Who understands 478 pages of legalese?
Binding laws ought to be understandable.
The Lisbon Treaty is both over-complex and unreadable: It consists of two treaties and numerous protocols, appendices and statements. 30 per cent of Irish people voted no on July 12, 2008 simply because they did not want to approve something they didn’t understand. The governments made a conscious effort to draw up an unintelligible treaty.
Deliberately unintelligible:
In order to avoid a broad public and democratic debate on the Treaty, the governments made a deliberate effort to draw up an unintelligible document:
The Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht openly admitted this fact: "The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable, the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable (...) The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a successthis treaty is to be unreadable [...] The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success." (Flanderninfo, June 23, 2007)
The chairman of the convent presidium and former French president, Valéry Giscard d´Estaing, also admitted „A last lucky find consisted in wanting to preserve part of the innovations of the Treaty and camouflaging them by splitting them into different texts ... In this way, public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly … All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”
(Le Monde, June 14, 2007 und Sunday Telegraph, Juli 1st, 2007)
Until April 2008, that is four months after its approval by the European Council, the Lisbon Treaty still consisted of the following documents:
- Two treaties (EU treaty and EC treaty),
- Two lists of amendments of these treaties,
- 37 protocols,
- 2 appendices and
- 65 statements
For non-experts it was – and still is – absolutely impossible to read and understand this treaty!
This is also a way of undermining democracy, if the constitution or a similar text which is the basis of all legislation cannot be understood by an overwhelming majority of the population.
In Ireland, 30 per cent of No voters stated that they do not want to voted in favour of something they did not understand. "If you don`t know, vote no!"
Links to the study on motives underlying the Irish vote:
http://wissen.mehr-demokratie.de/fileadmin/pdfarchiv/papiere/di-monitor-report-en.pdf (engl)
http://wissen.mehr-demokratie.de/fileadmin/pdfarchiv/papiere/di-monitor-report-dt.pdf (dt.)
Rubber-stamping instead of discussion:
9 national parliaments and the EU Parliament have already rubber-stamped the Treaty before the „consolidated“ version (incorporating amendments into the existing treaties) in April 2008 even existed!
Too long:
In its consolidated version, the Lisbon Treaty still consists of 478 pages. In comparison, the constitution of the USA is 15 pages long, that of the France 20, the German Basic Law 70 pages.
Attac founder Susan George wrote about the Lisbon Treaty: „The only comparable document regulating economic details to the same degree was the Constitution of the Soviet Union in 1936 which was written by the politbureau.“ (Europe´s World, Autumn 2005)
Too complex:
A constitution should actually only contain the following:
a) values & aims
b) fundamental rights
c) competences of institutions
Concrete details about individual policy fields, such as the economy, foreign policies, or road constructions have no place in a constitution; in any case they should be voted on separately – even more referendums.
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