FEDERATION FEARS:RATIFICATION OF the Lisbon Treaty will create a new European Union with the constitutional form of a supranational European federation and reduce member states to the status of provincial or regional states, it has been claimed.
Speaking at a press conference in Dublin, Anthony Coughlan of the National Platform, a body which undertakes research on the EU, said the treaty would make our national citizenship "additional to" rather than "complementing" EU citizenship as is the case at present.
He said: "At the moment we are notional EU citizens as one can be a citizen only of an actual state. But this will change under the treaty and we will also be citizens of an effective EU state. But this will not be a dual-citizenship of two different states, but rather ones which have a federal-regional relationship as we see in federal Germany, USA and Switzerland."
Mr Coughlan said there was further evidence of this change in status in the way the treaty deals with the relative legal powers of the EU and its constituent states.
"It is clear . . . we will ultimately be subordinate to EU law in the way that people from California or Rhode Island are governed by US law even though they have state citizenship . . ." he added.