Ireland Rejects the Lisbon Treaty
by Srdja Trifkovic
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The European Union’s Lisbon Reform Treaty was decisively defeated by the Irish electorate in a referendum on June 13. The Euro-federalist project will be at least delayed, if not derailed, thanks to the vote. The victory of the “No!” campaign was due to a variety of factors, but whatever its causes it reflects the fatal flaw in the federalist project: its lack of popular support and democratic legitimacy.
Various European treaties have been defeated several times over the past decade but their proponents were always able to revive them, and try to impose them by hook or by crook. An earlier Irish referendum, rejecting the Nice Treaty in 2001, was repeated a year later amidst unprecedented foreign pressure; the “yes” vote narrowly prevailed.
More egregiously, following the rejection of the European Constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005, the EU leaders promptly devised a new document to replace it: the Reform Treaty, or the Treaty of Lisbon. Had it passed the Treaty would have eroded even further the national sovereignty of EU countries and increased the power of unelected Brussels apparatchiks.
It is ironic that the European Union continues to present itself as the paragon of democratic values. Once hailed as a mechanism for overcoming deadly rivalries and increasing economic efficiencies, it has morphed into a giant tool of social and political engineering. Its now defunct Constitution pointedly excluded Christianity from the Preamble but introduced references to “equality” and “non-discrimination,” and invoked the obligation to combat “social exclusion” and respect “diversity.”
The Lisbon Treaty inherited this ideological baggage in toto. It would have had primacy over the law of member states, formally making the EU superior to all national constitutions and legislative bodies. Yet Brussels will not give up. The political and legal straightjacket that it seeks to impose on 450 million Europeans is gradually making opposition to the demographic change of their continent not only undesirable but also illegal—to the benefit of unassimilable, overwhelmingly Muslim multitudes, filled with contempt for their host-organism that breeds the urge to conquer it. The term “Eurabia,” introduced as an intellectual concept three decades ago by Lucien Bitterlein and his small cabal of Amerophobe Arabophiles at the Groupe d’Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient, is on the verge of becoming real.
Far from grasping the danger to American interests inherent in such developments and seeking to counter them, the Bush administration is acting as an accomplice in the project. On his farewell tour of Europe, only four days before the Irish referendum, Mr. Bush went out of his way to praise the European Union as a strong parter of the United States: “It’s in our interest that the EU be strong, vibrant, and it’s in our interests to work hard to have a partnership that solves problems.”
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso responded to Mr. Bush by praising the support of the United States to the European integration process, which—he asserted—was “well and running”:
This is indeed a great achievement, and this achievement was possible thanks to the commitment of founding fathers of the European Union to a united Europe, but also thanks to support of the United States of America . . . Thank you for all the support you have been giving to the integration and progress of democracy also in Europe.
The agreement between Mr. Bush, a “conservative,” and Sr. Barroso, once a Maoist and now a socialist, is unsurprising. They both favor a propositional concept of “Europe” and “America” and the concomittant rejection of common heritage that includes common ancestry.
This kind of partnership, which gives a new and unwelcome meaning to the term “beyond the Left and Right,” can be resisted only if we have a backlash against Jacobinism, both here and in Europe. Its foundation is the fact that, for the time being at least, nations still survive. On Friday, June 13, Ireland provided a welcome proof that it is possible, and necessary, for a small nation to resist the forces of Euro-Gleichschaltung.
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1 Comment by robert m. peters on 17 June 2008:
“Gleichschaltung”! A “nice” term coming out of the Nazi era in Germany, but hardly new in essence. The Jacobins of the French Revolution used it to subsume in a nationalist fervor and in a reign of terror the regional dialects and languages, customs and traditions of France and then to project consolidation in an internationalist fever on all of Europe. State nationalism did the same in Germany, Italy and other European societies, making “society” synonymous with “polity.”
Lincoln and his oligarchy of Republics began the process here in earnest, and it has moved at an almost exponential rate through Wilson, the grand nationalist, FDR, the internationalists and finally to Clinton/Bush, who are for my understanding merely the opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin.
The internationalists appear to have won with the ever more strident EU in Europe and the movement to a North American Union. Yet, and yet, there is a faint and weak counter voice: Ireland, Serbia and Oklahoma where the House passed a resolution to reaffirm the 10th amendment and to challenge the general government in its usurpations. “Chronicles” is a part of that counter voice. We have a duty to speak. Who may hearken to our words and whether or not they might return void remains to be seen; however, speak we must.
2 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 17 June 2008:
Viva Ireland, Serbia, and Flanders.
I hope the backlash comes, and when it does, it is sober and controlled, rather than vicious and ugly. The longer the delay, the greater the chances of the latter.
3 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 17 June 2008:
Who would have thunk? Only 50 years ago the entire world was looking forward to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Not so today. The Soviet prodigy (Russia) might actually be the only system of “checks and balances” in Europe precisely because it is not in the EU. 180 degree turn common only in hindsight vision. We are blessed to live in such a time as to witness all the acrobatics, semantics and other forms of juggling, but “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than…….._________….” (you fill in the blanks). Christianity lives on.
4 Comment by Michael Kenny on 18 June 2008:
Dr Trifkovic is right to point to the fatal flaw in the way in which the EU leaders approached the people. The peoples of Europe want the EU and want to be part of it. That goes for Ireland, that goes for Serbia and that goes just about everywhere else. I’m sure it even goes for Russia, although that’s a bit down the road! But they want THEIR union, not an American imposition in which Europe is reduced to a client state of one of its own former colonies. The Irish electorate rejected US-imposed globalisation, as the French did before them, and they rejected US-imposed militarisation of the EU. As in the French referendum, the big loser in all this is the US. It’s just that the peoples of Europe have got ahead of their leaders, who still have difficulty in grasping that the world is no longer dominated by the US.
It’s also worth pointing out that the EU institutions are not really in need of any reform. They’re functioning perfectly well as it is! Equally, 90% of what was in the treaty is already law and 90% of the rest can be enacted into law without need for a treaty, so the effect on the functioning of the EU will be zero. The principal of the primacy of Community law over national law, for example, to which Dr Trifkovic refers, has been in force for more than 50 years!
Just to rub it in: gallant little Ireland, inside the EU, stops the whole machine in its tracks by a simple exercise in democracy. Gallant little Serbia, outside the EU, gets crushed under the American jackboot! Q.E.D.!
5 Comment by Henrik Ræder Clausen on 18 June 2008:
I am slowly discovering that understanding the EU and its fallacies just might be key to understanding why our political leades are failing so systematically in dealing with the Islamic challenge.
The best book I’ve found so far is The Great Deception by Booker & North, which basically is the history of the EU seen from a British perspective. I’ve written an essay summing up highlights of the first part at Gates of Vienna.
It’s time to take back power from the bloated system. That’s democracy, and it’s Good
6 Comment by rjrafferty on 19 June 2008:
I find it interesting that of all the 27 member nations of the EU only Ireland was allowed by its masters to hold a referendum on the treaty (something to do with some document called a constitution). Amidst calls from the tories and a few others for a UK referendum Gordon Brown huffily replied that it was not necessary and forced the ratification through parliament. Ireland will face intense pressure now, to have another vote or to ratify the treaty anyway. Sarkosy has already called the vote “unacceptable” and has pledged to visit Ireland in July where he, no doubt, hopes that his Gallic charm (via Hungary) will win them over just as it did the US congress when he told them what splendid chaps we Americans were, how we had saved Europe and stamped out the Hun. Congress said “aw, shucks, we think you’re pretty wonderfull too.” And he went back to France, having neutralised us, and didn’t change his policies one jot.
7 Comment by athanasius on 24 June 2008:
I find it interesting that of all the 27 member nations of the EU only Ireland was allowed by its masters to hold a referendum on the treaty (something to do with some document called a constitution).
This is because in 2005 the French voted the constitution down as soon as they had the chance to vote and forced them back to the drawing board. Most parliaments are not going to make that same mistake. Why the Irish want anything to do with this to begin with is beyond me.