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