When a member of the European Parliament, “Red” Daniel Cohn-Bendit, said in a plenary session that there was a possible financial link between the Irish “No to Lisbon Treaty” campaign and the Pentagon and CIA, it was easy to dismiss the accusation as a storm in a tea-cup from one of Parliament’s more eccentric members. However, while at dinner in Brussels last night, I was told that an official European Parliamentary delegation will raise the matter with US Congressmen next month during a visit to Miami.

EUOBSERVER has confirmed the report today, although the chairman of the European delegation, Jonathan Evans MEP, said that the matter would be raised informally rather than formally. As a sensible man, Evans has said he will not elevate these ‘concerns’ to the same level “as the main agenda items.”

Evans is right to take a cautious approach, although a dismissive one would perhaps be better. US Congressmen should treat these accusations with the contempt that they deserve and send a message to the European parliament in the strongest terms that unwarranted and baseless accusations against the United States will not be tolerated.

The European Constitution was rejected by France and Holland in 2005, before its official abandonment and rebirth as the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland, being the only country brave enough to hold a referendum, voted against Lisbon in a free and fair referendum. Britain is just one of several other EU countries who refused to hold referenda, knowing that they would surely be lost. The only conspiracy here is on the part of EU elites, desperate to railroad through a discredited treaty.

By the EU’s own rules of success, the Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty have failed. A rejection by one – and especially by three! – should have represented a rejection by all. The EU’s illegitimate and immoral attempts to press on with the Lisbon Treaty regardless of their own rules (and Ireland’s constitutional arrangements) is shameful.