Labour's Leaflet lies

national | eu | opinion/analysis Tuesday June 10, 2008 01:18 by Galway woman

I just got a leaflet through the door from Labour today calling for a Yes vote. It is worse that I could have guessed.

One outright lie which I found infuriating is this:

"The right to give state aid to companies and in particular, to public services is not changed by Lisbon"

If they had actually bothered to check the Lisbon Treaty, and other EU directives and laws that will not be overturned by Lisbon, they would know that this was obviously not the case. For example:

Article 87 of the Treaty states: "Save as otherwise provided in the Treaties, any aid granted by a Member State or through State resources which
distorts or threatens to distort competition by favouring certain goods, shall insofar as it affects trade between Member States be incompatible with
the internal market".

Other relevant parts of the Treaty:

Article 98 of the Lisbon Treaty states that "The Member States and the Union will act in accordance with the principle of an open market economy with
free competition."

Article 3 gives EU leaders "exclusive competence" (i.e. control) in "the establishment of the competition rules necessary for the functioning of the
internal market".

[i.e. the EU will be making the rules, not the individual member states]

Protocal 6 states that this reference to the internal market "includes a system ensuring that competition is not distorted"

The business employers group IBEC, which is calling for a yes vote, is looking on privatisation as a good business opportunity. They have said about the Lisbon Treaty "A yes vote for the Lisbon Treaty creates the potential for increased opportunities for Irish business particularly in areas subject to increasing liberalisation [i.e. privatisation] such as Health, Education, Transport, Energy and the Environment

For more information on privatisation and the neo-liberal agenda see http://www.caeuc.org/index.php?q=node/319 and http://www.caeuc.org/index.php?q=node/8 and http://www.caeuc.org/files/HealthLib.pdf

Just a few other interesting things from the Labour Leaflet.

"Europe's laws will be required to be socially proofed to protect citizens. Your public services are also safeguarded"

(Ahem, no they will not be)

Also from the leaflet.

"Europe will play a major role in the eradication of Global Poverty and will take the lead in making our planet a fairer place for all"

But Article 188 of the Treaty gives the EU Commission power to negotiate with agencies such as the World Trade Organisation [which is promoting "free-trade" economics and the privatisation of public services, which devestates "third world" economies] and negotiate a common commercial policy. Countries will not be able to veto the results of these negotiations in most cases.

Article 188d states the EU's negotiating stance will be based on "the achievement of uniformity in measures of liberalisation" ["liberalisation" means pro-free market, and pro-privatisation].

The EU has recently been pushing for the "liberalisation" not just in the EU but also in Africa, the Carribean and Pacific countries, with whom they have been negotiating economic agreements.

The Labour Party leaflet also boasts that we will have:

"Guaranteed help from our EU partners in the event of a natural or man-made disaster or terrorist attack in Ireland"

If our government wasn't supporting US terrorism we wouldn't under any threat from anti-US-terror-terrorists, and in an EU with a pro-NATO foreign and defence policy we will be even more vulnerable. Also interesting that they don't mention that if other EU states have this obligation to us, we also have it to them.

The leaflet tells us:

"More transparent decision-making by Ministers who must act in public, not behind closed doors as at present"

Great, so now they can screw us more publicly. Arem't they kind of admitting here that the EU is full of shady deals behind closed doors? Why would we trust these people?

The leaflet also states:

"Tackling Climate Change is put on a legal basis. As a Union of 27 developed countries we can set the pace in addressing global warming"

A snails pace I think. The Lisbon Treaty says this about climate change:

Article 174 shall be amended as follows:

(a) in paragraph 1, the fourth indent shall be replaced by the following:

"– promoting measures at international level to deal with regional or worldwide

environmental problems, and in particular combating climate change.";

So measures to combat climate change will only be "promoted" in the Lisbon Treaty.There is no extra obligations etc. on states other than those that already exist under other treaties and laws. And neo-liberalism and free market economics, where the market need is put above everything else, is incompatable with environmentalism.

Contrast this weak statement on climate change, with the Lisbon Treaty's, much more definite pronouncements on military defence:

"Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities. The Agency in the field of defence capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments (hereinafter referred to as "the European Defence Agency") shall identify operational requirements, shall promote measures to satisfy those requirements, shall contribute to identifying and, where appropriate, implementing any measure needed to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the defence sector, shall participate in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy, and shall assist the Council in evaluating the improvement of military capabilitie

and the support for NATO, for example. e.g.

EU defence policy will "respect the obligations of certain Member States, which see their common defence realised in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)... and be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within that framework

and "a more assertive [European] Union role in security and defence matters will contribute to the vitality of a renewed Atlantic Alliance"

[i.e. an alliance with the US in security and defence matters].

[If you want to find references to NATO in the Lisbon Treaty, download the document from www.lisbontreaty2008.ie . If you don't have any tool bar showing when you download the document - as if it wasn't hard enough to try to read! , you might first have to (a) click View on the top of the page.(b) Then go to Tool bars and then (c) the Show tool bars and click.

Once the tool bar is up go up to the top where there is a box with "find" written in it, do a search for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (also you can click on the little arrow near this find box which gives you a menu and you can do a Full Readers Search, which seems to pick up more references for things. Do a search also for Atlantic Alliance.

I hope this doesn't sound too complicated, it took me a while to figure out how to turn the pages, and to do a quick search for key words, as the tool bar didn't show up when I downloaded the treaty!]