The Sunday Post: Goodbye Democracy

This week’s Sunday Post comes from the keyboard of one of our most avid readers. The recent Fiscal Treaty referendum in Ireland brought forward many areas of discussion – chief among these was and still is the question of the erosion of democracy as fiscal issues continue to concentrate power in the hands of authorities in Europe . With the passing of the referendum in Ireland and the looming creation of the “European Stability Mechanism”, or “ESM”, the concern now is the question of who will control this ever-increasing fiscal power and who can be held to account, if at all, for its use.

In his piece below, Eoin Meehan shares his view on what impact the Fiscal Treaty and ESM will have on democracy:

“The recent referendum here in Ireland has made me very afraid for the future of Ireland. In principle, I have no problem with Europe building a “stability mechanism” to backup the Euro, they probably should have done it at the foundation of the Euro, but I do have a problem with the way the European Union is going about it.

For a start, lets look at the wording the Irish people were asked to insert into the Constitution:

“The State may ratify the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union done at Brussels on the 2nd day of March 2012. No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by the obligations of the State under that Treaty or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by bodies competent under that Treaty from having the force of law in the State.”

I have a problem with the phrase “No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted etc”. I read up on this and a few people said “it’s the standard wording for all the treaties, don’t worry!”. But its not; it was first used in the Lisbon treaty. This means that as an Irish citizen I cannot use the protection of our Constititution if I think my rights are being infringed. As we sign up to more and more EU treaties, I foresee this wording being used more and more. That means our Constitution is being slowly sidestepped.

Secondly, in the bill that sets up the European Stability Mechanism, paragraph 3 in section 32 states:

3. The ESM, its property, funding and assets, wherever located and

by whomsoever held, shall enjoy immunity from every form of

judicial process except to the extent that the ESM expressly waives

its immunity for the purpose of any proceedings or by the terms of 20

any contract, including the documentation of the funding

instruments.”

Read that again “shall enjoy immunity from every form of judicial process”. Every state that signs up to this is making the ESM above their law, immune from prosecution of any kind, unless it decides to waive that right. Based on our experience, do you really think *any* organisation with that immunity is going to waive it? Really?

So we have voted to approve a Treaty that sets itself above our Constitution, which creates an organisation which is immune from prosecution.

We can count ourselves lucky that we were able to vote – the rest of Europe can’t! Treaties like this are being imposed without reference to the democratic process.

My final issue is with the terms of the Treaty – that you can only access the ESM if you sign up to the fiscal terms. This was specifically inserted by Angela Merkel as a blackmail clause because she knew Ireland would have to vote on it.

Goodbye democracy, it was nice while it lasted!”

I’d be very interested to read your opinions on this topic – do you feel that we are handing over democracy to the European Union or countries in Europe? Are we signing away our freedom in exchange for “fiscal stability”? Alternatively, do you feel that this is unnecessary worrying? I’d love to hear from people on all sides of the discussion, all opinions are welcome.

Your comments and views are welcome as comments on this post, via twitter to @Meehan990 or @RP_Blog, via our Facebook page (a link to which can be found to the right of this post) or to our email address: revolutionpendingblog@gmail.com.

Mark Meehan, Editor-in-Chief – 03/06/2012