Statement of the APK after the Irish No to the Nice Treaty on June 8, 2001.

The Nice Treaty Is Dead - the Ratification Process Must Stop!

The No of the Irish people to the Nice Treaty means that this treaty is dead. The Irish people is the only people of the EU countries who has had the opportunity to vote on it - and they rejected it. They said No to the actual transformation of the EU into a federal state, No to increased power to the big countries at the expense of the small ones, No to loss of sovereignty, and No to the militarisation of the EU and its becoming an imperialist superpower.

According to the EU treaties, EU legislation and international law, this means that the Irish government cannot sign the Nice Treaty. But it also means that the process of ratification in all the other countries has to stop. The No is not an Irish problem, but a problem of the EU. The Irish people has performed its democratic right to say No, and everybody is obliged to respect that.

With tremendous arrogance, the Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, present Chairman of the European Council, and the Chairman of the European Commission Romano Prodi, refused to respect and adhere to the Irish No. On the contrary, they have called for "doing a Denmark" on Ireland. That is to force the Irish people to vote again, to vote on a "Nice 2" that does not change a single word in the "Nice 1" they have already rejected, a "Nice 2" furnished with some protocols and declarations about Ireland - just as it happened when Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. With enormous contempt for the democratic process, and even the laws of the EU itself, the foreign ministers of the EU countries have also concurred in this at their meeting in Luxembourg, and proclaimed that the Nice Treaty will be signed by everybody, as planned, before the end of 2002!

The formula of "democracy" of the EU is "Vote Yes - Or Vote Again!" This is another proof of its anti-popular and anti-democratic nature, that the EU is the Union of the monopolies and not the project of the European peoples.

The Workers' Communist Party of Denmark (APK) appeals to the Danish government and the Danish parliament to adhere to democracy and stop the process of ratification - and it appeals to the strong Danish movement against the EU to take steps to secure that this happens. If not, a referendum on the Nice Treaty must be held in Denmark, too.

We also appeal to all democrats and critics of the EU - outside and inside the EU - to put pressure on their governments and the EU in order to stop the ratification process, respecting the No of the Irish people.

The Irish people are not only speaking on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of all European opponents of the Nice Treaty. A Danish referendum, which until now has been refused, would most likely result in another No.

No to the Europe of the Monopolies!

ARBEJDERPARTIET KOMMUNISTERNE (APK)
Workers' Communist Party of Denmark

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