{"id":424,"date":"2008-06-13T20:51:13","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T20:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=424"},"modified":"2008-06-15T08:58:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-15T08:58:00","slug":"constitutional-conundrum-for-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/constitutional-conundrum-for-eu\/","title":{"rendered":"Constitutional conundrum for EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/europe\/7453560.stm\">the Irish voted NO in their referendum on the Lisbon treaty<\/a>.  That will prove to be a pain for the EU Commission and has already initiated some unsavoury feudal voices from those that promoted the treaty.<\/p>\n<p>Ireland is the only country that had a democratic vote on the treaty.  It was required by its constitution.  But the result reflects the uncertain nature of that treaty.  Many people in other countries wanted a democratic process for its ratification, but were not given the opportunity by their governments.<\/p>\n<p>It is very difficult to take an educated perspective on this treaty because it is so opaque.  Certainly here in Ireland neither the &#8220;yes&#8221; nor the &#8220;no&#8221; promoters were able to present a cogent argument for their position.  Except perhaps the 2 arguments that relate to political process:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;this is nearly the same as the revised constitution that was declined by France, Holland et al, so it shouldn&#8217;t pass&#8221; and<\/li>\n<li> &#8220;it is opaque, complex, difficult to understand, yet binding, so it should not be passed in its present form&#8221; or &#8220;we don&#8217;t understand it so we can&#8217;t approve it&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Perhaps the vote points more to a problem in the political process of the EU.  This is an opportunity for the bloated bureaucracy to rationalise its operation.  It is also a natural process of development of a federal democracy and should lead to creative solutions.<\/p>\n<p>It is very worrying to hear some national leaders say that the Treaty will be implemented irrespective &#8211; that is tantamount to dictatorship and reflects an inappropriate feudal mentality that people despise.  The EU has a chance for creative development, it should not regress its political process.<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/europe\/7454333.stm\">EU grapples with Irish &#8216;No&#8217; vote<\/a> &#8211; BBC)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the Irish voted NO in their referendum on the Lisbon treaty. That will prove to be a pain for the EU Commission and has already initiated some unsavoury feudal voices from those that promoted the treaty. Ireland is the only country that had a democratic vote on the treaty. It was required by its &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/constitutional-conundrum-for-eu\/\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Constitutional conundrum for EU<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-6Q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}