By Breandán Morley Date : 13 September 2009

STAYING AT home on October 2 is effectively the same as voting Yes to Lisbon. A Yes vote will hand over even more of our powers to govern ourselves to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg.
And what will we get in return?

Lisbon will lead to Irish troops becoming part of a European army directed in the interests of the big powers of Britain, France and Germany.

The treaty is crystal clear on this. Articles 48 to 53 are entitled 'Common security and defence policy' and include the establishment of a 'European Defence Agency'.

The Lisbon Treaty specifically states: "Member states shall make civilian and military capabilities available to the EU for the implementation of the common security and defence policy".

The German chancellor, Angela Merkl, was quite explicit on this last year, stating: "We have to create a common European army".

There you have it – straight from the horse's mouth.
 
IF THE treaty is so good for Ireland, why does the Yes side feel it necessary to try and frighten the electorate with increasingly hysterical warnings of what will happen if we vote No? Where are all these alleged benefits of Lisbon?

Or does the Yes camp feel that it is only by threatening us that they can club the electorate into voting for what we instinctively know is a bad deal?
 
WHILE LISBON does not raise taxes, it nevertheless permits the European Court of Justice to outlaw anything that it decides 'distorts competition' between member states.

Chief amongst these is Ireland's low rate of corporation tax, which has been the main factor in attracting US multinationals to invest here, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process.

Our low corporation tax has long been eyed enviously by the more powerful countries in the EU, most notably Britain, which operates a much higher rate in Northern Ireland and is desperate to attract new investment there.

Supporters of Lisbon have argued that handing more power over to Europe will create additional jobs and prosperity as part of a calculated strategy of attempting to portraying the referendum as a choice between being in the EU or leaving it – which it is not.

Strangely, none of them has yet managed to explain how these additional jobs and increased prosperity are going to come about.

We can, however, be sure that a hefty rise in Ireland's corporation tax will not bring jobs to our shores but will instead encourage US multinationals to move their operations out of Ireland and into the low-wage economies of Eastern Europe.
 
WE HAVE had one treaty after another – Rome, the Single European Act, Maastricht, Nice and now Lisbon. Each time, power has been taken away from the Irish governments that we elect and transferred, permanently, to unelected bureaucrats in Europe.

And if voters stay at home and therefore let Lisbon go through by default, work will immediately begin on the next treaty.
 
THERE IS no great secret about where all of this is taking us. The openly declared aim of the EU is the creation of a federal united states of Europe modelled on the United States of America.

Ireland's position will be akin to that of the individual states in the US, with a limited degree of power over peripheral matters, but decisions on the big issues – including taxation, defence and abortion – will be taken over our heads in Europe, where Ireland, as a small country, will have little influence.
And Lisbon reduces Ireland's say even further.

The big difference, however, is that in the US, the national politicians, notably the president, are directly elected. In the EU, the president and the commission are not.

Despite this, more and more areas of our daily lives are governed by European law, which supercedes laws passed by our own TDs.

Lisbon takes Ireland further down the road towards becoming merely a province of a Europe that is run in the interest of the big powers.

Having struggled for hundreds of years to extricate ourselves from one empire so that we could govern ourselves, do we really want to sleepwalk into another?
 
THE POLITICIANS and the bureaucrats have always known that if voters  – not just in Ireland, but right across Europe – were asked a straight question of whether they wanted to give up their power to make their own decisions and become European provinces, their answer would be a resounding No.

Instead, therefore, we have had the salami-style slicing of powers away from national governments, with those powers being handed over to the EU by one treaty after another. Lisbon continues that process.
 
DOES ANYBODY really believe that the Lisbon Treaty would have been passed if referenda had been held in all the countries of the EU? Time and again, when the movement towards a federal Europe has been tested at the ballot box – in France, Denmark, Holland and Ireland – it has been defeated. Yet the politicians and EU bureaucrats ignore the voice of the people, which speaks volumes about the type of European Union that is taking shape.

Voting No is our way of giving a voice to the peoples of Europe who have been denied the chance to give their verdicts on Lisbon. They are looking to us to stand up for their democratic rights.
As good Europeans, it is our duty to stand with the peoples of Europe, rather than with the elites – by voting No.
 
THE REFERENDUM is not about whether we stay in the European Union or leave it. In the event of a majority voting No, EU business will go on exactly the same as before.

Ireland will remain at the heart of the EU and both our own Government and the rest of the member states will have to come to terms with that reality, precisely as they did after Denmark, France and the Netherlands all previously voted No to EU treaties and constitutions after being threatened that they too would "suffer a heavy price".

None of them paid any price whatsoever – and nor will Ireland.
 
STAYING AT home is tantamount to voting Yes. Giving the thumbs down to Lisbon, by contrast, will send out the message that we don't want to hand over more power to the EU, that we prefer to govern ourselves; that we don't want higher taxes and fewer jobs and that we don't want Irish troops fighting and dying in a European army directed by Britain, France and Germany.

A No vote says the EU has been good for Ireland and that we are happy to keep it that way.