Imposed on the Irish people with total disregard for democracy and popular wish as expressed in the June 13, 2008 referendum, this second referendum will be marked by unacceptable pressures on the Irish people. The victory of YES cannot be dissociated from the outrageous proportion of the means used in the YES campaign, the inadmissible use of means of the Irish State and of the European Union and the unacceptable manoeuvres of interference and blackmail against the Irish people headed by the main promoters of the Lisbon Treaty and even by the European Commission.
This referendum and its result do not legitimate the treaty or the policies it embodies. Because its content is contrary to the interests of the workers and peoples of European Union countries, the values of democracy, of peace and cooperation and highly damaging to national interests and sovereignty. Because, the political fact that emerges from this referendum and from the process of the so-called “ratification” of the Lisbon Treaty, is that those who proclaim themselves as champions of democracy and democratic participation in the European Union, are the same who do not hesitate in trampling democracy and popular wish to impose a result they did not accomplish in the first Irish referendum or in the referenda in France and Holland on the so-called European constitution.
The PCP salutes and expresses its solidarity to all those who in Ireland – namely the communist and progressive Parties – fought tirelessly, and in the hardest conditions, to defeat a treaty that embodies the basis of a super-state and its mechanisms of imperialist intervention in close cooperation with NATO and aims to institutionalize neoliberalism and anti-social policies as the economic and political doctrine of the European Union.
The PCP expresses its unwavering determination to continue and intensify the struggle for another Europe of the workers and peoples and against the now renewed threats against social and labour rights, against sovereignty, peace and cooperation facing the workers and peoples of Europe. A struggle which, next October 11, will also entail the reinforcement of CDU and PCP, the only Portuguese political force that clearly and fully assumes the combat against neoliberalism, federalism and militarism in the European Union.
