The Irish have Europe's future in their hands

[vedrand]

Don't have too much time now so I will reply only to a small part of your post, namely the following.

Originally Posted by Skybird

And finally, the way europe gets designed and taken over by the eurocrats simply is asomething that I regard as negative, destroying democarcy and freedom, and establishing a tyranny of lobbies and bureucraty who have not democratic legitimation at all, neither directly, nor indirectly.

I would say no one is taking over anything here. It took a long time to find a compromise for this treaty that everybody could agree on. If you are of the opinion that your government is destroying your own democracy, then the EU is not place to blame. Do you think that parliaments of:

Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Denmark
Finnland
France
Germany
Hungary
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
and the UK

the countries that have ratified the treaty so far, do not work in the interest of their own people? Do you think that all the people sitting in those parliaments are bought up by lobbys and 'eurocrats'?. I do not think so and moreover I trust these people (from all of the countries above) to be in a better position to known about the effects of the treaty then the average voter in Ireland or indeed any in any other country. Needless to say that all of us need to resprect the Irish law and accept the outcome of the vote.

I deeply believe in common values of the citizens of Europe. Despite all of our differencies that caused so much trouble in the last century and before. Please tell me one thing that is the interest of an average let say German and not in the interest of an average lets say Austrian (or could be any other country).

The broad parliamentary support, EU wide, is for me reason enough to believe in the treaty.

There are certainly problems in todays world that all of us need to cope with, but we are doing no better if everyone retreats behind the own borders and tries to solve them there.