Madam, - After the announcement by prime minister Jose Socrates that Portugal is to hold no referendum on the new EU Reform Treaty since its lower house of parliament "embodies the will of the people", it is now certain that Ireland is the only one of the EU's 27 member-states whose voters still "embody" their own will on this question.
The electorates of other member-states - the Netherlands and France, for instance - are also having their will "embodied" for them by state organs this time around. Are we peripheral Europeans now lagging behind in matters of enfranchisement? Isn't it time for us to scrap our outdated constitutional stipulation that citizens be consulted on matters such as sovereignty, so that Dáil Éireann, that very embodiment of our free republic, might "embody" our will for us too?
- Yours, etc,
FERGAL TREANOR, Cologne, Germany.
Madam, - In defending "the legitimacy of the [European] Union's legislative process" against Anthony Coughlan, Michael Drury touches on the philosophical kernel of what is often called the EU's "democratic deficit" (January 11th).
He reminds us that "the Commission is not a representative body, and that its members are forbidden to take instructions from the governments which nominated them". Critics of the EU "ought to protest vigorously every time Commission members seem to be acting on behalf of their countries of origin, rather than in the interests of the Union."
However, it is unclear why citizens of EU member-states should have any faith in the benign objectivity of an unelected and unrepresentative Commission, why they should feel confident that such a body is immune to undue influence from the more powerful EU states such as Germany or from mighty pressure groups like the European Round Table of Industrialists, or why their own interests - particularly in matters of foreign policy - should necessarily be identical with those of states with very different histories and allegiances.
Indeed, Mr Drury´s logic would tend to confirm that the "democratic deficit", far from being a marginal by-product of EU governance, constitutes its very essence. This is why concerned citizens, be they nationalists or internationalists, must oppose the Lisbon Treaty.
- Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.