I would they had thought European. However, I am glad that the Irish voted NO to the Lisbon Treaty even if they only did it for the usual reasons.

With their NO votes, the supporters of the Nationalist Sinn Féin wanted to defend Ireland's sovereignty and military neutrality. Conservative Catholics feared that the Lisbon Treaty would break the Irish constitutional ban on abortion.

The majority of the workers and farmers and many middle class people felt they had nothing to gain but something to lose if they voted YES. The Irish said NO to the kind of development, liberalization and modernization that the EU represents.

Yet the main reason for the victory of the NO in Ireland, and earlier in France and Holland, is the fact that the Treaty of Lisbon (like its predecessor, the Constitutional Treaty of the European Convention) really does not change anything; it only continues the present catastrophic economic and political trends.

Interestingly, Ireland does not have a political party of the radical right of the type represented by Le Pen's Front national in France, or Jörg Haider's Freiheitspartei Österreichs. Sinn Féin, which collected ca 7 percent of the votes in the last parliamentary elections (2007), and which campaigned actively against the Treaty of Lisbon, is certainly Nationalist, but it is not xenophobic. The economic demands of the party. e.g. tax justice, are leftist. (1)

Sinn Féin also demands that Sellafield be closed down. Whether this is primarily because the British nuclear site pollutes Irish waters, or out of a principled and global opposition to nuclear energy, is not known to the present author.

Ireland is the exception that proves the rule: today the EU is not something which the citizens decide about, but something which is forced upon them. (The first, spontaneous reactions of President Sarkozy and other EU leaders confirm that the rule applies as usual in the case of the Irish NO to the Lisbon treaty.)

However, the situation is partly our own fault. The EU would not have to be what it is if its citizens dared to think in European terms instead of going ahead along the usual National and Nationalist paths.

Our first strategic demand as EU citizens should be the abolition of the weapons of mass destruction. The constitutional treaty of the EU should outlaw the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. For what purpose do we maintain and modernize atomic bombs now that the Cold War is over?

The EU-leaders would not contribute to the new arms race if they were serious about combating the man-caused climate change. Nor would they advocate the building of new nuclear power plants.

We the peoples of the EU-countries need to decide about the future of the nuclear weapons and the nuclear power plants.

The Treaty of Lisbon does not spell it out clearly. Yet what it means is that the governments of France and England may continue unhindered with their 'modernization' of their national nuclear arsenals, and that the EU will be committed to continuing the nuclear war planning of NATO and to embracing the current doctrines of nuclear deterrence, preemptive strikes and militarization of outer space.

Furthermore, the Treaty of Lisbon builds on the Euratom Treaty of 1957, the purpose of which is to further and increase the use of nuclear energy. The EU needs a new Euratom which guarantees an ordered and secure dismantling of the existing nuclear power plants.

For these two main reasons plus the obvious Capitalist bias of the Lisbon Treaty, I would also have voted NO , if I had had the chance.

Mikael Böök Isnäs, Finland.

Footnote:

(1) Based on: Eoin O'Malley: Why is there no radical right party in Ireland? Working Papers in International Studies. Centre for International Studies. Dublin City University. 2008.