What is not changed remains the same

ON the Lisbon Treaty, Lorna Jennings (Letters, August 3) tells us “the package we will vote on this time is quite different to that which was put before us last time”.

This is blatantly false.

The three “guarantees” that are supposed to make it so different this time merely confirm that the treaty, in the form in which the Irish people have already rejected it only a little over a year ago, does not interfere in certain matters (neutrality, taxation, abortion).

Despite much insidious misrepresentation, the “guarantees” are merely a cynical political pretext for disrespectfully presenting the same treaty to the electorate again within 16 months.

But don’t take it just from me.

In the presidency conclusions of the European Council regarding the meeting of June 18/19, at which the “guarantees” were agreed (the official record of the meeting), we read that the protocol enshrining them “will clarify but not change either the content or the application of the Treaty of Lisbon”.

I think most sensible people would agree that what is not changed remains the same and does not become, as Ms Jennings would have it, “quite different”. The question of retaining a commissioner, by the way, should not be confused, deliberately or otherwise, with the “guarantees” to which it does not belong.

James N O’Sullivan

Ohnhorststr. 28

22609 Hamburg

Germany