IRELAND SHOULD hold a second Lisbon Treaty referendum in late April, or early May – and not October, the former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has said.
An October referendum – the Government’s preferred choice for now – would occur “at the moment when the new European Commission will be chosen for a five-year term.
“Until the Irish answer, people will not know whether it is to be 17, or 27, so there will be confusion,” he told The Irish Times yesterday.
Saying that he was confident of an Irish Yes vote, Mr Giscard said he would “not intrude into Irish politics because I am not qualified for that”.
However, he feared that the EU’s big states will combine together and sideline all EU small member states if Ireland rejects the treaty a second time.
Asked about the consequences for Ireland of a second No, he said: “Difficult to tell. It depends on what the others will do. If Ireland is followed by one, or two countries – which is possible, the Czech Republic and what will happen in Britain – it will lead rather automatically to a new positioning of the European system centred on the big countries. Because the big countries will say, ‘We tried to have a functioning system. It failed. So let’s work together’.
“That means Franco-German co-operation, it also means Anglo-Franco-German co-operation. That will be the natural reaction, because the process that we supported was having everyone into the system, but it was a system that wasn’t able to function,” he said.
The Irish people’s main concern is the economy: “Future decisions by the Irish people will be affected or even determined by the economic situation and evolution”.
However, the pro-Lisbon camp should not use Ireland’s deteriorating economy as part of its campaign to persuade people to vote Yes. “Some people say that we should use this as an argument for support.
“I think it mustn’t be used for that, but it is a fact that in time of difficulties you have a need for solidarity, for common approach,” he said.
Smaller EU member states have been the ones to call for two meetings of EU leaders over the next two months, “not the big ones”.
The Lisbon Treaty protects the rights of small member states: “Because if we want to have a Europe composed of Germany, France and the UK we could do it.
“But that is not Europe. Europe is composed of different countries, different sizes,” said Mr Giscard during a two-day visit to Dublin.
He maintained his long-held objections to each member state having a commissionership: “Europe cannot function without an improvement of the institutions.
“It is not to suppress the Irish commissioner, or the French commissioner. No. It is to say that 27 cannot work,” he commented.
The former French president became a key figure during last year’s referendum campaign after anti-treaty group Libertas quoted him as saying the treaty meant that “public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals we dare not present to them directly”.
The quotation was taken from an interview carried in French newspaper Le Monde, but the next paragraph made clear that he believed that such an approach would be “unworthy” and only confirm European citizens “in the idea that the construction of Europe is organised behind their backs by lawyers and diplomats”.
Yesterday, Mr Giscard said he had not seen “how it was translated”, but he said that he had wished that the public could “have understood the whole substance of the treaty”.
The report of the EU Convention, which reported in 2003 and which he chaired, was in clear language and “could have been understood” and debated.
“With the full text, it was not possible, or it was very difficult.
“It is difficult to ask citizens to approve a text that they cannot fully understand.
“So, the process was a difficult one in terms of democratic support,” he said.