June 13, 2008 at 4:54PM Lisbon rejected
Ah well, we know we’ll probably be voting on it again anyway.
Simon’s got a great analysis of why the treaty was voted down on Irish Election.
There’s a great comment on Donncha’s blog concerning voting either way for the treaty that I really think is completely spot-on and worth repeating (edited for punctuation and grammar):
But if you don’t understand either, then how can you justify a vote for either?
One of the no slogans that got to me was Ms. Sinnott saying you wouldn’t sign a contact without reading it. Well, I wouldn’t reject a contract without reading it either.
That said though, I totally agree with you on the lack of knowledge thing, if the result is no, then it’s totally down to the yes campaign’s poor ability to get the reasons for voting yes across.
If the EU believes the reforms are truly necessary, there’s a few things that can be done to salvage this mess:
- Get it across to people that the number of commissioners was already reduced in the Nice treaty and that all the Lisbon treaty did was state their method of selection.
- Break the treaty up into independent, self-contained fascicles that can be approved or rejected separately. Make sure these are clear and readable, and make sure no arguments about their incomprehensibility can be made, which means no diffs this time around.
- Make it clear that the EU presidency proposed in the treaty is not the same as the one currently in place. I know of people who misunderstood that the treaty was extending the current rotational EU presidency from six months to two-and-a-half years. Why would people see this as a bad thing? Because the next country up is France, and France have an awful habit, more than any other nation, of putting their desires above those of the rest of the union. It’s not: it’s scrapping the rotational system and replacing it with a elected official.
- Don’t be so bloody patronising.
Update: Reread the third point and cleared up the language. Oh, the irony...
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