Plan D comes from Ireland

I believe the EU will work better with the Lisbon treaty. It helps to make the institutions, voting and power sharing more transparent and manageable. Ratifying the Lisbon treaty also finishes the institutional navel gazing and creates room for doing real stuff. From my perspective, the EU needs even simpler, transparent and democratic rules which would probably move it further towards a federal structure. This would be fine with me. Having said that, I agree that a second Irish referendum is not the most democratic way out of the problem. I have argued straight after the first Irish referendum that one should ditch the Lisbon treaty and gradually reform the EU step-by-step, as it has happened so far.

Of course, ideally we should have a more efficient and democratic European Union. But from my perspective this can only be achieved through more federalism.

From what I understand Libertas will be a pan-European party which stands for more democracy in Europe. There is nothing to argue about. I could undersign this.
But the single focus of Libertas on fighting the Lisbon treaty weakens it, I think. If you stand for more democracy, why not propose to have a pan-European referendum about the Lisbon treaty on the same day with the referendum passing with 50% of the European electorate. This would then also be consistent with the direct election of the EU President as proposed by Libertas. I am all for this. Together with the EP elections in June this would be the best communications campaign for Europe, a real political discussion about Europe’s future. This would be a real Plan D, not a buraucratic Plan D of funding information campaigns.

In this way, the creation of Libertas as a pan-European party with a united election platform is a good thing and puts the mainstream parties under pressure to think and campaign more European. If that happens we will have a real European Parliament election campaign in 2009, with real debate and political competition. If Libertas can act as the catalyst for this, Libertas will be thanked by pro-Europeans all over Europe.