Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-23-Speech-3-019"
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"en.20021023.1.3-019"2
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"Mr President, ask a leading question, and you get the answers you are looking for. Ireland has won an emphatic ‘yes’ to more jobs, to neutrality and enlargement, but there are neither jobs nor neutrality to be had from the Treaty of Nice, and, regardless of whether the Irish had voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’, enlargement would have gone ahead anyway, by taking Declaration 20 and moving applicant countries’ votes in the Council and seats in Parliament into the accession agreements. I will vote for this in the House, but future historians have to know that a people was harmed. Ireland is the most EU-friendly country there is. It voted ‘no’. Instead of giving other people the chance to express their opinion, the Irish were bullied into voting ‘yes’ using the fabricated contention that failure to do so would block enlargement.
Up to now I have had nothing but praise for the Danish Council Presidency. Today, however, I am sorry to say that the Danish President of the Council was party to the deception of the Irish voters. Would Mr Rasmussen have stopped enlargement following an Irish ‘no’? He would probably have pulled another proposal out of the hat and secured enlargement without the Treaty of Nice. The best that can be said about the Treaty is that it will only last for a year or two. Then, a new basis from the Convention of the time will be put to the vote. The Treaty of Nice is the worst mess to date. I have published it in consolidated form, but I can by no means recommend the book.
Nice is ill-suited to secure popular support in the applicant countries. It takes away the countries’ right to choose their own Commissioner, in favour of an EU government appointed by majority voting. Remove the stumbling block now and declare that there will still be a representative of each Member State on the Commission. The Irish voters by no means declared themselves in favour of losing their Commissioner. The subject of the Treaty of Nice was scarcely discussed this time and some skill went into ensuring that the Irish did not come to know about Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s first draft constitution. This was presented at a closed meeting last Thursday. The copies were numbered and were collected in again afterwards. Mr Giscard d’Estaing has a cure for referendums: if a country votes ‘no’ the next time, it will be left behind. Vote ‘yes’ or disappear. Countries permitting their population to vote ‘no’ will no longer be paid any attention. The EU state comes before the voters. In Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s democracy there is a choice between voting ‘yes’ and ‘yes, please’. No, thank you, Mr President."@en1
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