Lisbon treaty rejection a huge mistake, says ICMSA president
Jackie Cahill, president, said the ICMSA supported the Lisbon treaty despite the fact that radically different views were being strongly advocated by other people in its sector at the time and subsequently.
“We saw — and we still see — our future as being best served by ratification of the treaty,” he said.
Mr Cahill said this was not a blind acceptance or trust that everything from Brussels is good, but a balanced and rational assessment of the inevitable process in European integration and a calculated weighing of the opportunities and challenges that this brings about.
“On that basis, ICMSA will repeat our conviction that, as a nation, Ireland’s rejection of the treaty was a major mistake and one that will have to be corrected,” he said.
“It is our experience that Ireland’s influence in Europe at all levels has been affected — if not outright reduced — because of Ireland’s rejection of Lisbon,” he said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin said earlier this month the Government will decide on whether to hold another referendum before the EU summit in Brussels on December 11.
The farm lobby in Ireland is meanwhile monitoring reports that pressure is growing for a ministerial meeting in Geneva next month to seek a world trade deal in the key areas of agriculture and industry.
Trade officials said the high-level meeting would almost definitely occur in mid-December, after World Trade Organisation (WTO) mediators have the chance to revise negotiating texts that would form the basis of a deal on cuts to tariffs and subsidies.
However, New Zealand’s ambassador to the WTO, Crawford Falconer, said there had been virtually no movement in the farming talks that he mediates.
Catherine Ashton, who succeeded Peter Mandel-son as the European Union’s new trade commissioner, said with the right combination of hard work and leadership “we should aim to agree the framework of a final deal before Christmas.”
The talks to open world trade, which began seven years ago, stalled in July.
