BOSTON AND BERLIN

VINCENT MacDOWELL,

VINCENT MacDOWELL,

Sir, - Sean Deegan (January 17th) dealt ably with statements from Dr Garret FitzGerald, and from my old antagonist John Palmer, quondam Guardian correspondent and now European spin-doctor.

Like Mr Deegan, I warmly accept a European Economic Union, which has largely given us freedom from war in Western Europe for nearly 60 years, but am fervently opposed to a European political union, resembling a superstate, with a nuclear-rocket armed European army and a first-strike policy.

We must reiterate that the Irish were the only people in Europe who were consulted about this process, and we voted against it. What would the Italians say about it, if they were given the same democratic choice? What would the British or the French say? The peoples of Europe were prevented from deciding the question.

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The drive to reinstate the Nice Treaty is a fraud on democracy; and behind the tattered banners of Garret FitzGerald and the pseudo forum lie an old-fashioned European imperialism, anxious to re-establish Europe's hegemony as in days of old.

It is most important to remember that our present economic good fortune springs in large measure from our right to set our own economic structure, our own tax rates and incentives for local and international industry. Our success has aroused a certain amount of jealousy in Europe, with demands for "harmonisation" in taxes, which would probably lead to the migration of many international companies which form the skeleton of the Irish Tiger. Our economic welfare would plummet!

We should defend very strongly our independent sovereignty and our right to set our own budgets and taxes, with no interference from Brussels or Bonn. - Yours, etc.,

VINCENT MacDOWELL, (Independent Councillor), Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.