EU Superstate and the Lisbon Treaty

Pressure on Czechs After Poland Signs EU Treaty

October 10, 2009

Reuters — Polish President Lech Kaczynski signed the European Union's reform treaty into law on Saturday, leaving the Czech Republic as the only country still to ratify the document.

The Lisbon Treaty is designed to streamline decision-making and give the 27-nation bloc a long-term president and a stronger foreign policy chief. It can only take effect when all member states have approved it.

"Only (Czech) President Vaclav Klaus' signature is missing. Europe eagerly awaits this to happen, Europe needs no more delays," said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who attended the televised signing ceremony in Poland's presidential palace.

Klaus set out his terms on Friday for signing the treaty, demanding an exemption to protect Prague from post-war property claims and safeguard the sovereignty of the judiciary.

Poland and Britain have won opt-outs on the application of some of the provisions of a Charter of Fundamental Rights which will be given binding force when the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.

Asked if Klaus' objections were a threat to the treaty, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said:

"No, this is not a threat to the treaty. I am sure the treaty will be ratified soon and that it will have all the elements inside to move on soon."

France and Italy welcomed Kaczynski's signature.

"The treaty has now been ratified by 26 member states, so we are very close to our goal. It must take effect by the end of the year for Europe to become stronger and more efficient," a statement from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said.

"This 26th ratification marks a new step that brings us closer still to the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which we hope will be as quick as possible, before the end of the year as committed to by the 27 (members)," said France's foreign and European ministers in a joint statement.

The president of the European Parliament, former Polish prime minister Jerzy Buzek, also told guests at Saturday's ceremony he was confident the treaty would go into force before the end of the year.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer's office welcomed Poland's ratifcation and said he believed his country would ratify the document "in the foreseeable future."

The Czech parliament has approved the document but the president must sign international treaties. Fischer's government, which conducts foreign policy, has yet to take a position on his demands.

Before he signed the document, Kaczynski, a eurosceptic conservative, stressed the EU remained a union of sovereign nations and said it must remain open to new members, including countries in the Balkans and Georgia.

"The EU remains a union of nation states, a strict union, and let it remain so ... Within a union of sovereign states we will achieve increasing successes," Kaczynski said.

"We now have 27 member states. I am deeply convinced this is not the end... The EU, a successful experiment without precedent in human history, cannot be closed to those who wish to join ... not only in the Balkans but also countries like Georgia."

Poland, which joined the EU in 2004, also strongly supports its eastern neighbor Ukraine's long-term bid to join the bloc.

Kaczynski had refused to sign the treaty, which Poland's parliament approved last year, until Irish voters backed it in a referendum. Ireland overwhelmingly approved it on October 2.
 

Polish President Signs Lisbon Treaty Winding Up Ratification By Poland

October 10, 2009

OfficialWire — Polish President Lech Kaczyński signed the Treaty of Lisbon winding up the process of its ratification by Poland. Now the Czech Republic remains the only country that has not ratified the EU reform treaty yet. The treaty was endorsed by the Polish parliament last year. However the presidential signature was needed for its ratification. To get enforced it has to be ratified by all 27 EU member countries.

Czech President Objects to Treaty’s Property Rights

October 9, 2009

New York Times — President Vaclav Klaus revealed his objection to the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty on Friday: a provision on property rights.

Mr. Klaus said he feared that the provision, part of the treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, could be used as a legal basis for a flood of property claims related to the expulsion of three million Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II.

He demanded a special exemption from the Charter for the Czech Republic, a gambit that could plunge the bloc into turmoil by unhinging the treaty’s delicate ratification process at the last minute. But some Czech observers said Mr. Klaus’s move was a face-saving maneuver aimed at clearing the way for him to sign a treaty he has long ridiculed.

Following a recent “yes” vote in Ireland in favor of the treaty, and the signing by the Polish president in a ceremony on Saturday, Mr. Klaus is the last hold-out on the treaty, which would give the union a more powerful foreign policy chief and its first full-time president, among other changes. The treaty must be ratified by all 27 Union member states in order to come into force.

The Czech Parliament has ratified the document but Mr. Klaus has so far refused to sign it. In addition, 17 senators have challenged the document at the country’s constitutional court, which has yet to rule.

Mr. Klaus said he wanted the Czech Republic to have an opt-out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which lays down the basic human rights of all European Union citizens, including property rights.

“I have always considered this treaty a step in the wrong direction,” he said Friday. “It will deepen the problems the E.U. is facing today, it will increase its democratic deficit, worsen the standing of our country and expose it to new risks, among other things also because it endangers the legal status of the citizens and the stability of property rights in our country.”

Prime Minister Jan Fischer said Friday that the government, in its review of the treaty, had not found any risk that it would open the door to property claims. And he insisted that the country could still complete ratification of the treaty by the end of the year, despite Mr. Klaus’s latest demand.

But Union officials said the changes requested by Mr. Klaus would require, at the bare minimum, that a revised treaty noting the exception be ratified again by the Czech Parliament, and probably by all other 26 member nations, too. That would mean a delay unacceptable to most nations.

Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament who met Mr. Klaus on Friday in Prague, said he was optimistic that Mr. Klaus’s demand could be satisfied by other means. Mr. Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, noted, for example, that Poland and Britain had already secured opt-outs from the charter.

Poland wanted assurances that the Union could not impose laws on social issues such as abortion, while Britain did not want provisions such as the right to strike.

Legal experts noted that one solution to avert a unionwide crisis could be for the bloc’s 26 other member states to issue a declaration at a summit meeting later this month in Brussels agreeing to Czech demands. Such a declaration was used to address Irish concerns about the treaty after Ireland rejected it in a referendum in June 2008.

Unlike the Czech Republic, Poland and Britain negotiated their charter opt-outs before the ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty started.

Some Czechs said Mr. Klaus’s attempt to link the Lisbon Treaty to post-war property claims, long an emotional issue here, was a populist maneuver. Others said the famously contrarian Mr. Klaus was seeking to assert his power and grab the spotlight. Formally, the Czech President has a largely ceremonial role; in practice, in the 20 years since Communist rule ended the office has been held only by two dominating figures, Vaclav Havel and his fierce rival, Mr. Klaus.

Mr. Klaus may be using Lisbon “to change a parliamentary system into a semi-presidential system,” Mirek Topolanek, the former Czech prime minister, this week told the Prague Post, an English-language newspaper.

First Order of Business for Post-Lisbon EU: Appoint War Criminal As President

October 4, 2009

The Corbett Report - Major media outlets from the BBC in Britain to RTE in Ireland are now reporting that the Yes side scored a resounding victory in Ireland’s vote Friday on the EU Lisbon Treaty. With the treaty’s ratification, the obstacles preventing the total federalization of the EU superstate are now removed.

As the Daily Mail reported earlier this week, one of the first orders of business for the post-Lisbon EU will be to appoint Tony Blair as the first President of the European Union. This move has been fully expected ever since Tony Blair’s highly suspect conversion to Catholocism two years ago. Of course, the many laudatory pieces (and even the adversarial ones) we are likely to read about Mr. Blair in the coming weeks will signally fail to mention that he has been accused of numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity including:

- Continuing economic sanctions imposed on Iraq from 1990 until its invasion at the hands of his government in 2003 that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.

- Conspiracy to join with another power in a war of aggression (the supreme international war crime).

- High treason in manufacturing a case for war (including the infamous Downing Street Memo).

- Participating in a political and military coalition with the U.S. in Iraq that deployed controvened weapons like white phosphorus.

Of course, the Irish electorate has not only allowed Blair to become the President of the EU. According to the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, which has compiled a list of 13 Facts About the Lisbon Treaty, they have also created a self-amending treaty that will no longer allow national vetoes on key issues like tax harmonization, crime, transport, energy and public health and services. As the head of the National Platform Anthony Coughlan explained in a pre-vote interview on the significance of the treaty:

“It [Lisbon] would establish a kind of European Federation which would in effect have all the powers of a traditional state. And this new EU Federation would then sign treaties with other states in all areas of its powers and would have its own voice at the United Nations and its own foreign minister and its own diplomatic service and so on.”

Now that the EU has “won” by forcing the Irish public to vote on the Lisbon Treaty until they got it “right,” liberty-minded people the world over will have the uncomfortable experience of watching the expansion of this vast new tyrannical superstate headed by unaccountable bureaucrats. Of course, given that the EU has been frustrated in its attempts to undermine national sovereignty again and again and again when the people are actually given a chance to have their say, we can only hope that the entire EU enterprise has been so discredited now that the political opposition to this rising EU Federation will continue to rise.

The coming weeks and months will be the most critical for the creation of this pumped-up regional superpower. One can only hope that the European citizenry will redouble their efforts to stop the inevitable power grabs before it is solidified, because the consequences for the entire world if this Nazi-inspired and Bilderberg-organized regional monstrosity is created are simply too ghastly to contemplate.

Conceived in iniquity and born in sin, the EU is the model dictatorship for the oligarchs and globalists who are seeking to centralize their power in large regional governments. The Irish David defeated the EU Goliath in their Lisbon Treaty referendum last year...but we all know the EU bureaucrats won't take no for an answer. - James Corbett, Lisbon Cometh (podcast episode), August 30, 2009

Ireland Backs EU's Lisbon Treaty

October 3, 2009

BBC - Irish voters have strongly endorsed the European Union's Lisbon Treaty - 16 months after their first vote rejecting it plunged EU reforms into deadlock.

About 67% voted "Yes," official results from the latest referendum showed. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen hailed a "clear and resounding" endorsement. According to final results, 67.1% of Irish voters approved it, while 32.9% voted "No." Turnout in the three-million electorate was 58%.

The treaty - which is aimed at streamlining decision-making in the 27-nation bloc - cannot take effect until all 27 member states ratify it. The parliaments of Poland and the Czech Republic have approved the treaty and Polish President Lech Kaczynski is expected to sign it in the coming days. But the Czech Republic's Eurosceptic President, Vaclav Klaus, said he would not sign the treaty until his country's Constitutional Court had pronounced on its validity.

Ireland was the only EU member state to hold a referendum on Lisbon, though there have been calls for referendums in several countries.

"The Irish people have spoken with a clear and resounding voice," Mr Cowen said in a brief statement to reporters. "It is a good day for Ireland and a good day for Europe.

"The Irish people showed an Ireland embracing her future with Europe," he said.

The Irish anti-Lisbon group Coir said on Saturday: "We are extremely disappointed that the voice of the people was not heard the first time around."

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, called the vote "an important victory for Ireland and for all of Europe." He said it was just a matter of time until the EU "finally can push the button for the better European co-operation that the Lisbon Treaty will give us."

Irish opinion is thought to have swung behind the "Yes" vote this time because of the severity of the economic downturn, as well as the legal "guarantees" on Irish sovereignty that the EU pledged after the first referendum.

The legally binding "guarantees" state that Lisbon will not affect key areas of Irish sovereignty, such as taxation, military neutrality, and family matters such as abortion - significant issues in last year's campaign in Ireland. But they have not yet been attached to the treaty.

The treaty is intended to make EU institutions better suited to the enlarged bloc of 27. But opponents see it as part of a federalist agenda that threatens national sovereignty.

In last year's vote, 46.6% of Irish voted "Yes" and 53.4% "No," and the rejection of the treaty plunged the EU into political gridlock.

All of the republic's major parties campaigned for a "Yes" vote except the nationalist Sinn Fein. The party believes rejecting the treaty would mean a more democratic EU.

Irish Lisbon Treaty Vote: Early Tallies Show Shift to Yes

October 2, 2009

Dow Jones - Early tallies in Ireland's second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty show a major shift towards the Yes vote, returning officers said Saturday.

"I'm delighted for the country and it looks like a convincing win for Ireland, " Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin told state broadcaster RTE Saturday.

Most observers say opposition party Fine Gael's exit poll showing 60% in favor and 40% against looks like an accurate prediction of the final result.

"It was one of the most unequal battles in recent history," Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins said. "The huge funding from big business came blatantly on the Yes side."

Turnout in Ireland's 43 constituencies was estimated at around 50% when polls closed at 2100 GMT Friday, which spelt good news for the Yes vote.

The Lisbon Treaty was rejected in June 2008 by a 53.4% to 46.6% vote with a 53% turnout with 33 out of 43 constituencies voting No.

Ireland is unique among the European Union's 27 member nations in holding a public referendum on the treaty forged in Lisbon to replace the failed EU constitution.

The referendum raises concerns in Brussels that another Irish rejection could throw off the whole EU reform process. The treaty is an amended version of the EU Constitution. EU protocols clarified Irish neutrality and maintained its anti-abortion laws, safeguarded independence on taxation, and the right to keep its own European commissioner.

In 1957, Alice Bailey, then the leader of the House of Theosophy, wrote in her collection of writings, "The Externalisation of the Hierarchy," that the world must first be reorganized into "spheres of influence" before it could be organized into a global government (Page 209). She made it very clear that this reorganization would not follow traditional national boundaries, but would be a completely different organization. Bailey did not specify how many "spheres of influence" would be created, but her plan was fleshed out in 1974 by New World Order authors, Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, in a book entitled, "Mankind At The Turning Point." They wrote that the world would be reorganized into 10 Super Nation States, listed below. - David Bay, Cutting Edge Ministries

(1) North America
(2) Western Europe
(3) Japan
(4) Australia, South Africa, and the rest of the market-economy of the developed world
(5) Eastern Europe, including Russia
(6) Latin America
(7) North Africa and the Middle East
(8) Tropical Africa
(9) South and Southeast Asia (including Afghanistan, Pakistan and India)
(10) China

Cold War Era 10-Region Map (Mexico Not Included in the North American Union)


On September 17, 1973, the Club of Rome released a report called the "Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System," which was prepared as part of the "Strategy for Survival Project." This revealed the Club's goal of dividing the world into 10 political/economic regions... which would unite the entire world under a single form of government. These regions are: North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Rest of Developed World, Latin America, Middle East, Rest of Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and China. - David Rivera, Final Warning: A History of the New World Order

Ireland: Vote “No” to the Lisbon Treaty

October 1, 2009

WSWS - The Socialist Equality Parties of Britain and Germany call for a “No” vote in the Irish referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty on Friday, October 2.

Nothing has changed in the Lisbon Treaty since it was last rejected by Irish voters on June 12, 2008. It remains what it always was—the European Union’s contemptuous manoeuvre in response to the 2005 plebiscites that saw French and Dutch voters reject the proposed European Constitution.

Designed to consolidate a political, trade and military bloc to advance the interests of Europe’s imperialist powers worldwide, the constitution promoted the further privatisation of social services and the break-up of residual labour protection across the continent.

It was thrown out by the working populations of France and the Netherlands, who correctly identified it as hostile to their interests. But its essential aims were reintroduced in the guise of a treaty, on which only Ireland is constitutionally obliged to hold a referendum.

Outside of Ireland, some 490 million people within the EU have had no say on the treaty, which has been ratified behind their backs by parliamentarians and heads of state. Only last week, while national elections were still underway, German President Horst Koehler signed a law ratifying the treaty.

Ireland’s own ruling elite is no better. Lisbon was rejected by 53 percent to 46 percent in 2008, but its supporters in all the major Irish parties, media and business, have determined that they will keep going until they get the result required.

The entire experience testifies to the fundamentally undemocratic character of the treaty and the EU itself, and confirms the need for the working class to oppose it.

EU Offers Concessions

The EU is doing everything to ensure success this time around in the Irish ballot. Having spent almost a decade trying to get the constitution through in some form or another, it is anxious that the treaty is not defeated for a second time, scuttling plans for an EU president, foreign policy head and the re-organisation of voting powers in line with the interests of Europe’s largest economies.

To this end, the European Commission has organised a €1.5 million advertising campaign in support of the treaty, while in December the European Council offered Ireland opt-outs so that it can maintain its existing reactionary laws on abortion, euthanasia and same sex marriage. Ireland’s so-called military “neutrality”—which has not prevented the use of its airspace for CIA rendition flights—was also supposedly guaranteed, with the agreement that the country will not be “forced” to participate in European military adventures.

Most significantly, the country’s right to organise its own national taxation system has been upheld. Ireland’s corporation tax rate is 12.5 percent. This low rate was a crucial factor in the Celtic Tiger investment boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, and in fuelling the property and speculative bubble that followed.

On this basis, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Greens have again called for a “Yes” vote. Out of the country’s 166 MPs, 162 are backing the treaty. So too is the Catholic Church, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and the Irish Farmers Association. Public sector union SIPTU, in a shift from 2008, has also quietly endorsed the “Yes” campaign.

Major corporations such as Intel and Microsoft are calling for a “Yes” vote, with Intel providing €200,000 to the campaign. The boss of budget airline Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, has offered one million free flights for a favourable result.

The “Yes” campaign claims that success is vital for Ireland’s economic recovery. Playing on working people’s fears over their jobs and living standards, their slogan is “Yes for jobs, yes for the economy.”

Such claims are false. Last year, the Irish government was the first in Europe to organise a multi-billion euro rescue of its financial system. Some €400 billion of tax payers’ monies were used to guarantee large bank deposits. The objective was not to protect working people, but to reassure the international financial markets that Ireland was still open for business.

Since then, the government has implemented two emergency budgets, with a third anticipated shortly. While eschewing tax increases on the major corporations and super-rich, billions are being cut from public provision and welfare. New proposals include cutting the health budget by 10 percent, social welfare by €1.5 billion, and education by €700 million, including more than 6,000 redundancies.

Ireland’s Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, while stating he was not “threatening the people,” warned that in the event of a “no” vote, “there will be a substantial loss of goodwill towards Ireland.”

Recovery was dependent upon European backing, he continued. The EU Commission sought to reinforce this message with an announcement that €14.8 million from a European Globalisation Adjustment Fund would be made available to help 2,400 Dell workers facing unemployment to find new jobs, translating to around €6,100 per Dell worker. José Manuel Barroso, president of the EU Commission claimed, “The EU is built on solidarity…our natural response is to come to the aid of those who are experiencing difficulties.”

No such funds will be offered to the 440,000 workers on the dole queues in Ireland, whose numbers have grown by 78 percent over the last year. Irish unemployment is now the second only to Spain in Europe.

“European” backing is not an alternative to a further attack on jobs and living standards. Throughout the continent, every national government is looking to enforce austerity measures. Already in the EU, 7.7 percent of the 221 million workforce is officially unemployed. This will worsen as the European bourgeoisie seeks to offload the burden of its handouts to the banks and international financiers onto working people.
The provisions of the treaty consolidate this class offensive. As the “Ireland for Europe” website noted frankly “…employers and unions realize how important it is to maintain a strong relation with Europe so that Irish bonds do not fall further in their standing in international markets.”

The Dangers of Nationalism in Europe

While voting against the EU as a matter of principle, working people cannot give support to any of the various “No” campaign groups, all of which either defend the status quo on an explicitly nationalist basis and/or claim it is possible to reform the EU.

The “No” campaign comprises open reactionaries, including the well-funded low tax Libertas group and Catholic organisations opposed to abortion rights, together with the nationalist parties led by Sinn Fein and various pseudo-left groups.

Nationalism offers no means of opposing the escalating attacks on working people’s living standards in Ireland and across Europe...

Blair To Be Named EU President 'Within Weeks' If Irish Ratify Lisbon Treaty

October 1, 2009

Daily Mail - Tony Blair is set to become EU President within weeks if Ireland votes 'Yes' in its referendum on the Lisbon Treaty tomorrow.

The former prime minister's candidacy for the new post will be rushed through as quickly as possible, according to government sources.
Mr Blair is among the favourites to become the first President of the European Union, a role that is chosen by the EU's 27 leaders and not by voters. Such an appointment would restore him to the world stage as well as boost his long-term income.

Mr Blair has refused to rule himself in or out of the running, but did say that 'it is good to have fans' for a possible candidacy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has given his full support to a Blair bid. When French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner was asked yesterday if Mr Blair was the only real candidate, he said: 'For the moment, indeed.'

The post of President cannot exist until the Lisbon Treaty is formally ratified by all member states, and officials across Europe would scramble to move forward this weekend if Ireland votes 'Yes' on Friday.

Yesterday Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen ruled out a third referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if the controversial charter is rejected again. As both sides in the debate made their final pleas to voters, Mr Cowen warned a second and final defeat would plunge the EU into uncertainty.

'Well there won't be a Lisbon III, I think that's for sure,' Mr Cowen said.

Leading the charge for the Yes camp with just one full day to go until polling, the Taoiseach claimed the vote was one of the most important political decisions of our time. He said Ireland faced the prospect of a two-tier Europe if the complex charter was thrown out for a second time.

'I think what's clear is that we face into a period of extraordinary uncertainty in Europe, for Europe, and what direction it would then take,' the Taoiseach said. 'We could well see the development of a two-speed Europe.'

Pro and anti-treaty groups staged separate events throughout the day in a last ditch intensive effort to woo voters before the traditional broadcasting ban came into force at midnight.

The latest opinion poll taken last weekend gave the Yes side a commanding lead, with half of all voters suggesting they would back the reform package.

All of Europe will be watching the Irish vote. Sweden, which chairs the bloc this year, wants a president named by the end of this month.

The only real obstacle in Mr Blair's path is if Poland and the Czech Republic delay their own ratification of the Treaty.

The Tories claim that the two countries could take up to six months to do so, creating the possibility that a Cameron government could also block Mr Blair's candidacy.

Senior Conservative sources today said that the Tory leader would 'definitely oppose' Mr Blair's bid for the job. The party is determined not to have the former Labour leader hovering over a Cameron administration and possibly exposing problems with its European policy.

Ireland Set for Second Vote on Lisbon Treaty

September 29, 2009

EUbusiness - Irish voters go to the polls this week in a second referendum on the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, with EU leaders hoping they will reverse a shock No vote and end the bloc's institutional limbo.

Ireland's hard-hit economy has been seen as a major factor that could lead to a different result than in last year's vote.

Polls suggest the Yes campaign is set for victory in Friday's ballot, 15 months after 53.4 percent of Irish voters rejected the controversial reform treaty, which must be ratified by all 27 EU states to come into force.
Ireland, the only EU country constitutionally obliged to put the treaty to a referendum, agreed to hold a new poll after securing guarantees on key policy areas which it said were behind the rejection in June last year.

Specifically, Dublin's EU partners gave assurances on Catholic Ireland's abortion ban, its military neutrality and its tax-setting right, while pledging that every EU state will continue to have an EU commissioner in Brussels.

It is not the first time Ireland held a referendum re-run: in 2001 its voters rejected the EU's Nice Treaty, only to overturn that vote a year later.

This time it appears likely they will perform the same trick again: a poll published by the Sunday Business Post newspaper gave the "yes" campaign 55 percent compared with 27 percent planning to vote "no."

"The 'yes' side maintains a comfortable lead among all voters and among those who say they are most likely to vote," said the newspaper's political editor Pat Leahy. A further 18 percent are still undecided.

Meanwhile the Sunday Independent put the "yes" campaign on 68 percent, with 17 percent ready to vote "no" and 15 percent undecided.

The other major factor which seems to have affected voters is the global economic downturn, and its devastating impact here.

At the time of the first referendum the long booming "Celtic Tiger" economy had already lost some of its roar. But since then Ireland became the first EU country to enter recession, and is one of the worst affected.

This year its GDP is set to shrink a record eight percent, while the jobless toll could exceed 15 percent, three times its June 2008 level.

The Yes camp likes to point out that, without the 120 billion euros (175 billion dollars) injected by the European Central Bank, Irish banks would probably have had to close.

"We need to ratify the Lisbon Treaty because it is good for Ireland, because it is good for Europe, because it is good for workers' rights; but most of all, because it is good for jobs," Prime Minister Brian Cowen said recently.

Declan Ganley, the businessman who spearheaded the successful "no" campaign last year, countered:

"The only job that the Lisbon Treaty will save is Brian Cowen's."

Like last year, Ganley hopes to show that Irish voters can be in favour of the EU, but against the Lisbon Treaty, which he says imposes a "Brussels democracy" with unelected leaders unaccountable to citizens.

But his power has been hobbled since his pan-European Libertas group failed spectacularly in European Parliament elections last year, while the Yes camp again includes all the mainstream political parties except Sinn Fein.

Richard Sinnott, Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University College of Dublin, says the Yes camp has learned the lessons of last year and ramped up its campaign.

One key weapon in the Yes camp's arsenal this year is celebrities, including U2 guitarist The Edge, filmmaker Jim Sheridan and Michael O'Leary, the flamboyant head of budget airline Ryanair.

The No campaign hopes that the unpopularity of Cowen's government will fuel a protest vote on Friday.

But Enda Kenny, head of the main opposition Fine Gael party which is also in the Yes camp, said his message to voters was:

"Hold your anger until you can cast your verdict in a general election which will come in due course.

"But, in this case, we are deciding on the country's future," he said.