IRELAND MAY lose a European commissioner next year if the Lisbon Treaty is not ratified, a European law expert told a Dáil committee yesterday.
Dr Gavin Barrett, UCD school of law, also said there was no legal reason why abortion became an issue in the Lisbon debate.
He said the current rules under which the EU operates, set down in the Nice treaty, mean that the number of commissioners will have to be reduced next year. Nice had stated that after enlargement of the EU, the commission would be too inefficient to operate with one commissioner per country.
Anti-Lisbon campaigners had argued that Ireland would lose an EU commissioner if Lisbon was ratified. However, according to Dr Barrett, Lisbon actually offered a process to reverse that reduction.
He told the cross-party Sub-Committee on Ireland's future in the European Union there was no process to reverse the reduction under the existing treaty.
"If Lisbon is not ratified, there must be a reduction in the number of commissioners," he said.
He said he strongly suspected part of any package that may be offered to Ireland would include the retention of one commissioner per member state.
