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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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I don't know much about European politics, but...
It appears that the complexity of the Lisbon treaty — the treaty that replaces the failed European constitution and reorganizes the EU’s governing body — is one reason that it was rejected by Irish voters yesterday. The Economist reports that “[d]uring voting on Thursday, both supporters and opponents complained that they did not understand the highly technical text—many chose to ‘play safe’ and say no.” The Times echoes this sentiment by quoting a political scientist as saying that the voters in Ireland “didn’t understand the treaty — why it was needed, what it was going to change.”
All of which would be understandable if it weren’t for the fct that it seems that European politicians deliberately obfuscated the treaty. The Economist, in the same article that was linked above, also reports that “[i]t was no accident that Lisbon was a hard text to read: EU leaders were to be heard crowing last year that they had made it “unintelligible” in order to smuggle it past voters.”
So, I guess European politicians have reaped what they sowed with the rejection yesterday by the voters in Ireland of the Lisbon treaty.
Posted by on 14 June 2008 at 11:04 AM
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