Abuse and dishonesty the hallmarks

This weekend the French electorate go to the polls to vote in that country's referendum on the EU Constitution. And the last three published opinion polls indicate that there will be a majority against of between 52 per cent and 55 per cent. A few days later, the Netherlands follow suit; and, again, unless the opinion polls have got it dramatically wrong, the result there will be an even more substantive no.

Irish political observers will have to be astonished by these indications, for while the possibility of no votes has been commented on in the media there has been no serious attempt whatever to explain what it is about the European Constitution that is exciting such opposition.

In Irish politics, it is an excommunicable sin to raise any reservation about any aspect of the European "project", and every debate is reduced to whether or not we should have joined the EEC, it hasn't happened yet so it won't happen now, and there is in any case nothing in the latest treaty that we haven't already accepted in previous treaties.

In fact, the European "project" has always been a rolling one, developing a closer and closer political integration on the back of improved economic developments. No one treaty has completed the establishment of a European federal state, but each one has taken a significant step nearer.

Fine Gael now openly espouses such a federal state, while Fianna Fáil continue to blandly deny the fact and decry arguments to the contrary as ludicrous.

But is it "ludicrous" for Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian prime minister, to say that "the Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State"?

Or for the German Minister for Europe, Hans Martin Bury, to declare that "the EU Constitution is the birth certificate of the United States of Europe"?

Or for German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, to explain that "creating a single European State bound by one European Constitution is the decisive task of our time"?

But the word "federal" isn't used in the text, the Government blusters. Indeed not. The chairman of the drafting Convention, former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, explained in the Wall Street Journal: "It wasn't worth creating a negative commotion with the British. I rewrote my text with the word federal replaced by communautaire which means exactly the same thing."

The arguments about militarism and acceptance of a common European security policy are well-rehearsed, and, despite Fianna Fáil denials, explicitly set out in the new constitution (Article I-16), with union law being given clear supremacy over national law (Article I-6).

But it is in the economic sphere that the undemocratic nature of the Constitution is most apparent. Article III-177 states baldly that "the activities of the Member States and the Union shall include… the adoption of an economic policy which is based on the close coordination of Member states' economic policies, on the internal market and on the definition of common objectives, and conducted in accordance with the principle of an open market with free competition." (my emphasis)

In other words, if we accept this Constitution it will be unconstitutional, illegal, to try and establish a socialist economy or one that deviates in any way from the neo-liberal free market. Whether or not such economic systems should be voted for is another matter: but to be denied the right to vote for a different system is surely the antithesis of democracy.

An important point that you might have thought would have produced serious analysis on radio, television and in the major press. After all, it's the key factor that is worrying French workers as they prepare to say No. As pro-treaty Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit says "those who are for No have succeeded in turning it into a debate between a liberal Europe and a social Europe."

For Cohn-Bendit, and indeed for Ireland's Proinsías de Rossa, the point of a European federal state is to challenge US hegemony throughout the world. I believe this to be an important argument because the immense unbridled power of the United States poses a danger of a continual series of wars, killings and human misery. But surely the best and only way to defeat that threat is through strengthening the United Nations (the reason, of course, that that institution is under such continuous criticism in the media)?

What is becoming apparent now as the debate really gets underway in Europe is how much we have been lied to by our political leaders who have dismissed serious concerns as no more than ignorant and atavistic throwbacks to a glorious past that never existed.

We are continually drowned in a sea of uncritical pro-Europe propaganda, especially on television; perhaps in the light of the obvious questions being raised in France and Netherlands we might study the arguments actually put forward by the no camps.

And this time, if we vote no, perhaps our leaders might respect our decision!

Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity.