EU's disdain for voters

A letter writer to the London Times put his finger on it. "Can anybody explain to me," he asked, "what is the difference between democracy in Zimbabwe and democracy in the European Union?"

In Zimbabwe, back in March, Robert Mugabe called an election which he was sure he would win. But despite widespread intimidation and vote rigging, he lost. His Zanu-PF party lost its majority in parliament, and Mugabe himself was defeated by Morgan Tsvangirai in the presidential race.

But Mugabe refused to accept the result and organised a rerun. This time he made sure the result would be the right one.

The point the letter writer was making is that something similar keeps happening in European Union referendums. Whenever voters reject a proposal put forward by Europe's political elite, they either get ignored, or they are told to vote again until they get it right. It happened to the Danes in 2000 when they rejected the Maastricht Treaty and a second referendum was called. The Irish then rejected the Nice Treaty in 2001 and had to have a rerun. And now it's happening again after French, Dutch and Irish voters have rejected the Lisbon Treaty.

This latest democratic charade began in 2005, when the European Commission published plans for a new constitution creating the structure for a European federal superstate.

French and Dutch voters threw a spanner in the works by rejecting the proposals in national referendums. Europe's leaders were stunned, for France and The Netherlands are normally rock-solid supporters of EU federalism. The plan was withdrawn before Eurosceptic Britain had the chance to vote on it, and the leaders went back to the drawing board.

Two years later, they came up with the Treaty of Lisbon. In content, this was almost identical to the earlier constitution. It creates a new European president, just as the constitution tried to do. It establishes a European foreign minister (now called the high representative for foreign affairs) and it creates a European diplomatic corps.

It extends qualified majority voting to 68 new areas of policy, just as the constitution did (this prevents individual countries from blocking changes on which most other countries are agreed).

Like the constitution, the treaty anticipates a single European army and defence policy, and it recognises the euro as the common currency.

References to European "laws" have been struck from the text, but EU "regulations and directives" have exactly the same force as laws.

The treaty also stops short of making the Euro flag and anthem legally binding, but these symbols of statehood have long been established across the continent anyway.

The treaty differs from the draft constitution only in form.

Rather than establishing a new, founding document, it introduces the desired changes by amending previous EU treaties. This has given Europe's leaders the excuse to bypass any more troublesome referendums. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who chaired the convention that drew up the constitution, happily admits: "The Treaty of Lisbon is the same as the rejected constitution. Only the format has been changed to avoid referendums."

This time around, therefore, the French and Dutch voters have not been consulted. Their governments have ratified the Lisbon treaty despite the voters having rejected virtually all of its provisions just two years earlier.

The same is true of the Brits. Having promised a referendum on the draft constitution in 2005, the Brown Government has now ratified the treaty in 2008 without troubling the electorate for its views. Of the 27 governments that make up the Union, 26 have decided a referendum on the treaty is not needed, and 18 have already ratified it.

Only the Irish decided to ask the voters what they thought. The Irish have been major beneficiaries of Brussels' beneficence over recent years, so a yes vote was widely anticipated, but in the event, they voted no.

Europe's leaders are furious about this. They insist ratification in the other 26 countries will still go ahead, and they are demanding the Irish government find a way around the referendum result. They say three million Irish voters cannot be allowed to subvert the will of 450 million Europeans, conveniently overlooking the fact that the other 447 million were not actually asked their opinion. With no apparent sense of irony, the German Foreign Minister says "we need this treaty to make Europe more democratic".

Past experience suggests the Irish will either be told to vote again, or their government will find a pretext for signing a slightly-amended version of the treaty without calling another referendum.

I wonder if Mugabe is taking notes?