Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty

President Sarkozy visited Ireland last July and told Prime Minister Brian Cowen to continue his efforts to push through the Lisbon Treaty. Sarkozy is strongly in favor of the treaty and told the Irish people that they would have to vote again – and the sooner the better. But we know only a complete fool would sign a document designed to take away his/her country's sovreignty, and hand it to unelected foreign nationals.

The Lisbon Treaty would cause chaos in Ireland, allowing companies to bring immigrant workers from other countries to exploit at cheap labor, undermining the minumum wage of their own workers. This would mean that as is already happening throughout Europe, the Irish workers would be forced to take a big cut in wages or see their jobs go elsewhere.

Two-thirds of the laws are already made by the European Union. The Lisbon treaty would allow tighter control of 32 new areas of policy. The Euro has already created a higher cost of living and over-pricing of exports as well as massive job loss in the country.

The same can be said for all EU countries, but according to many reports, there are only a few countries such as Ireland who are putting up a fight. The Irish people are convinced that the Lisbon Treaty will drag their country to ruin. We already know that 95% of the French and Dutch people rejected it, but France passed it anyway.

The intent of the leaders of the European Union countries is to create a European Council that would dictate what the citizens would do. One of the many disadvantages of this would be that Ireland would not have a voice in the most important table in the EU and Ireland's voting weight would be reduced to 50%.

The question is: can the Irish result be overturned by another referendum? If the question is left to the people of the country the Lisbon Treaty will never be accepted. But we already know that this is not the way that the EU countries typically work. Prime Minister Cowan continues to consort with his high-ranking friends in the EU to work to pass the Lisbon Treaty with or without the consent of his people.

Marie Anne Jacques