Tallrite Blog
From the Irish Times Letters page, 1st March 2008
QUOTE
DEBATE ON THE LISBON TREATY
A Chara, - Tony Allwright's call for a rejection of the Lisbon treaty is disingenuous ("Don't sign an EU contract you can't even understand", Opinion, February 28th).
First, he laments the unreadability of the new treaty. That's how its sponsors wanted it, he suggests. According to Mr Allwright, "if it represented an honest endeavour, it would have incorporated the contents of all three treaties into a single, unambiguous, easy-to-comprehend document".
He contradicts himself here, because elsewhere he acknowledges that the first attempt to reform the EU came in the form of a single, rather readable, self-contained constitution.That constitution was rejected by the people of the Netherlands and France for reasons that are not at all clearly linked to its content. At the time issues such as unemployment and immigration weighed heavily on voters' minds. There was nothing in the Constitution that could have made unemployment worse or loosened immigration controls. Arguably, the reverse is true.
Furthermore, there is a widely acknowledged flaw in using a referendum to determine people's opinion on a multi-faceted, technical proposal. It is that they may not answer the question they are asked.
In part the French "non" was a response to the question, "Do you approve of Jacques Chirac?"
We risk falling into the same trap. If the housing downturn continues and Bertie Ahern's troubles take a further twist, people may well answer the question: "Are you satisfied with the current Government?"
Secondly, Mr Allwright took apart a straw man when he pointed to the claims by the Yes camp that Lisbon would help deal with climate change. I have followed the debate fairly closely and climate change is never among the serious points made by those in favour of Lisbon.
Nor does the Yes camp believe that the EU is "advancing towards some mythical nirvana". No-one is under any illusion. The treaty is a pragmatic attempt to forge a stronger, more effective European Union in a world increasingly dominated by big players.
Many positive arguments for Lisbon have been made on these pages and I will not repeat them here. But any discussion of the treaty must be genuine and bear some relation to the facts. Colourful but empty rhetoric cannot help the cause of democracy and it has no place in the current debate. - Is mise
CIARÁN MAC AONGHUSA, Churchtown, Dublin 14.
UNQUOTE
I am judging the book not by its cover but by the impossibility of understanding its content, good or bad. On top of that, I am deeply suspicious of the content, when there is no reason for obscuring it other than that the drafters believe citizens would not otherwise accept it (as the Dutch and French rejected the TEACoFEe). No better reason for voting NO.
As for the negotiation process between 27 countries, of course it's going to be difficult, if not impossible. That's one reason we taxpayers pay politicians and EUrocrats so handsomely. But making the text unintelligible does not make the negotiation any easier (probably the converse), except for those negotiators who would rather not know what they are discussing.
Then there is the whole issue about whether a new treaty is needed at all. There is plenty of evidence to support the contention that it isn't. The Nice Treaty is sufficient. You will recall its raison d'etre was to make the enlarged EU smoother to administer - the same argument put forth for Lisbon. Nice has been highly successful in that regard.
Sorry you felt I was being unfair to your arguments; that was not my intention. I try to remain gentlemanly!
http://save-ireland.blogspot.com
Mr. Allright, I think you are being unfair to my argument. You are recasting my 'political compromise' as 'deception'. You know that these are not the same thing.
The Brussels elite attempted to get a single more readable version of the treaty put into force. One of the problems with this, as you know, is that because it was all under one roof, in a single document, and called a constitution it scared people off. What I'm saying is, that it was as much the presentation and the psychologial impact of the notion of a constitution that made it unpopular as the content. That was a political misjudgement by those who attempted to promote the first effort at reform. The second attempt necessarily avoided having it under one roof which meant it had to be a list of ammendments to previous treaties.
Let me be clear: I am not gung ho about the entire content of this treaty. I think there are pluses and minuses for Ireland. But I think it is disingenuous not to acknowledge the difficulty in getting a document that agrees so much between 27 nation states. Recall that at one stage, the negotiations for the good friday agreement spent 3 days over a single word. In Lisbon, there were necessarily going to be protocols, optouts, and so on. The combination of this and the fact that it politically had to be in the form of ammendments meant that it would have the clause structure that you loathe.
The elected representatives of the European states have spent years trying to hammer out a reform program. When they finally reached agreement - and now in ammended version - I think the least we can do is focus on the actual impact of the outcome. If indeed this treaty were good for Ireland, would it be right to reject it because of the complex phraseology, knowing that a renegotiation might take a decade? Such a stance would be juvenile and self-defeating and betrays a horrendous naivity of the challenges facing political leaders in such complex negotiations.
Effectively you are judging the book by its cover, not its content. That is surely the wrong way to attain the best outcome for Ireland.
Business communication conducted by memo and live language is one thing. But when it comes to major contracts, they have to get it right because there can be major financial consequences, and people have to know what the contracts mean. I was in this part of a business (a major multinational) for quite a number of years so draw from my own experience. Unintelligible jargon will rarely find itself inside a high-value contract.
But my point over the Lisbon Treaty is not that it is drafted wrongly with lots of ambiguity, but that no-one can possibly understand it.
Tomaltach's last paragraph illustrates my point -
"Finally you have to accept that this is a political project - the first (more readable) version of which failed to get approved. Politics, especially between 27 nation states, is always going to be about compromise - even when the result is rather messy. That's life."
He is saying that the only way to get this thing approved is by deception, because honesty doesn't work (for the Brusselarians, though it does for the voters).
That's not compromise; that's not messy; that's not life. That's wicked dishonesty.
So vote NO!
I take your point that legislation and treaties do not have to be difficult.
I'm not sure I agree with your comparison with business. This makes the assumption that in 'business', communication is always (or even mostly) of a high standard especially when written communication is concerned. Having worked in the private sector in a number of firms for a dozen or so years, I wouldn't necessarily agree. Year in year out businesses win at the "foot in mouth" awards by the British Plain English Campaign. In fact, in recent years business communication has become so degraded with obscure jargon that it often descends into comedy. Even the RTE Sunday show "The Business" has a section of 'business jargon' where they identify horrid vague business terms that they want to banish from the language. The impression therefore, that business gets it right and government gets it wrong is wide of the mark.
Your comparison with business also ignores that the vast bulk of communication by private firms is not of a contractual nature. You have to recognise the difference between drafting water tight legal agreements between 27 states and a business memo between the CEO and the marketing department outlining their new plans. When it comes to real legal contracts, business call on the lawyers to draw up contracts - which usually turn out to be full of (not always necessary) legalese.
Finally you have to accept that this is a political project - the first (more readable) version of which failed to get approved. Politics, especially between 27 nation states, is always going to be about compromise - even when the result is rather messy. That's life.
I agree my choice of words about the EU might have been a bit loose and that there are more ways than one to solve particular problems.
Indeed, there is never any excuse for poor use of language, especially when written expression is critical. The same goes for overly complex use of language.
Treaties and legislation do not have to be difficult to understand. That they frequently are is the fault of the drafters and lawmakers, but that doesn't make it OK.
If the people are being asked to approve something, they have a right to know what it is.
You're correct to point out that I haven't commented much on the actual content. How could I? How could anyone? No-one (except the tiny élite that wrote it) has a clue.
If Brussels were a business, this shoddy document would be sent back to the originator with an instruction to complete his staff work.
Frankly, I think you are disingenuous. You say the treaty is deliberately hard to read, being a mish mash of ammendments to former treaties. This ignores the fact that the original attempt at reform was under one roof in the form of a more readable constitution.
I don't want to sound pedantic, but your language is imprecise. You say the Eu is a marvellous institution. That's careless. The Eu is a political and economic union. It comprises several institutions. It is not 'an institution'.
You love the euro because it takes monetary management out of the hands of fickle politicians. A monetary union is not necessary for that - as Labour in Britain have demonstrated.
I agree that the Eu elite must try harder to forge a connection with the citizens of members states and must make more effort to explain the union.
But you must acknowledge the difficulty of getting agreement between 27 nations on a reform wording . And the difficulty of saying yes or no to a complex legal document. You criticise the legalese. But would Irish people easily comprehend any of the tens of thousands of statutes in Irish law? Probably not. More effort is now being made to draft user friendly law, but by its nature it needs to be very precise and therefore can often be wordy or technical. The same for an eu treaty. A certain amount of technicality cannot be avoided. If you are looking for a 10 page document in simple English that can tie down the numerous reforms to the EU (which the heads of government agreed were necessary) then it will never come.
I find it interesting that you have little to say about the actual implications of the Treaty itself.
Thanks for your comment.
I am not at all an Euro sceptic. The EU is a marvellous institution in terms of the prosperity it has brought its citizens, principally through free trade and open borders.
I am also in love with the €uro, because it takes monetary management out of the hands of fickle politicians, preventing them from playing with interest rates as a way of avoiding hard decisions about tax and spending. As such, it helps to protect the value of citizens' money, rather than have it frittered away in inflation (remember the Lire? Or for that matter the Zimbabwe Dollar?). As an added bonus, it also reduces - to the banks' annoyance - cross-border transaction costs.
The Lisbon Treat is NOT progressive, and not necessary, as far as I can figure it out. But above all, it is deeply dishonest to EU citizens because it has deliberately been made virtually impenetrable, as EUcrats freely admit.
You should always be suspicious when someone tries to make you sign something while preventing you from knowing what you are signing. It amounts to signing a blank cheque. That's the Lisbon Treaty.
I fully agree that the law has to be "proper and precise". Making its meaning clear to readers is the foundation of this. I haven't a clue whether Lisbon is "proper and precise" and I would lay a wager that no-one who signed it has either.
Unreadability is hardly conducive to being "proper and precise"!
Personally, I think a NO vote by Ireland would be widely welcomed among the EU's 490 million citizens who are the only people who matter, though not of course by the Brussels élite.
Can I ask you, why are you such a Euro sceptic? Surly a negitive stance in somthing that is so progressive as the Lisbon Treaty can only have a negitive impact on Ireland. You fail to make the comparison with every treaty that has been signed in the EU and indeed much of our own legislation is written in the same manor! Could you imagine if it wasn't? Where would the legal system be if everything was left open for ambiguity! The fact is, when it comes to law it has to be proper and percise.
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