Madam, - Dr Garret FitzGerald is somewhat misleading on two points in his article on the proposed EU Constitution (Opinion & Analysis, March 12th).
He writes that under the constitution "national parliamentary bodies as well as governments can refer to the Court of Justice any law which is viewed as breaching the principle of subsidiarity". In fact only governments can do this. The most a parliament can do is to request a government to act, which the government can do anyway without any such request. So the EU Constitution does not propose any new power for national parliaments here.
He points out that "if one-third of national parliamentary bodies object to a draft law, it must be reviewed". This position is not new, for national parliaments can object already. It is not a new power for national parliaments, for they can object all they like and the commission, which drafts European laws, can go on ignoring them. What national parliaments get in the constitution's Protocol on Subsidiarity is effectively a new right to be ignored. Presumably Dr FitzGerald knows of the proposal in the drafting convention that if two-thirds of national parliaments objected to a draft law, the commission would have to abandon it; but that was not adopted.
One of the more alarming features of the proposed constitution is its "escalator" or "passerelle" clauses which would allow the European Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers to move EU law-making from unanimity to majority voting for most of the policy areas the constitution covers, so long as they agreed unanimously among themselves and no parliament objected. Convention president Giscard d'Estaing dubbed this provision "a central innovation" of the constitution. It is not hard to see why, for it would allow the constitution to be effectively amended and for EU powers to be increased further in future without the need for new treaties or for getting the consent of citizens in referendums.
Dr FitzGerald seeks to reassure us by stating that "any of the 25 national parliaments will be able to block such a move". He omits to mention that they will not be able to do that for the escalator clauses in relation to the EU's common foreign and security policy (Art.I-40) or its annual spending ceilings (Art.I-55), where there is no such safeguard as a parliamentary right to block. As an experienced politician he will know too that if the EU presidents and prime ministers want to use this escalator clause strongly enough, they will normally be able to command majorities in their national parliaments.
Dr FitzGerald defends the Constitution's proposed move to a largely population-based voting system for making European laws by stating that "we have to face the fact that in the enlarged Union of 25 member-states the present voting system would enable 18 smaller states with less than half the population to impose their will on the six large states, which would hardly be democratic".
Democracy is government of the people by the people, the "demos". One wonders what notion of democracy or what concept of a people Dr FitzGerald has in mind as the basis for this remarkable justification for big-state power in a new, post-Constitution Union? - Yours, etc.,
ANTHONY COUGHLAN, Secretary, The National Platform, Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9.