Ireland and the Nice treaty

Analysis by members of Libertarians against Nice

Libertarians Against Nice

Anarchist and libertarian groups and individuals from all across Ireland met in Dublin on Saturday 7th September to found a campaign against the Nice Treaty

At the meeting we agreed to campaign as Libertarians Against Nice (LAN) and to produce at least 50,000 A4 leaflets and 300 A2 corriboard posters.

For more details check the LAN website

Relevant offical EU documents

These are links to text from The European Union online

National Declaration by Ireland relating to traditional policy of military neutrality
The relevant parts of the Seville EU council minutes on the Irish governments declaration that it hopes will help get the Nice treaty passed the second time around

PDF file of the Nice treaty
Full text of the treaty from the EU web site

PDF file of treaty on European Union
This is the text Nice modifies. Consolidated version incorporating the changes made by the Treaty of Amsterdam, signed on 2 October 1997

Useful articles on the EU

Trade

Commission Equipped for New WTO Disasters
Kenneth Haar, SOS-WTO Denmark, looks at what the Nice Treaty means for the EU's international trade policies.

Restructuring and resistance: Diverse voices of struggle in western Europe
Thise is an inspired book that succeeds in explaining why many people in western Europe are opposing capitalist globalisation. It does this by doing what the mainstream media will not, giving them a voice.

TRIPS and the WTO - killing millions for massive profits
The World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was created to allow multinational corporations to demand that their 'ownership' of intellectual patents be respected in all countries.

The Euro: the root of all evil?
It makes no sense for us to oppose the EU on the basis of some sort of return to national sovereignty. Rather we must look for ways to create our globalisation agenda out of the process. The protests at the European Summits are proving one way of doing this

The WTO and GATS
According to the WTO, the GATS agreements cover 160 services' sector. What few people realised when the deal was first done is that the GATS also includes healthcare, education, housing, water, waste management and other basic services usually run by government agencies.

The Nice Treaty: conclusions and considerations
The European Trade Union Confederation finds the Nice Treaty regrettably unambitious and lacking a forward-looking vision of European integration

The Sharing of Power and the Institutional Balance in the European Union-A Continental Perspective
Paper presented to the Jean Monnet Seminar on the European Union, NAFTA and the WTO: Advanced Issues in Law and Policy

Fortress Europe

2042 deaths due to Fortress Europe
A listing of every documented death due to Fortress Europe from 1993 to 2001. The total figure is four times the number killed trying to cross the Berlin wall during its 30 year history! Some groups estimate the actual death toll is far higher.

Enlargement Commissioner Sounds Notes Of Caution
Radio Free Europe reports a speech which suggests that enlargment is more then the question of how we vote on Nice

Sweatshops, unions and Fortress Europe
The EU is continuing the exploitation of the people of North Africa through creating a special trade zone of some of the North African countries similar to the free trades zones North America has created in Mexico.

Fortress Europe pulls up the drawbridge
The essence of globalisation is mobility, but now it is clear that true mobility is to be limited to money and the global elite that manipulates it.

Spain in hi-tech war on immigrants
Immigrant pressure groups in Spain say that 4,000 people have drowned on the crossing in the past five years

EU splits on linking aid to action on migration
At Seville EU governments split over the proposal to suspend financial assistance to developing countries which fail to crack down on people-smugglers and take back their own nationals. Because the old decision making methods were still in force the proposal was vetoed. If the Qualified Majority proposals of Nice were active it would have passed!

Asylum crisis hyped in Europe, says UN
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said the number of refugees entering Europe had fallen by almost 50 per cent over the past decade

Militarism

EU prepared to act in crisis management situations
The Crisis Management Exercise held in May, proved that the EU has acquired the necessary structure to integrate both military and civil aspects in crisis management situations

European Union militarisation: Humpty-Dumpty as peace-maker
It is nothing but a fig leaf argument when we are told that the EU Rapid Reaction Force is not and will not become a European "Army.

Shannon demonstration against refuelling of US war planes [with photos]
Between September 2001 and July 2002 a total of 535 US warplanes have refuelled at the airport

Peace Activists spray paint USAF Hercules at Shannon
Irish activists spray painted a plane on the runway at the start of September 2002

'Neutral' Ireland takes top EU military position
Irish army officer Colonel Pat Hayes has been appointed to one of the top European Union military positions in Brussels.

Policing

Statewatch
Monitoring the state and civil liberties in the European Union

Resistance to the Europe of the bosses

French Workers Take on their bosses [1996]
The strike wave that rocked France in the closing month of 1995 is yet another example of the great fighting spirit of the French working class. Yet when we look at the causes of the strike and the relative weakness of French workplace organisation the question that emerges is 'if they can do it, why can't we'?

The unemployed are on the march [1997]
A European March against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion has been called by a wide coalition of unions, unemployed and political groups. Eleven separate legs of the march will arrive in the centre of Amsterdam on the afternoon of June 14th, to coincide with a European Union Inter-governmental Conference

The Protests against the Nice summit

International anarchist statement for the counter-summit in Nice
signed by Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland) and groups from the Lebanon, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Italia, USA, Canada and the Czech Republic [ In French][In Italian][In Spanish] [In Turkish]

The media and the anti capitalist globalisation movement - Learning from Nice
You may remember back in early December the news being dominated for several nights by coverage of the European Summit in Nice. An endless stream of politicians and political experts offered us their opinions on what new voting arrangements might be introduced. You might even be aware that there was some opposition on the streets of Nice to the summit, on December 7th most TV news items started with brief footage of a bank being set on fire

December 7th - Battle starts outside European summit in Nice
Mainstream press sites and the wire services are carrying reports that battles have broken out between the protesters in Nice and the riot police guarding the European Summit.

Seville 2002 Europan Summit protests

The Seville 2002 EU summit protests [with photos]
An Irish anarchist reports from the European Summit protests in Seville

 Libertarian call to Sevilla 2002
The European Union, the War Machine against Social Rights an international anarchist statement for Seville

 From Barcelona to Seville
Time was when an EU summit was every leader's wet dream. But not any more. The EU summit in Barcelona over the 9 to the 16 of March saw between 250,000 and 600,000 people take to the streets!

Irish anarchists and the Seville protest
The protests in Seville on the weekend of June 20th against the European summit are liable to be the largest globalisation protests to date. Anarchists from Ireland will be at the protests and in Dublin (and maybe elsewhere) we are arranging solidarity activity

Other interesting links

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