Welcome to the No 2 Lisbon 2 Website

Night falls over Europe...

Looks like lots of us did as we were told and overturned our sovereign vote last year.  Lots of us appear to have caved in to scaremongering, smear campaigns and a multimillion euro propaganda onslaught. It was always going to be a David and Goliath affair, only this time there were scores of Goliaths. Despite an enthusiastic, multifaceted, and imaginative No campaign from across the political spectrum, elite interests have triumphed once again over the interests of ordinary people. It would be nice if the campaign had been won by rational persuasion instead of by recourse to "monstrous illegality", the manipulation of public fears and denials about the real implications of a Yes vote. Unfortunately people will find out when it's too late just why No campaigners were so concerned about this treaty.

The Lisbon Treaty was rejected by the Irish people in a national referendum on the 12th of June 2008 by a majority of 53.4% as against 46.6%. A referendum is considered to be one of the most perfect expressions of democracy. Experts agree that the Lisbon Treaty is substantially the same (over 90%) as the earlier European Constitution which was rejected, again by substantial majorities, by French and Dutch voters in 2005. Hence in essence we are being asked to vote on a set of proposals which have already been rejected three times by the people of Europe, and which we ourselves here in Ireland have decisively rejected. This is a gross abuse of democracy.

No change of any kind will be made to the Lisbon Treaty’s contents as this would require reratification by all 27 member states.The legal guarantees on offer are essentially worthless. In any case, 500 million people are still being denied a say on a treaty which will fundamentally and radically alter their relationship with the EU. In Britain Labour broke a campaign promise to hold a referendum on this issue. We should therefore reject completely this attempt to reverse our democratic decision not only for ourselves and for our own future but for these hundreds of millions who are being denied a say on the Lisbon Treaty.

Remember that we have previously been forced to vote twice on the Nice Treaty. We were then, in a certain sense, bullied, threatened, intimidated and cajoled into that yes vote. Accession of new member states was falsely linked to ratification, a tactic once again in play with Lisbon. Key European leaders were invited over to deliver speeches in the run-up to the referendum. Government researchers did exhaustive research in order to effectively smear opponents, a tactic which failed the first time with Lisbon. Additionally, in the short interim between Nice 1 and 2 the function of the Referendum Commission was changed. The Government removed from it the function of presenting arguments for and against a proposal. This means that they [the Irish Government] were afraid of the public hearing the arguments against ratification.

All of this is happening again. Equal air time for opposing sides on the Treaty has been scrapped in favour of subjective assessments of "fairness" by broadcasters. This follows the recommendation of a government appointed commission. The National Forum on Europe, which presented representatives from both sides of the debate, has been scrapped. The EU has invested almost 2 million euro into promoting the Union in Ireland.  It is using social networking sites such as Facebook, mobile phone text campaigns and bloggers to “encourage active citizenship.” The Irish government has also launched a million euro informational campaign, which they themselves state was inspired by our no vote. (Yet outgoing Commissioner Charlie McCreevy recently argued we were among the most knowledgable of EU electorates.) We must reject all these attempts to manufacture assent through conditioning us like laboratory animals into changing our minds. We must also reject all the manipulative scaremongering, remembering that we are supported by ordinary silenced voters across Europe who are now counting on us to make a stand for freedom and to 

Vote No to Preserve Democracy