What is in the Lisbon treaty anyway?

We live in a time that people seem to have an attention span fit only for ADHD sufferers. My guess is that is has to do with the generations that were exposed to the TV-watching boom taking over demographically. With it comes and incredible inability to read anything longer than 3 lines of text.

Below i explain the treaty in language the yoof of today and the semi-literate adults prevailing in the western world would understand:

The deal of Lisbon updates old EU agreements, without replacing them. It tries to add things people said they wanted out of the EU.
  1. The European Parliament and country parliaments will have more times to say their opinion about EU stuff. It also tries to clear up who does what in European and at each country.
    • EU Parliament: the European Parliament, which we elect in those EU elections from time to time that nobody bothers to go to, will be making more laws now, as well as control EU money and deal with coutries outside EU.

    • Parliaments of countries will get more involved controlling what the EU does.
    • If 1million citizens from eu countries want something they will be able to have it happen maybe (this will be checked by parliament).
    • If some country like UK or ireland wants to leave the EU, now they will be able to quit.

  2. A quicker and easier Europe, simpler methods and voting rules. Less procedures..

    • Now if most coutries want something and one or two refuse, then the decision of many countries is what happens. For that to happen though at least 65% of the EU’s population must want it.

    • New job of President. Who will last for two and a half years, main purpose is for other powers like US China etc to have somebody to talk to rather than needing to talk to 27 different leaders.

    • New measures against terrorism and organised crime that need many countries to work together for best results.

  3. Rights for people.
    • the Treaty of Lisbon preserves existing rights and adds more.
    • political, economic and social freedom of European citizens.
    • Solidarity between Member States: the Treaty of Lisbon provides that the Union and its Member States act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a Member State is the subject of a terrorist attack or the victim of a natural or man-made disaster. Solidarity in the area of energy is also emphasised.
    • Increased security for all: the Union will get an extended capacity to act on freedom, security and justice, which will bring direct benefits in terms of the Union's ability to fight crime and terrorism. New provisions on civil protection, humanitarian aid and public health also aim at boosting the Union's ability to respond to threats to the security of European citizens.

    • A new Foreign Affairs guy will increase the chance that EU opinions and interests will be heard more worldwide.
    • Union's negotiating power, making it more effective on the world stage and a more visible partner for third countries and international organisations.

2 comments:

  1. Rogerh said...

    I don't think you're going to persuade any of them (Irish) to change their minds by writing like this.

    ---Macko Ushko Says---> I have long given up on convincing people about what is clear to anybody with an appreciation of the history of europe spanning beyond the last 30 years. I put my arguments forward, people can make their own minds up. In the end if the irish find themselves outside the EU, this is their loss.

    I think just betrays the idiocy of the education systems that produce citizens no more informed about what the results of the national interest above else has produced in the past. The british foreign office is shining example of an institution that doesn't get that it's aggressive pursuits of "victories" in europe excite only people with an extremely narrow view of the world or Britain's interests.

    Frankly i am disgusted by the petty nationalism that seems to guide many countries these days led by very unworthy heirs of giants of the past. In a continent so scarred by the poison of nationalism, in whose name horrendous phenomena like Fascism, Nazism and tacism developed, show that this continent more than any other should forever seek to banish nationalism from its politics. After all it was the constant competition of advancing national interests in europe that led to truly devastating and recurring wars that brought europe very near extinction.

    Lately this point is being belittled, but that is a serious mistake.

    I miss visionary leaders that had a clear view of the future and had the intellectual gravitas and substance to lead the european project forward, principally Helmut Kohl and his immediate predecessors who created a true open society that at times shows such flashes of brilliance tolerance and humanism that cannot be found in an increasingly capitalistically dumbed down world.

    The current tragic mistake of a nature of the man in the white house is just a symptom of this more general trend of a simplistic anti-intellectual bend in english speaking societies.

    Europe may be an old lady whose past is more interesting than its future and its wrinkles show, but it has style and consists of far better societies to live in than aggresively individualistic ones like the american one.


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    Why is someone stupid if they vote "no" to something they don't understand? If you can't understand a loan contract, it's generally wise not to sign it...

    ---Macko Ushko Says---> If one is ignorant about a referendum affecting all, they should absrain and should leave it to true citizens that take an interest. The no camp exploited cynically the fact that there is a majority of people that vote with criteria such as whether candidate A or B has a full set of hair or not. The electorate is so corrupted by their unthinking lives that do not know what is going on around them. They do not take an interest in european politics, but ask them who was thrown out of big brother or what colour knickers the latest media trollope wears (or doesn't) and you get enough technical analysis to base a PHD thesis on. They don't know because they are not democrats, and they are not citizens, they are -as advertisers disdainfully refer to them- consumers..

    The european union is striving to deal with the real important issues, chiefly globalisation that is going to put pressure downwards to all european wages, a climate crisis that showed that Europe;s sky-high tazation of fuel was right all along,

    The Eurosceptic contribution on the matter seems to be a return to the diplomatic and military arrangements suitable for the world of our great great grandfathers, that consisted of fragmented and primitive nations that small nations like Holland could control through technological advantages.
    This world is gone and we either adjust to the new one that contains players like China with its billions of people eager to compete with us in all ways imaginable.


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    I guess the counterargument is something about representative democracy and trusting the people they vote for on difficult issues but in the Anglo-Saxon world, there is a strong belief that politicians should be able to explain what is going on to "ordinary people" and be precisely accountable. It informs ideas like trial by jury and universal suffrage and they've guaranteed peace and security in the UK and the US a good bit longer than the EU's been around...

    ---Macko Ushko Says---> The challenges in front of us are new, the electorate seems to have become as corrupted as the senators of the late roman empire. Democracy and trusting the people is all very well, however the level of indifference towards new and very real challenges is alarming.

    To paraphrase Churchill, you can rely on the public to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possible options. And that is a good point. In the USA there was a clear majority opinion against getting involved in the second world war.

    I agree that for the most part democratic choice is the better system, but we also need informed citizens that vote.

    In the past people of a very limited intelligence would defer to others for advice. Now we live in the world were beaming sales representatives from Slough and relly addicted housewives from Derry, confidently assert their right to remain uneducated and uninformed pondlife but nevertheless confidently vote no on important issues they do not understand. I wonder if its not the same scholars who were busy applying for 125% mortgages 10 months ago, with the same extreme certainty that is only possible if one is lobotomised from an early age by the footballing role models such as gazza and other 2-syllable long role models.


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    So what is the benefit of the treaty? You appeal to the good the EU has done in the past but that's no guarantee of future performance. The EU has changed a lot in the last 20 years.

    ---Macko Ushko Says--->
    I disagree that the EU has changed that much, it should have changed much more. The Lisbon treaty is a treaty that fundamentally sets the stage for the EU to become a collective tool for the small rich countries that are its memebrs, to tackle globalisation, and while they keep the prised national identities, they dont suffer the fate of small insignificant nations in a world consisting of 3 giant trade and (eventually) military blocks. US, China, India...

    Europe consists of nation states that were empires in a previous age. Take portugal, the whole of Brazil and even places like Macao speak portuguese, its loss of empire was a result of other bigger players taking over its dominions. Today portugal is less important than luxemburg in many ways, and in terms of wealth, its about to be superceded by Czech and Slovakia in the next 5 years.
    My point is that nation states are simply no good at countering the new giants, whi do not have the basic technological disadvantages of the past to keep them behind (greedy globaists ceded that advantage in pursuit of rapid personal enrichment).
    In this sense the EU is vital to its members, more than ever. The competition unleashed by globalisation will be experienced as nothing short of an economic war by the masses of europe an america.
    These fine points are not readily understood by much of the population.


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    I do feel that a more powerful European parliament, qualified-majority voting and a proper president would bring with them a better, more accountable EU because it would bring a lot of stuff which is currently stitched up in complex multilateral deals into the light of day, but it's weird to try to get there through an undemocratic process that demands blind trust from voters.

    ---Macko Ushko Says--->
    I agree, and i would add that it crucially adds the right to leave and the club gets the right to effectively throw out members that continuously pee in the communal pool, or flag wave robotically to their electorates for party political reasons.

    I am of the opinion that complex matters particularly foreign policy needs to be handled by experts. Britain has always done this and the british public get near to zero say on what the foreign office decides, even when the matter is whether the country goes to war.

    After this treaty the UK and ireland can have a nice referendum to leave the EU and swim across the atlantic to join texas and alabama in a celebration of common values such as credit card debt and negative savings rate, as well as negative equity, antiworker legislation and consumerism as religion, private healthcare, privatised utilities err.. .

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  2. Yes you are correct. Now a days people are addicted to TV. Reading is impossible for some people. European parliament does not obeys peoples wishes.
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    Paul Cooper
    http://www.shepelskylaw.com

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