally about creating a world where bullies don't invade other countries just because they feel like it. It's about being united in strength.
Point is, we have to find a new way to explain why Europe is a good thing. The Schumann declaration talked about the war that had just ended, and talking about World War II is what Europhiles have done ever since. But there aren't that many people alive today, %-wise, who remember that war, and it's becoming increasingly irrelevant as an argument for European Integration. So instead politicians talk about money, about improved economic growth, and voters undestandably respond that they won't sell their national identities, etc. for money.
But it has to be possible to explain European Integration by reference to all the bad things that are happening in the world today, things that don't happen within the Union because we've created an unassailable island of freedom and security in a very bad world. Like Schumann said, the Union is also about keeping each other honest. (=peaceful, democratic, etc.) And that argument has lost nothing of its force. (Or at least it shouldn't have, if it wasn't for the fact that voters, rationally ignorant or just plain ignorant, think that war in any case can never ever happen again.)
"Yes, apart from the classic five, here in the Netherlands we have very little in terms of liberty."
You lack an important liberty: full freedom of speech and the press. We don't have laws that punish a citizen for speaking of writing something deemed "racism and xenophobia." I can publish something critical immigration. Can you? I can publish something critical of Islam. Can you? Rasoel (himself an immigrant) found himself in trouble for doing so. He was charged with racism for writing The Impending Ruin of the Netherlands, Country of Gullible Fools, NRC Handelsblad (Rotterdam), Dec. 17, 1992. His book was removed from the shelves. There is virtually no example of that kind of thing happening in the US. Prior restraint of the press is almost unknown. The Progressive Case, where the US government sought an injunction against a magazine for publishing an article that showed the design of nuclear weapons being almost the sole exception. And that got corrected quickly-- the article was published.
I don't know of anyone who worries he might get whisked off to a secret prison. You are really straining here. Detention of captured terrorists on foreign battlefields is hardly and example of a lack of liberty. But even that has changed with the recent SCOTUS decision.
- Whenever an overzealous bureaucrat attacks freedom of speech, that quickly gets corrected. Most recently this fiasco. The actual difference in free speech is being greatly exaggerated on blogs like this one. (And, once again, for those who forgot, we´ve had free speech since before the Mayflower, with people like Spinoza and Descartes who ticked everybody off and were more or less free to publish anyway.) Also, here is fitna. And if you´d like to talk about non-legal limitations on free speech, please start by explaining why Comedy Central can only broadcast the uncensored version of George Carlin shows in the middle of the night, and even then they had to have the naked boobies edited out.
- If the whole secret prison thing is no big deal, that what exactly happened to Joseph Padilla?
/back on topic now...
In 19 out of 27 member states, a majority of respondents replied that membership was a good thing. (p. 23).
On pages 38-39, you can find the polling results with regards to the question of which policy fields the EU should become more involved in. The top 3 are organised crime, the environment and immigration.
P. 40: 61% of respondents "tend to agree" that "(OUR COUNTRY)’s voice counts in the EU" (down from 66% in the spring of 2007), and 30% of respondents "tend to agree" that "My voice counts in the European Union" (down from 35%), which makes sense in an EU of 450 million citizens.
These Eurobarometer reports are a gold mine for political scientists, since they have been asking the same questions since the 1970s. The results tend to show that, in general, the European Union continues to enjoy widespread support among the European population.
"Whenever an overzealous bureaucrat attacks freedom of speech, that quickly gets corrected."
Your own link contradicts your assertion.You call that corrected? BTW is being arrested, interrogated and held for 30 hours in itself constitutes a punishment, and serves to chill speech. Such behavior makes people engage in self censorship.
The actual difference in free speech is being greatly exaggerated on blogs like this one.
How is that? We have we said that's an exaggeration? BTW you still have not answered the question as to whether you feel free to publish a criticism of immigration or Islam.
" ... we´ve had free speech since before the Mayflower ..."
You don't have it now. Hint: Europe is headed in the wrong direction.
"And if you´d like to talk about non-legal limitations on free speech, please start by explaining why Comedy Central can only broadcast the uncensored version of George Carlin shows in the middle of the night, ..."
I will talk about it. As a private party a TV network or station has the right to determine what it publishes. They has no power to arrest, interrogate, detain and prosecute anyone for anything. If the network were forced to publish George Carlin shows, then we would have compelled speech and freedom of speech includes the right not to speak. It's true that in the US the government through the FCC can and does prohibit obscene material from being broadcast on the public airways. I personally think they go too far, and I think "obscene" is hard to define.
"If the whole secret prison thing is no big deal, that what exactly happened to Joseph Padilla?"
I didn't say secret prisons were no big deal. I said "I don't know of anyone who worries he might get whisked off to a secret prison." Obviously the Padilla matter was a big deal and that's why it went to the Supreme Court. To put it another way, I don't detect any widespread fear in the US that people are in danger of being put in a secret prison.
So why did Europeans keep voting down the EU constitution? In the one case where the treaty was put to a referendum it got voted down too. Perhaps the problem is with the polls. I've designed polls, and I'll let you in on a secret. You can get virtually any result you want by phrasing the questions properly and monkeying with the sampling frame.
It looks to me like many Europeans don't want to cede power to Brussels, and I don't blame them. Listen to the former Belgium Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene: "Parliament is the heart of representative democracy, not referendums." This is Soviet style thinking. In other words, we politicians know what's good for you.
One thing you seem to be missing with all these polls is that the Irish are less hostile to the EU than (say) the British. They rank at the top of polled nations in thinking the EU has benefited them economically. So if Ireland votes down the treaty then you can be sure the UK would too along with many other countries would too. The treaty advocates know this and that's why they don't want to put it to a popular vote.
This EU nonsense is notabably less democratic than what the American Fouders did hundreds of years ago.
apart from the classic five, here in the Netherlands we have very little in terms of liberty.
You do not have the freedom to control the destiny of your own country, so you don't have any freedom at all.
the classic five, which don't have very much to do with human rights but which are a good example of not banning things unless there's a good reason to, are abortion, euthanasia, weed, prostitution and gay marriage.)
Those are the adolescent five. You'll give up your adult freedoms if only sombody grants you the freedom to indulge in your adolescent desires - getting high and getting laid.
Of its own the EU is nothing either way. It is a polity, to use the most neutral term, and those that sit in its governing bodies can make policies that they think are wise within the limits of the powers that have been conferred by the Treaties.
Which is a roundabout and evasive way of saying that it is a govenment with no checks and balances at all, and one which created itself rather than being created by the people. As I'm sure you know, there are NO "limits" to the powers confered by the (never ratified) Treaties.
What I've been thinking about fixing that image problem:
In Europe, one can think Iraq was a just war, or not. (Actually, I suppose that possibility exists pretty much everywhere outside of Texas, but never mind.)
What are you, eighteen years old? But never mind.
Firstly, I think free blacks can be safely ignored, since even in New Jersey, they formed less than 2% of the population. (And New Jersey was the only state to permit women's suffrage.) Secondly, this figure is complicated by the fact that the referendum wasn't a national one, and several states had much larger disenfranchised populations. (Virginia and South Carolina were over 40% black.) I think it's fairly clear that in virtually all the states, only a minority was enfranchised.
SIG357: Sounds like somebody wants to overthrow the US government.
Not me.
It looks to me like many Europeans don't want to cede power to Brussels, and I don't blame them. Listen to the former Belgium Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene: "Parliament is the heart of representative democracy, not referendums." This is Soviet style thinking. In other words, we politicians know what's good for you.
You do notice where he said representative, I repeat, representative democracy, right? Representative democracy is the system in the majority of EU member states, and in the majority of US states, as well as the federal level. If you have a problem with it, take it up with Edmund Burke. (Or at least offer something more than ill-considered and unsupported statements.)
As for what Pöttering said, I've said several times in this thread that that is not my preferred next step, but I don't see a problem with asking the Irish government whether some accomodation might not be made.
@SIG357: No checks and balances? Have you no clue at all what you're talking about? A few years ago I did my stage in the Secretariat of the Council, working in the department where they coordinated the negotiations with Parliament for those legislative dossiers that go to a Conciliation Committe. (art. 251(4) EC, in case you were wondering) Let me assure you that Parliament and Council tend to have very different outlooks, based on their different backgrounds, and frequently end up duking it out in a Conciliation Committe.
Then there is the relationship between the Commission, which has the sole right of initiative, but very little control over the dossier afterwards, and the legislative branches. Under art. 250(1) EC, the Commission, after it has made the proposal, can force the Council to vote unanimously if it wants to accept an amendment the Commission does not like.
Finally, there is the European Court of Justice, which annuls any EU secondary legislation as well as any national legislation, if it violates the Treaties. Art. 230 EC.
Feast your eyes on all these checks and balances.
On a specific issue how is a referendum less representative than a parliament? The Communist party in the USSR also asserted it was representative.
If you want real democracy you will find it in some New England towns where all issues at are subjected to the direct will of the people. Literally a referendum on everything. Of course the apparatchik mind recoils at the notion of direct democracy. As does the monarch. That's pretty much the attitude of people like Jean-Luc Dehaene and Hans-Gert Pöttering.
When I lived in Ireland, I studied Irish and English law, and one of the cases we had to study, which particularly fascinated me, was the 1985 House of Lords case of Sidaway v Bethlehem Royal Hospital, the classical case on informed consent to medical treatment. One of the interesting things about that case is that it shows a key flaw in the system of having concurrences and dissents, or worse, of having each judge write their own opinion, the way the House of Lords still works.
Between the five law lords in that case, they announced three different rules for informed consent: the amount of information a reasonable doctor would provide (i.e. analogous to other areas of medical malpractice), the amount of information a reasonable patient needs, and the amount of information a doctor can reasonably give.
The analogy with some of the issues that came up in this thread is that in informed consent, too, the law has the impossible task of balancing a principle with the harsh truth. The patient, alone, decides what happens to them. They have to give consent, otherwise the treatment would be battery. However, in practice it is impossible for the patient to take this decision without first spending several years in medical school. So instead the law requires that the doctor carefully explain what he is proposing to do, after which the patient gives their consent.
So why is it becoming increasingly impossible to apply the same approach to politics? It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the position that voters delegate power to legislators because it is essentially impossible for them to become informed enough to take law-making decisions themselves. The founding fathers discussed the difference between republics and democracies, and had little difficulty arguing for the former. A century later, Mill wanted to give the educated more than one vote, just to be sure. To be sure, in those days a referendum would have been more difficult to organise, but that was not the point of their argument.
One of the most interesting, at least to me, kinds of posts on the Volokh Conspiracy are prof. Somin's posts about rational ignorance. And yet here we have a post by his fellow Conspirator David Kopel implying that it is a disgrace that referenda weren't held in all 27 member states. Referenda are great if everyone's a lawyer. I read the Reform Treaty as soon as the first consolidated version became available, and I didn't find it particularly difficult to understand. Then again, I have a degree in European (=EU) Law. I know what the terms of art in the Treaty mean, and I know pretty much how this treaty compares to the status quo ante. (Not in all chapters, I admit. I know more about some fields of law than others. But at least I'd know how to look it up.)
What explains this referendum fad? Is it only going to get worse? As evidenced even in this thread, these days if one says that referendums are a bad thing, people look at you as if you're a leper, as if you'd just professed to being a fan of Hitler. What's up with that?
A much better course of action for the U.S. would be to promptly cease all payments into that kleptocracy of America-haters, and to begin doling out the $billions unilaterally only to those countries that are friendly to America, both in deed and in their public statements of support. The payoff would be immediate and extremely beneficial to American taxpayers -- whose earnings are now taken and shoveled into the pockets of the UN theftocrats and the national leaders who appoint them.
Please explain how a change like that would make the U.S., as you state, 'stand alone'? It would absolutely result in many more countries taking our side on the world stage than is currently the case in the rabidly anti-American UN. They take our $billions and hate us out loud and constantly. That certainly creates a more dangerous situation than my reasonable proposal above.
Funny when you drive through Vermont and New Hampshire towns after a snow storm the roads are pretty clear. I lived in New York City for more than 30 years and the snow removal was dreadful. Outside of Manhattan, snow removal was virtually non-existent at times. NYC is the very antithesis of direct democracy. Better to call it no democracy.
EU, as a political enterprise, has a lot of problems and inconsistencies. The Constitutional Treaty and now the Lisbon Treaty had attempted to fix some of those problems. No doubt, in the process, they would have created other problems. It's normal for a developing enterprise. It's an open question whether this development would have been an improvement. It may well be worth debating and analyzing. But neither Kopel nor his sources appear to be rational enough to get to that point. It's much easier just to dismiss everything new as bad.
As for the comments, some are just hilariously uninformed and meaningless. Quoting any Belgian politician, for example, for any purpose should always come with a mountain of salt--don't forget that Belgium was stuck without a government for nearly a year and nearly got to a point of splitting up because the Walloons and the Flemish could not agree on some fairly minor parliamentary points. But, of course, there are less obvious issues.
Most things in EU work by consensus. This was fine for the EEC when it consisted of six members (even then the French were particularly obstinate). But now with the inclusion of the East European states--the likes of Romania and Bulgaria--the issues and the dynamic are completely different. It is unreasonable to maintain decision-by-consensus model. But that's one of the things that the new treaties were supposed to have changed. The problem? Still need consensus to agree on abandoning it.
Again, it's just a taste of the kinds of issues these people are dealing with. But does Kopel look carefully at what is going on in Europe? Does he actually read the treaties? the ECJ opinions? Or does he just believe that EU is just a larger version of NAFTA because EU Referendum says so?
Advice to EU skeptics--go to Europe, see for yourself. Then pull out history books and find out what's going on. Until then, Big Brother Kopel will be your guide, because ignorance is strength, you know. When you have strong opinions, it's better not to know the facts lest you be confused by them.
I never said you were fan of Hitler. I'm sure that your authoritarian tastes lie in a different direction. But your contempt for democracy is plain to see.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the position that voters delegate power to legislators because it is essentially impossible for them to become informed enough to take law-making decisions themselves.
I think everybody else has no problem in understanding that the things the people delegate to their representatives are the mundane everyday decisions. The question of whether or not to abolish ones country is not the sort of thing which parliments have the authority to answer. All power comes from the people, and only they can dissolve themselves.
What explains this referendum fad?
The desire to keep people like you away from the levers of power.
Why, thank you. I have been to Europe, and I have seen for myself. But I appreciate the helpful advice.
Yes, thanks for clarifying that point.
Has anyone ever hinted to you that you might be ... how shall I phrase this, a pretentious ass?
Nobody cares that in your own mind, you are the Grand Poobah Of European Constitutional Law. You'd be better employed in making arguments from first principles instead of these appeals to authority, where your authority is yourself.
And what about the actual people? What is their relationship to any of these entities? Do they figure at all in your schemes, other than as pawns to be manipulated?
They seem distinctly unwilling to go along with your wonderful plans. Maybe the problem is not them, but you.
... and pretentious ass, well, only when I'm in a bad mood.
@Smokey: We can abolish the UN if you like, as long as something is put in its place. People have been talking about a league of democracies, to which only democracies would be admitted. The big problem with that is that you can't draw the line clearly and objectively enough. (Is Russia a democracy? I'm sure they would say they are....) If someone can come up with a good way to fix that problem, I'd happily trade in the UN for such a league.
(Actually, maybe we should have them both, just to be sure. Along the lines of keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Just to be sure. They do have nukes, after all, so probably we should continue to have some forum to at least talk to them. But at least we would be able to do away with things like UN peace keeping, which could be taken over by the new league.)
People are realizing that there is a huge principal-agent problem with their elected representatives when it comes to how far government powers are allowed to reach. The great majority of the voters may want restricted government, but that goes against the interests of every politician with real power, and when that is balanced against the politician's desire to be re-elected, often the decision is that they can buy some votes with other persons' money, and bamboozle enough of the rest. For one example, look at the laws passed by state legislatures supposedly in response to Kelo; a few of them genuinely restrict the eminent domain power within a state to public powers, but more often the legislators have written a law that changes nothing but lets them pretend that they did something. For another example, take the entire Bush administration (...please) - elected under a pretense of being for smaller government, Bush has expanded federal powers more than any president since the 1970's, and it took six years for most Republican voters to notice.
In the particular case of the EU constitution, which is a more fundamental change than even rewriting a national constitution, rational ignorance is hardly the issue. Any citizen of an EU with any interest at all in the affairs of their nation will learn what they can about that. And if the document in question is essentially unintelligible, that is still enough information to conclude that the politicians are once again trying to put something over on the people.
If you haven't done it yet, you might benefit from reading The Federalist Papers, which are available on the Internet. These essays were written to convince the states to adopt the Constitution. These papers are part of the founding documents of the world's oldest and most successful democratic republic. Also notice how short the US Constitution is compared to volumes that come out of the EU bureaucracy. George Washington warned us to be wary, and stay arms length from the Europeans-- his advice is still good.
@markm: That makes sense, but the things you're saying are not unique to this day and age. Traditionally people have used the courts to stop laws they felt went too far. (Take Lochner, for example.) So what changed in the last few decades, and particularly since the end of the cold war?
As for the Reform treaty: it's difficult for a non-lawyer to understand for the same reason that many statutes are difficult to understand. Because it's a carefully crafted compromise that is designed to cover a large number of policy fields in one document, creating different legal rules for each. To make things worse, because this treaty, unlike the Constitutional Treaty, builds on what already exists, it has additional messiness due to its path dependency. For someone with legal training, though, it is not particularly unintelligble. The structure still makes sense, even after five rounds of tinkering. (SEA, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and now this one.) After a few introductory articles, it covers the different policy fields. Next, it discusses the institutions, then the budget, and then there are a few dozen remaining stipulations that didn't fit anywhere else. That's it. Of course, it is written in the language of lawyers, but that seems to me to be a good thing. So I don't see any reason to believe the big conspiracy stories...
Actually, that's another big one that I've never seen adequately explained. The US constitution is unique in all the world in its simplicity. Even those statutes that together make up a large part of the UK constitution are much more difficult to understand. Here in the Netherlands they published a normal language version of the constitution last year, but not many people seem to have noticed. (Come to think of it, ours is pretty simple, too. About 120 short articles, which in printed form can't be much longer than the US constitution. Compare that to the French or German constitutions...)
I'd say the reason was in the article
Constitutions that wish to be accepted by the people should be relatively short statements of guiding principle. 400 pages is something else.
The result would be to reward friendly and supportive countries, and to cut off any financial assistance to those countries which exhibit hostility [such as preposterously naming America as one of the top 5 human rights violators in the world]. If a country wanted American largesse, it couldn't very well broadcast scurrilous accusations at us, while giving China, Russia, Tanzania, Venezuela, Ecuador, Myanmar, North Korea, etc., etc., a free pass.
This change would align most countries with the U.S. overnight, and end the devious meddling of the entirely corrupt, thoroughly anti-American UN; a huge improvement over the present, super expensive fiasco. The UN is courrupt to the bone, and our continuing membership will never change that; they've learned to game the system. Why should we continue to play their game?
Your EU mindset continues to favor some sort of "league." Don't you get it? It is in the best interests of this country to deal on an individual basis with other countries, so other members of a league or a group can't connive in smoke filled back rooms to turn the group against us -- as has been done in the UN [unless you believe it's A-OK to have Robert Mugabe on the UNHRC, pointing an accusing finger at the U.S., and a thousand similar examples of the UN biting the hand that feeds it].
I'm not saying that multiple member groups would never work. But we've given the UN about seventy years to do the things it promised. They've failed abjectly; all the UN has really accomplished is to get its hands ever deeper into American pockets, while demanding more, more, more U.S. money. Let's give one-on-one relations seventy years, then compare the results. Heck, I'd be satisfied with seven years.
[BTW, thanks for dropping that insufferable "L.S." at the beginning of every comment. Your posts are better for it.]
You're just repeating the old fallacy.
In fact, replacing the UN with literally nothing would be a huge step in the right direction. In the absence of the UN, it would be easier to form an Ad Hoc Coalition of the Willing (and Able) to address a particular issue, as no one could point to the UN's pretense to handle things as an excuse to not get involved.
Your suggestion has some merit, but before we proceed down that road I'd like to hear how you plan to deal with the problem of "regulatory capture" among the members of an obviously-expanded State Department. State has not recently distinguished itself as a hotbed of pro-American feeling...
I agree with your analysis of the UN. Note only is the UN bad for the US, it's bad for the rest of the world too, especially Africa. The UN continues to push fighting the African AIDS epidemic on the basis of faulty data. This campaign draws resources away from fighting malaria, which is the real problem in Africa. The IPCC global warming effort is possibly another UN sponsored hoax. There is certainly probable cause to be skeptical of IPPC's conclusions regarding AGW. The science is not settled.
In short the UN is not only a failure at keeping the peace, it fails in many other ways as well. I do not understand how so many people are taken in by this obvious fraud. The UN is certainly worse than no UN. I'd like to know how my life would get worse if the UN disappeared tomorrow.
But there is a more important problem. Creating ad hoc coalitions to deal with problems is cumbersome and costly (transaction costs, in technical terms), and it makes it more difficult to make multi-issue compromises.
In (economic) bargaining theory, the idea is usually that if a proposal has more benefit for one party than it costs to the other, they should be able to find some way to compromise. In theory, that is done through side-payments; the one that benefits reimburses the one that loses out. In most walks of life, that is pretty much what happens, but in politics it's a little more difficult. Instead of paying cash, diplomats tend to construct issue linkages, so that policy question one where A wins and B loses is connected with question two where A loses and B wins, so as to create a mutually beneficial outcome. The biggest example in the history of diplomacy of this very question are the EU Treaties. (From day one, see the Schumann declaration above, the ECSC linked various questions about security and economic policy/reconstruction into a mutually beneficial bargain, and the trade-offs have only gotten more complex since.)
In the Security Council, such linkages are less explicit. That is possible because the same 15 countries sit at the table every week for a year, and the permanent 5 are there always. And because they know they will be seeing each other again next week, they don't have to "win" on every issue. If one permanent member gives in one week, the others will remember and make sure it all pretty much balances out in the end. If the US were to negotiate on an ad hoc basis, that wouldn't be possible.
As far as actual influence on state behaviour is concerned, the whole rest of the UN is essentially irrelevant. For the aesthetic symmetry of it all, we could hardly abolish the general assembly (not to mention that they elect the other 10 members of the Security Council), but the whole rest of the UN could be abolished without anyone on the ground noticing.
Finally, another problem with your analysis is that it obviously does not apply to all countries. As I noted before, this only works to the extent that the US really is the strongest bully in the playground. With Russia and China on the rise, it would be wise to exercise some foresight before letting go of international law at the benefit of international relations.
You bring up an excellent point. I personally think the US State Department has been compromised by Arab money. I can't prove it, but the number of former State Department people now working as lobbyists or lawyers for the Arabs does not sit well with me. The Albright Group (as in Madeleine) represents the UAE. This applies to Senators as well. Bob Dole also works for the UAE. Current Senators seem to think that's peachy keen. You can read the full piece here. It really looks like the US government is for sale, so I guess we should not be surprised that we continue to pour money into the UN.
Do you really think that international law will constrain a Russia or a China that achieve super power status? Especially if the US becomes so weak it can't challenge their aggressive actions? Making the US weak seems to be the agenda of much of the American and European left. I think the next US president might share that agenda as well.
Your apparent assumption that the UN is actually working on the basis of/in favor of International Law sounds very suspect to me.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I would reply, but Mrs. Smokey & I are going to