Madam, - According to the results of a recent Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll, "62 per cent of respondents do not know how they would vote" in a referendum on the EU Reform Treaty "or have no opinion on the matter" (The Irish Times, November 5th). This is hardly surprising given that the architects of this treaty have made it almost unintelligible for anyone but legal experts.
The treaty's obscurity was highlighted in recently in the Economist (October 27th) which declared: "The new treaty's opacity is not an accident: it is its raison d'être". By "cramming a long list of innovations and amendments into an unreadable legal text, it could be presented as just another EU treaty, amending previous ones". Yet it is anything but another EU treaty. Instead, it is a cosmetic rehash of an already rejected treaty - the EU Constitutional Treaty.
That treaty was rejected, when put to referendum in 2005, by two of the EU's founding member-states, France and the Netherlands. Yet despite the public's rejection of this treaty and its contents, EU leaders remain determined to get it ratified. It would apparently have been "undemocratic" to ask the citizens of these countries to vote again. So, instead, a new treaty has been presented which, this time round, will be ratified by their national parliaments.
The "new" reform treaty is anything but new. It has the same aspirations and legal substance as its predecessor - namely to transfer more power from member-states to the EU institutions and to provide the EU with its own constitution, in all but name. But disguising its true intents will only damage democracy in the EU in the longer run. As the Economist remarked: "Sneaking a constitution through on the sly is a bad idea for all Europeans."
What is equally damaging and alarming for EU democracy is that none of the member-states' citizens (apart from Ireland's) will have the opportunity to vote on the treaty, as it will instead be ratified by their respective parliaments. Yet a recent FT/Harris poll (Financial Times, June 17th), found that "75 per cent of Spaniards, 71 per cent of Germans, 69 per cent of Britons, 68 per cent of Italians and 64 per cent of French believe the treaty important enough to warrant a referendum".
Ireland, thanks to unique provisions in its Constitution, will have an opportunity to vote on this treaty in a referendum. Yet despite the treaty's significance, 62 per cent of voters do not fully understand its purpose or legal substance. An uninformed electorate will only further undermine EU democracy. It is therefore important, in the interest of true democracy and that of other EU member-states, that Irish voters are informed of its true intents and that its merits are openly discussed. - Yours, etc,
MARCELLA O'SHEA, Irishtown, Athlone, Co Westmeath.