Madam, - Anthony Coughlan of the National Platform (January 4th) is critical of the Lisbon Treaty's proposals on the number and appointment of Commissioners and the method of law-making in the EU.
What Mr Coughlan fails to do is to put his remarks in context. When he writes that "it is bad enough that under the proposed new treaty Ireland would have no representative at all on the EU Commission, the body which had the monopoly of proposing all European laws, for one out of every three Commission terms", the situation looks pretty bleak. However, when we examine the overall reform proposals governing the Commission, the picture is totally different.
At present each new country joining the EU is entitled to appoint a Commissioner. This worked fine when Ireland joined in 1973 and there were 12 countries, but the numbers have since increased from 12 to 15 to 25 and to 27 in 2007. The number of member-states will further increase as the EU expands in the years to come. The increasing number of Commissioners has inevitably affected the workings of the institution.
To make the Commission more effective the new treaty, which is aptly titled the Reform Treaty, proposes to reduce the number of commissioners to 18. Thus each country in the EU will have a commissioner for two-thirds of the time, or for two out of every three Commission terms of five years.
Also, to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the Commission, its president will be elected by the European Parliament on the proposal of the European Council. Mr Coughlan omits this context entirely so that he can give the impression that poor little Ireland alone is singled out and discriminated against in the consolidation process.
In reality the position of the smaller states like Ireland is strengthened vis-à-vis the larger states. Rotation of commissioners will be on the basis of strict equality between the member-states irrespective of size. It must be remembered too that the larger states had two commissioners each until 2004.
Thus Germany, with a population of 80 million, or Britain, with a population of 60 million, will have exactly the same number of commissionerships and on the same terms of appointment as Ireland, with a population of 4 million, or Slovenia, which joined only in 2004 and is the first former Eastern Bloc country to hold the presidency, with a population of 2.9 million.
Moreover, Mr Coughlan's statement "that European laws made by the Council of Ministers in response to the Commission's proposals will be decided primarily on the basis of member-state population size - which would increase the relative weight of the big countries in EU law-making at the expense of smaller ones like Ireland" is quite misleading.
Under the Reform Treaty, decisions on law-making will now be made on a new double-majority voting system of member-states coupled with population. Thus, starting in the year 2014, 55 per cent of member-states and 65 per cent of the population of these states will be required to make decisions. Mr Coughlan neatly omits any reference to the number of States required before a decision can be taken and likewise omits any reference to the hefty 65 per cent of the total population required. Moreover, the EU Parliament will henceforth have co-decision making powers with the Council in the vast majority of legislative matters.
Moreover, the national parliaments of Members States will have a substantial role for the first time in considering, accepting, rejecting or amending proposals emanating from the Commission.
In such circumstances it is quite wrong for Mr Coughlan to say that the larger EU member-states will have the primary role in law-making at EU level. If anything, the opposite is the case.
The European Union is about Member States, large and small, pooling their sovereignty and working together as equals, with shared values to provide employment, prosperity and peace on a continent that has had a far greater history of war and genocide than any other continent in the world. It is a project that deserves our support.
Yours, etc,
JOE COSTELLO TD, Labour Party Spokesperson on European Affairs, Dáil Éireann, Dublin 2.