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Second Lisbon Treaty on its Way?
Read more about: Economy, Europe, Fianna Fail, Foreign Affairs, Government, Lisbon Treaty, Lisbon Treaty 
Brian Cowen is talking to the EU Legal Service about drafting opt-outs and protocols to make the Lisbon Treaty “palatable to the Irish public” according to Jamie Smyth and others this morning.
Cowen, who said the France, which is the current president of the EU, had also asked the Council of Ministers’ legal services “to see what can be done and what can be achieved”, listed the composition of the European Commission, defence, social issues and taxation as “areas that need to be addressed” to satisfy Irish voters, who rejected the treaty in a referendum held in June. The Council’s legal services are thought to be examining whether declarations or protocols can be drafted on these issues to make the Lisbon treaty more acceptable to the Irish electorate ahead of a possible second referendum.
But Cowen remained non-committal on the idea of a second vote. “We had a referendum on the last occasion [that Irish voters rejected an EU treaty, the Treaty of Nice in 2001] and we have to see where this process that we are now engaged with brings us this time. We’ll discuss it in December when it will be far clearer what the options might be.”
“We will define the elements of a solution in December and I shall have the opportunity to make proposals,” France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy told journalists late on Wednesday.
We will probably be foolish enough to vote “yes ” the second time to Lisbon like we voted “yes” the second time to Nice which put us in the position we are in today – monstrous debt buying houses we did not need produced with cheap labour from Eastern Europe. Now instead of having decent sustainabe jobs we are on the dole and the East Europeans are still here drawing the dole as well (why wouldn’t they)and it seems we haven’t seen the worst of it yet.
I am sure those who are pushing the Lisbon Treaty have another brilliant scheme up their sleeve. It is a pity they don’t want to tell us about it.
First, I don’t see how the cheap labour from Eastern Europe had anything to do with our buying houses with debt. The workers from Eastern Europe supplied vital labour to an economy that simply hadn’t enough people to do the jobs it required to sustain its boom. True, much of the latter part of the boom was fuelled by excessive building – but we could have curtailed that. Note that the Financial regulator did not stop 100% mortgages, and did not flag the banks for making over 80% of their loans in 2006/7 against commerical property. Add to this that the government continually added fuel to the fire by providing large tax breaks for builders and by decreasing, yes decreasing stamp duty at a time when the sector was already so clearly inflated. Madness.
We won’t find the seeds of our current predicament in Nice – nor In Lisbon, but far closer to home. Kildare Street, College Green and Dame Street would be good places to start.