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Oliver is wrong

Saturday, 14th June 2008

My very good friend Oliver Kamm has posted a comment on the post below:

My dear chap, the Lisbon treaty is not a new constitution for the EU and its proponents are not a conspiracy.

I hate to have to write that Oliver is wrong, but Oliver is wrong.

It's not simply my contention. It is the conclusion of, amongst many others, the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons which found that the treaty is "substantially equivalent" to the EU Constitution. Here's how the BBC reported its findings:

The committee criticised the "essentially secret" drafting of the document, which is due to be signed by EU heads of government in Portugal after an Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) later this month.
It said the treaty had been drawn up hastily, with draft texts available to member governments only 48 hours before the IGC in June.
This had been carried out "by the [EU] Presidency, with texts produced at the last moment before pressing for an agreement", it said.
The report said: "The compressed timetable now proposed, having regard to the sitting terms of national parliaments, could not have been better designed to marginalise their role."
The report said it was "likely to be misleading" for the government to claim that the treaty did not have the same characteristics as the constitution.

To argue that the Lisbon Treaty is in any meaningful sense not the same as the rejected constitution is to argue that the moon is made of cheese - complete and utter nonsense. The whole point of the Lisbon Treaty was to find a way of resuscitating a dead constitution - to disguise it as nothing more than an amending treaty and rely on it being nodded through by governments.

Many of those behind the old constitution - Giscard, for instance - concede this (indeed they are proud of the fact that the Lisbon Treaty was reborn and unapologetic about the manner of its rebirth).

But because Ireland, alone in the EU, is constitutionally bound to hold referenda on such treaties, the plan - a plan which I think it fair to call a conspiracy by the European political elites - collapsed.

It's really that simple.

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Kevyn Bodman

June 14th, 2008 7:02pm

Mr.Pollard,
You are right and Oliver Kamm is wrong.
But you shouldn't have to hate saying it.
Everyone is wrong sometimes.
I found a great line on another blog recently.'I agree with nobody on everything.' (Sorry, I don't know the writer.)

Britain's finest columnist is wrong on 42 day detention without charge, as I and many others have recently told her on her blog.
But she's still Britain's finest columnist.
Your friendship with 'the master' will probably survive.

Snorri Godhi

June 14th, 2008 8:06pm

One of the definitions of "constitution" in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is as follows: "The basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or social group that determine the powers and duties of the government and guarantee certain rights to the people in it".

The problem with the Lisbon Treaty is that it NOT a constitution by the above definition: it is not limited to basic principles, does not determine enumerated powers and duties, and does not guarantee inalienable rights to the people.

The Irish Constitution, by contrast, clearly works as intended. God Bless Ireland.

David Boothroyd

June 14th, 2008 8:54pm

No, Oliver Kamm is right. This is a point on form and not content. The Constitutional Treaty would have scrapped all existing European treaties and then substituted itself for all of them.

The Lisbon Treaty won't; it just makes some minor procedural changes in the existing texts. The fact that the majority of them were also part of the Constitutional Treaty is neither here nor there and does not make the two the same.

The reason why the Constitutional Treaty was a big deal and the Lisbon Treaty isn't is that, having approved the whole structure in a Constitutional Treaty would give it a great deal more weight; having made some changes in the Lisbon Treaty, they could simply be undone in the next inter-governmental conference.

Commondog

June 15th, 2008 8:03am

Right or not Stephen, this is a very brave step.

Tom Foster

June 16th, 2008 1:30pm

You are both correct. Mr. Kamm correctly contends the Lisbon treaty is not a constitution. You contend that the treaty is in it's essential content as well as its intent identical to the late Constitutional Treaty.

This latter treaty was not, other than in name, a constitution.

David Lucas

June 17th, 2008 12:54pm

Re Boothroyd and Foster:

Boothroyd: any reader of UK legislation will recognise the difference between ammending legislation and the consolidated law. But this does not alter the legal status of the text.

I believe that the "minor procedural changes" amount to the vast majority of the changes barring a few symbols.

What is the point of treaty law that makes a consolidated treaty replacing prior treaties more embedded than a treaty making the same points in ammending form. Or has the implementation been changed? (sincere question)

Tom Foster: I believe formally the "Constitution" was a "Treaty Establishing a Constitution". What definition of a constitution are you using. If the high contracting parties say they are establishing one, I hestitate to disagree.