MINISTER OF State for Europe Dick Roche has signalled that the Government is unlikely to call a referendum over a looming revision to the Lisbon Treaty to allow the creation a permanent rescue scheme for euro zone countries.
On the sidelines of an EU meeting yesterday, Mr Roche said it was his personal view that a referral to the people would not be required and believed Cabinet members to hold the same opinion.
After the failure of the first Lisbon and Nice treaty referendums, the Government is known to have entered talks on the insertion of a new paragraph in the Lisbon Treaty with the objective of avoiding a new vote.
EU leaders expect to sign off on the amendment when they gather in Brussels tomorrow. They believe the change will not transfer powers to the EU and, therefore, may not require an Irish referendum.
Although the formal decision on whether a vote is required rests on a legal opinion from the Attorney General, Mr Roche said the Government took advice from the attorney as it entered the talks and was pleased with their outcome.
“If I thought for a moment that the attorney would be unhappy I would be unhappy too,” Mr Roche told reporters.
“We actively support the text . . . If we had the opportunity of scripting it we wouldn’t have gone any further.”
The proposed text was “very close” to the Government’s preference, he added.
“My personal view is that it is unlikely,” Mr Roche said in reference to the possibility of a referendum. Asked whether Cabinet members held similar personal views, he said he had “no reason to believe otherwise”.
While the Crotty ruling of the Supreme Court holds that any significant transfer of power to the EU must be put to the people, European leaders believe the proposed revision does not add to the EU’s competences.
This frees them to use an amendment procedure reserved for such changes. The leaders believe they can go down this path because the rescue scheme they plan would operate as an inter-governmental arrangement, outside the purview of the EU institutions.
“If there is a transfer of competences to the union then there may be a requirement for a referendum. In this case there isn’t going to be a transfer. Remember, we’re going to have an inter-governmental arrangement here,” Mr Roche said.
Although last-minute haggling continues over the proposed text, senior EU diplomats signed off on a text last week which says euro zone countries “may establish a stability mechanism to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole”. The proposal also says the “granting of financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality”.
In a separate development yesterday, Germany, France and Poland urged EU foreign policy chief to take personal charge of plans to boost military co-operation between EU countries and between EU and Nato structures.
“We see this as an important contribution to the debate on military co-operation and EU-Nato relations,” said a spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton. “The High Representative will respond in due course.”