The No to Nice Campaign yesterday published a new poster and announced a series of public meetings to oppose the Nice Treaty in the autumn referendum.
This is ahead of the main campaign launch, according to the co-ordinator, Mr Justin Barrett, who estimates a starting campaign fund of €35,000.
With the heading "A 2nd Chance to Become 2nd class", posters have already been put up in a number of locations to advertise the public meetings, starting in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, on Saturday.
Some 2,000 are expected to be hung, similar to the eye-catching and effective red and black poster with the message "You will lose - Power, Money, Freedom".
Mr Barrett said that governments of accession countries had taken "at face value" what they had been told by EU leaders, that enlargement was impossible without Nice.
"But the fact of it is the only reason why the applicant countries would want us to vote Yes is so that enlargement would go ahead".
Mr Barrett claimed that enlargement would go ahead on much better terms for applicant countries without Nice.
The governments of the candidate countires were being "severely misled or at least being intimidated in exactly the same way as there is an effort to intimidate our Government by saying it is Nice or nothing," he said.
Those countries had been told to "take it or leave it". "We want to give the accession countries a 'pre-Nice' deal, to offer them accession on the same terms that Ireland joined the EU, as equals and without the provision of the enhanced co-operation which will allow for a two-tier Europe."
He denied that this contradicted the campaign's view about the free movement of people within the EU. The campaign was not opposed to migrant workers but believed that all EU countries should apply the seven-year rule or none and said Ireland was one of only four member-states that would allow free movement from the date of accession in 2004.
Mr Barrett also rejected the view of Government and other parties that the No to Nice Campaign was xenophobic.
The Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Dick Roche, said Ireland would be operating on current EU rules about the movement of people.
The Government had made a "sovereign decision in sticking with EU law as it exists" and he was surprised that the No to Nice Campaign wanted it to concede its national sovereignty on this. Nine member-states had made no final public statement about free movement.
The Minister also denied that the No to Nice Campaign had "stolen a march" on the Government with an early poster campaign.
