Green senator accused of U-turn on Lisbon treaty

SPEAKING at a Sinn Féin-organised conference on the EU constitution in 2005, Deirdre de Búrca called for its rejection on the grounds that it “only addresses the EU’s democratic deficit in a limited way”.

Imagine my surprise when the same Deirdre de Búrca (Letters, February 11) said the “Lisbon treaty does take certain important steps in the direction of addressing the EU’s democratic deficit”.

The Green party senator says the Council of Ministers will now meet in public. This is true and a good thing, but it was in the constitution she opposed. She welcomes the formal role for member state parliaments in monitoring draft EU legislation.

What she fails to mention in her description of the ‘yellow card’ system is that parliaments only have eight weeks to respond, must secure the support of one-third of all member states and, even then, the commission is obliged only to consider their objection. It gives them no power to amend or block the legislation.

Senator de Búrca also welcomes the extension of co-decision to the European Parliament in a number of areas.

Co-decision is a slow, cumbersome and flawed process and again its extension was in the constitution she opposed.

Like many defenders of the Lisbon treaty, Ms de Búrca plays up the introduction of the citizen’s initiative.

However, citizens’ initiatives already exist and, like the yellow card for member state parliaments, the commission is obliged to do nothing other than consider the proposal. Ms de Búrca argues that the “charter of fundamental rights gives a legal basis to a citizen’s right to access documents from EU institutions and to petition the parliament”.

Again citizens currently can petition parliament, which has a committee dealing with this issue, while almost all EU documents are available on www.europa.eu.

At that same Sinn Féin conference she argued that “we need to campaign very vigorously to have this EU constitution rejected, as it will not assist us in achieving the kind of Europe we are aspiring to”. As all of the “important steps” she referred to in her letter were in the constitution, one wonders how Senator de Búrca could have rejected them in 2005 only to accept them in 2008.

Martin Ferris TD

Leinster House

Kildare Street

Dublin 2