Strasbourg, 14/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - At a press conference organised by Jens-Peter Bonde, chairman of the SOS Democracy intergroup, three of the fifteen Irish members of the European Parliament who voted against the Nice Treaty - Patricia McKenna and Nuala Ahern, Greens, and Dana Scallon, independent, member of the EPP/ED Group - made a series of demands to take account of the negative outcome of the Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty, which are: (1) a new simplified Treaty. Ratification should stop immediately: the outcome of the referendum is binding and must be respected. But the Governments of the Union should urge the people and parliaments to initiate a public debate on a new simplified fundamental treaty of the EU; (2) a slimmer, less centralised, more people-friendly EU. Other countries could also have said "no" if they had been able to organise a referendum, and that "no" is a rejection of more centralisation of powers in Brussels and a division into first and second class members; (3) decision-making must not take place behind closed doors, but publicly; (4) a new democratic union to emerge from negotiations that would first begin in national parliaments, with citizens voting on the results through binding referenda in each country. At the same time, these MEPs demand more flexible enlargement negotiations. Candidate countries have been misled, said Ms. McKenna: far from seeing them excluded, we want them to enter under the same conditions (conditions of equality in relation to the "large" ones) as we entered the Union in the first enlargement.
We voted against militarisation, inequality, centralisation, said McKenna, who has little hope in the Forum for Europe the creation of which the Irish Government announced Tuesday evening. The Government has already said that the Treaty would again be submitted to the people as it stands, therefore the forum cannot be a genuine place for discussions. We want to defend Ireland's neutrality, Ms. Ahern added, and Ms. Scallon defined as "insulting" the interpretation by which the Irish voted "no" for fear of losing Union funding.