EU officials should remain silent
As an Irish citizen Mr Doyle is entitled to vote as he likes on this issue when it is put to referendum; but with all due respect to him, I suggest that he is exceeding his functions as an EU commission servant by intervening in the Irish debate in this way, no matter how objective or valid he may consider the points he makes.
If the EU constitution is ratified, the EU commission obtains many new powers and functions; but it may not be ratified. Until that happens - if it does happen - the commission and its servants have no function in relation to it. It is just not their business to give ‘facts’ or arguments about it.
The commission is not a party to the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. In EU law the ratification of treaties is exclusively a matter for the member states, and for them alone.
Under Irish law a fraction, however small, of Mr Doyle’s salary is paid for out of public funds contributed to the EU by Irish taxpayers.
The Supreme Court’s judgement in the 1995 McKenna case laid down that it is unconstitutional for public funds to be used in a one-sided fashion in Irish referenda. If Mr Doyle can devote some of his valuable time to writing letters to the newspapers giving his views on the EU constitution, what is to stop the Commission Representation in Ireland from spending large amounts of money on, say, advertisements doing the same thing later on in the constitution referendum?
This actually looked like happening in 1998 during our referendum on the EU’s Amsterdam Treaty. In the lead-in to that Mr Doyle’s office in Dublin issued thousands of copies of a pamphlet on this treaty as an insert in Magill magazine. This purported to be an objective “critical guide,” but in fact it was a highly partisan document. Enquiries elicited the information that it was intended to enclose this pamphlet also with the RTE Guide and the Sunday Tribune - some 250,000 copies in all.
Patricia McKenna MEP protested to the commission secretary-general in Brussels that his Dublin office was exceeding its legal powers. A friend of mine, Owen Bennett, instructed his solicitor to seek a court injunction restraining this interference as illegal under the Irish constitution. I understand that the commission’s legal service in Brussels was asked for its opinion. In the event, the planned further distribution of the offending pamphlet by Mr Doyle’s office ceased, and Mr Bennett had no need to go to court.
There the matter rested until I saw Mr Doyle’s recent Irish Examiner letters. A letter to the press may seem a very minor intervention, but if left go unchallenged it could presage much more serious interference by the commission in our referendum on the EU constitution in due time. There was heavy partisan intervention by local commission offices during several of the EU accession country referenda last year. The commission has a huge budget for ‘information services.’ It should not be used to try to sway Irish voters in referenda.
May I suggest that Mr Doyle and his colleagues should avoid speaking or writing publicly, or spending money in any partisan way, in the Irish referendum on the EU constitution, if they do not wish to find themselves and their Brussels superiors having to defend their actions in the High Court at the behest of some indignant citizen concerned about legality and fair procedures in this hugely important democratic decision by the people.
Anthony Coughlan
Secretary
National Platform
EU Research and Information Centre
24 Crawford Ave
Dublin 9
