The announcement that Intel and Ryanair will spend hundreds of thousands of euro to try to achieve a Yes vote in the upcoming Lisbon Treaty represents an unconcealed attempt by big business to shape politics in its favour.

Ryanair alone says it plans on spending over half a million Euro advertising for a pro-Lisbon vote, together with Intel that means up to a million Euro for a ‘Yes’ by only two private corporations.

Credibility of Donations Legislation Lies in Shreds

This shreds any credibility of the legislation limiting corporate donations to political parties. Hard pressed working people or community activists who might launch a ‘No’ to Lisbon campaign would have to register with the Standards in Public Office and would have to account for every penny received in donations but billion Euro corporations have to do neither.

How long will we wait for denunciations of this in the same terms and from the same people who questioned Libertas’s funding last year?

Of course, it comes as no surprise that a big business like Intel supports the Lisbon Treaty. This Treaty is above all a Treaty for a big business Europe where the profits of big business come before the interests of working people.

Intel stands to profit handsomely from Lisbon’s militarisation drive.

Intel in particular stands to profit from the further militarisation of Europe which Lisbon drives along. Intel is a manufacturer of key components of military hardware including deadly missiles and guidance systems. The Treaty stipulates that “member states shall undertake to progressively improve their military capabilities” and that a common defence policy “will lead” to common defence, in other words, the creation of an EU combat force. Intel would profit handsomely from this further development while poor people will be injured and killed in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.

While militarisation and the primacy of big business may be good reasons for Intel to advocate a yes vote, they are also very clear reasons for ordinary working people to reject this Treaty.

Intel’s selfish motivation in intervening into this debate is crystal clear. A further question that must be asked is the relevance of Intel’s record fine from the European commission of €1.06 billion. Intel is currently appealing this fine to the European Court of First Instance. One wonders whether by spending hundreds of thousands on the Lisbon Treaty they aim to be seen as “good Europeans” and improve their chances in their crucial upcoming case.

I wonder if Intel management had a thorough and democratic discussion among its thousands of workers on the Lisbon Treaty inviting in speakers from both sides of the argument.”

Who’s Keeping Dodgy Company Now?

‘Yes’ advocates quite opportunistically tried to smear myself and ‘No’ campaigners on the Left with the fact that some far-right groups like UKIP were also calling for a ‘No’ despite knowing that we loathed the politics of such groups.

However, we are entitled to ask: By the logic they tried to apply to us, do they now feel degraded by the fact that they are ‘in the same camp’ as a company that supplies parts for the killing machines of the armaments industry (Intel) and another which prides itself on its contempt for working people at all opportunities and also want to charge people for using the toilet in mid air? (Ryanair)”

Further push for the No campaign

This should act as a further push for all of us calling for a NO vote. With only five weeks to go, everyone who opposes the militarisation and privatisation agendas in the Lisbon Treaty must pull out all the stops in campaigning against the treaty.

Assist with Joe Higgins & the Socialist Party’s anti-Lisbon campaigning: http://www.joehiggins.eu/get-involved

Click Image to Watch RTE News Coverage of Launch

Joe was intereviewed on RTE radio about the launch of the campaign and why he will be campaigning against Lisbon. Listen to the interview online by clicking here.

See the full press statement of from campiagn on their website here. Here we repost Joe’s comments from the press release.

“The Lisbon Treaty enshrines as the norm the running of essential public services for profit, including health and education. If it is passed, the EU Commission would uphold the right of big business to profit from public services, over and above the rights of workers to take action to defend these services.

“Likewise, it would intervene to prevent even a mildly progressive government from investing to improve public services as this in their view ‘distorts the market’. This is a profoundly undemocratic document, which seeks to turn right-wing economic policies into the only show in town, and this at a time when the neo-liberal policies of privatisation and liberalisation have directly led to a catastrophic collapse in the living standards and conditions of working people.”

“EU commissioners, going back to Jacques Delors, have expressed their frustration at the EU’s relative lack of military capacity, especially when compared to the US. Economic power needs to be matched by military might in their view. We reject any notion that the role of US imperialism is something for working people in Europe to aspire to. By expanding the range of situations in which European troops can intervene militarily in Article 28B, Lisbon will represent another staging post towards Delors’ dream of a fighting force to, in his words, ‘fight the resource wars of the 21st century’.”

For more on the grqnd coalition, read Joe’s press statement on this.

For more on the Lisbon Treaty his recent article on the treaty’s militarisation and privatisation agenda and how this is unchanged by the ‘guarantees’.

Lest anybody forgot, we voted on this Treaty in June of last year and by a convincing majority the Irish electorate rejected it. However, that did not please the Euro elite which was shocked at our insolence in daring to take a view different to what it has determined in our interests.

The Euro elite is comprised of the corporate or big business establishment within the European Union and the political establishment which represents it in the parliaments of Member States and in the Euro Parliament also.

The corporate establishment wields enormous influence over the Member State governments and the EU Commission as well as over other EU institutions. It has really determined the neo liberal direction that EU economic policy has been driven in over the last two decades, driving policies such as the privatisation of public enterprises and deregulation.

Initially presented as an exercise in tidying up the structures and workings of the EU, the Lisbon Treaty is now seen, correctly, as far more than that. In fact it encapsulates the strategy of the Euro elite to increase its economic and political influence across the globe. That is why we are being pressurised to vote again so that we facilitate its goal. And of course, the Irish corporate and political establishments are using the same script as their European counterparts.

Only two years ago we had another vote in this State in the form of a General Election. And considering what the major political parties promised to the voters in the economic arena contrasted with the disaster that has befallen us, there could certainly be grounds for a rerun of that election. That’s not on offer however!

Much ado is now being made of the so called legal guarantees that the Irish Government is about to secure so as to make the second coming of Lisbon palatable. It is a cruel deception of course.

Nothing is being changed in the Lisbon Treaty. It is exactly the same document that we voted on first time around. We are told that the guarantees will relate to issues such as ‘abortion, neutrality, tax and workers’ rights.’ I have news for the government. Those of us who opposed the Lisbon Treaty from the perspective of the left never raised the big majority of the issues that we are now being told we are to be reassured about.

They may have been raised by some others in opposition but they were always red herrings. What this means is that debate leading up to the second vote on Lisbon may be more narrowly focused around key issues that are intrinsic to the Treaty. This is to be welcomed as it means that we can have a serious examination of issues such as protection of public services and EU militarisation.

We have only had sight of the proposed text of the guarantees for a very short time. However, the fundamental text on which the future direction of the European Union will be based is the essential text of the Lisbon Treaty itself. This is what will count when the European Court of Justice comes to make decisions on controversial issues such as workers’ right to organise and mobilise against predatory contractors who would abuse migrant workers in undercutting agreed wage levels and working conditions in a particular industry.

Press reports indicate that there are serious objections within a number of EU Member States to giving any assurances on the question of strengthening workers’ rights. This is not surprising.

We pointed out in the course of the first Lisbon Treaty campaign that many false claims were being made by its supporters to the effect that it would rule out automatically the exploitation of workers and that judgements that were given by the European Court of Justice giving contractors the right to undermine agreed wages and conditions could not happen post Lisbon.

In fact the legal guarantees cannot address this issue to the benefit of workers’ rights since the fundamental treaties of the EU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights itself,a give priority to the rights of business to make a profit even where this means undercutting agreed norms for workers’ pay and conditions. We should not be asked to vote again only a year after we gave our verdict first time but if we must we will certainly insist that clarity rules with regard to the real meaning of Lisbon.

The three specific issues which I wish to highlight in this regard are:

1. The extinction of the right of Member States to follow a foreign policy that differs from the EU majority.

‘The Member States shall support the Union’s external and security policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the Union’s action in this area.’ (Par. 27)

Further all EU States’ embassies must publicly support the majority policy. ‘The diplomatic missions of Member States … in third countries and international organisations shall cooperate and shall contribute to formulating and implementing the common approach’.

Photo by Michael Gallagher

2. Consolidation and Expansion of Armaments Industry

The militarisation strategy is crystal clear. Paragraphs 49 and 50. ‘Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities.’

‘The (European Defence) Agency in the field of defence capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments shall….contribute to …implementing any measures needed to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the

defence sector, shall participate in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy…’ These prescriptions are very specific and no guarantee will override them.

Excluding China, 42 of the world’s 100 largest arms producing companies are European, selling tens of billions of Euro worth of arms each year. This ‘military industrial complex’, wields huge power with the EU Commission and EU governments.

3. Enhanced Cooperation: Proposal for Internal Military Alliance

Lisbon demands that the more powerful EU Member States form military alliances among themselves which can use EU resources to conduct foreign military operations. ‘Those Member States whose military capabilities fulfil higher criteria and which have more binding commitments to one another in this area with a view to the most demanding missions shall establish permanent structured cooperation within the Union framework.’

‘The Council (i.e. EU Heads of State) may entrust the execution of a task, within the Union framework, to a group of Member States in order to protect the Union’s values and serve its interests.’

Among the tasks envisaged are, ‘joint disarmament operations….military advice and assistance tasks,…tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking and post conflict stabilisation. All these tasks may contribute to the fight against terrorism, including by supporting third countries in combating terrorism in their territories.’

It really is remarkable how very embittered establishment figures and some political parties still are over their defeat in last year’s Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

Professor Brigid Laffan is Principal of the College of Human Sciences in University College Dublin. The UCD President’s office website informs us that she was appointed Jean Monet Professor of European Politics in 1991, that she is a member of the National Economic and Social Council and was appointed by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Micheal Martin, to the Irish Government’s ‘High Level Asia Strategy group’.

In short Professor Laffan is a pillar of the establishment which, presumably, is why she was invited to address the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis last Friday evening. And she is still very angry over the Lisbon defeat.

‘If you’d landed from Mars during the referendum campaign, you would have thought Joe Higgins was the Taoiseach of the country’ fumed the Professor to the delegates. What she was complaining about was ‘access to primary radio and TV that was given to people who were essentially non representative or weakly representative.’

We are not aware that Professor Laffan ever served as a humble County Councillor or as a Dail Deputy or Member of the European Parliament. But, as somebody who is ‘non representative’ or weakly reprentative’ ,we assume she was not complaining about her own participation for the ‘Yes’ side in very many radio and tv debates during the Lisbon campaign. We presume her outrage was over citizens opposed to the Treaty having such access.

Inadvertently, Professor Laffan makes a major admission. She implicitly acknowledges that the arguments of those opposed to Lisbon made a strong impression on voters, and in fact, made a bigger impression than the very wide range of establishment figures and politicians with whom they debated. And, clearly implied, is that for the rerun of the Lisbon Treaty this Autumn, opponents of the Treaty should be cut out of media debates. A European Union more democratic and more responsive to its citizens indeed!

Taoiseach Brian Cowen was equally hurting. Also speaking at the Ard Fheis he announced a tightening up on how referenda campaigns are financed because , ‘As we all saw in last year’s referendum, the system of regulation of political fundraising and spending is capable of being undermined by those who only pay lip service to transparency. ………I want these changes to be implemented before any referendum vote so that we can reach a stage where we can finally say that no individual will be able to distort a campaign through large scale personal fortunes.’

Well now. We can be sure that Mr. Cowen knows what he is talking about here. Any Fianna Fail Leader will be quite expert on political fundraising regulations being ‘undermined by a lack of transparency’ and of individuals being able to distort campaigns through ‘large scale political fortunes’.

We learned comprehensively how this skullduggery worked from the parade of Fianna Fail officials, Councillors and TDs at various tribunals of enquiry. We know, for example, how chief Fianna Fail fundraiser, Mr. Richardson, had a suite in one of Dublin’s most expensive hotels where he could receive in appropriate style generous donations from some of those with ‘large scale personal fortunes’ who wanted to ‘distort’ a few campaigns on behalf of their favourite political party.

However, we can assume that the Taoiseach was not referring to the cabal of major developers and speculators who have infested the Fianna Fail party for over forty years to the great detriment of proper planning in this State. He was, no doubt, referring to multi millionaire Mr. Ganley who financed the anti Lisbon Treaty campaign of the Libertas group.

In the past, in this column you will have found the most stringent criticism of Mr. Ganley and of his economic agenda – neo liberalism, more arms spending, more privatisation, less regulation. But it is frankly amazing that, without a hint of embarrassment, Mr. Cowen can stand up at his Party Conference and denounce Libertas for deploying just a very few of the tactics that his party has ruthlessly used to stay in power for much of the past forty years.

Sadly for Professor Laffan and Mr. Cowen, those of us on the Left who campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty will insist again in joining the debate. No doubt there will be an attempt to use the current economic disaster to terrify people into voting ‘Yes’. That might not seem like a great idea, however, as we point to the fact that the current crash is not unconnected to the neo liberal agenda being pushed by the EU for many years

The establishment should be warned that any interference with the right of Lisbon’s opponents to freely engage in the debate on the airwaves will be strongly resisted.