Lisbon Treaty ratification ‘is not at will; it is an obligation’.

So says former EU commissioner for Belgium Viscount Etienne Davignon, when he spoke at a European symposium at University College Cork in Ireland last week. Perhaps one should have anticipated the tenor of his speech given that the symposium was entitled ‘Europe: International Power’, for the assertion of political power is increasingly what the EU is about, and mere matters of trade and questions of national sovereignty were relegated to the periphery years ago.

The Viscount preached in pseudo-religious terms: ‘Signing the treaty is the most solemn thing that states can do. It's a commitment to the other states. The ratification process is not at will, it is an obligation."

Solemn? Obligation? There’s a divinity that shapes our ends...

The Viscount must be sensing the Hand of God upon his shoulder (God seems to be placing his hand upon quite a lot of centre-left shoulders at the moment). He speaks as though anointed with the Divine Right of Kings, which established as a fundamental maxim that the King could do no wrong. The monarch becomes a despot, doing what he pleases. The Divine Right teaches that people were made for the benefit of the King, and he may choose what liberties, if any, to bestow upon them. So it is with the new Caesar.

The Viscount reinforces the infallibility of his ex cathedra pronouncement, saying: "I find it unacceptable that a government that has committed to other governments in good faith that it would carry this (ratification) out, why then is this the only case when a government does not resign (if it fails)? It is not acceptable."

So Viscount Etienne Davignon finds it ‘unacceptable’ that a democratically-elected government should consult its people and then reconsider its policy in the light of the will of its people expressed through a referendum.

The Viscount might just consider that the Irish government had no democratic mandate to sign the Lisbon Treaty in the first place. And he might also consider that no EU government had the authority to do so since doing so negated the sovereignty of their peoples and neutered their legislatures further.

The Irish minister for foreign affairs Micheal Martin has confirmed that the Irish government would not be able to ratify the Lisbon Treaty before European parliamentary elections in June next year. As a consequence, ‘only 736 MEPs can be elected to the chamber as laid out under the Nice Treaty instead of the 751 MEPs envisaged under Lisbon. This will reduce the national quota of MEPs in 12 member states, something that is likely to be highly unpopular.’

It is likely that 26 countries will have ratified the Lisbon Treaty by the end of this year, and Ireland shall be portrayed in the media as the pariah state – insular, isolated, anti-communautaire, backward-looking, in the slow lane, on the wrong track, missing the train or the boat, etc., etc.

The path of salvation is narrow indeed, and few are able navigate it.