Ireland's European Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, has been threatened with legal action if he campaigns in favour of a Yes vote in the Amsterdam referendum.
Mr Flynn has denounced the threat, calling it an attempt to deny him his right to free speech. "I will not be muzzled," he said in response to a letter from the lawyers of a leading anti-Amsterdam activist, Mr Owen Bennett, a member of the National Platform group.
The letter, from Donal Reilly and Collins, solicitors, of Manor Street, Dublin, reminds Mr Flynn that legal action has already been threatened by Mr Bennett, their client, against the Commission to block any partisan campaigning by it.
It notes press reports of a speech by Mr Flynn in March in which he urged support for the Treaty and asserts that the speech was in breach of assurances given by the Secretary General of the Commission, Mr Carlo Trojan, that it had "no intention of interfering in the referendum campaign".
A furious Mr Flynn has responded personally in a letter saying that he does not regard the McKenna judgment or Mr Trojan's pledge as precluding him from "exercising my right to freedom of expression".
He acknowledges the need for a balanced debate in Ireland but says: "I do not think that the interests of balanced presentation are well served by attempts to muzzle others from expressing their views."
Mr Flynn told The Irish Times yesterday that he had every intention of continuing to express his views and would be contributing to a series of arguments in favour of the Treaty in this paper. "I should not be denied the right to tell citizens of my own country, as someone very closely involved with the negotiations, of the substantial advance it represents in social policy and other areas," he said.
Of Mr Flynn's March speech in Mayo, the letter to him says Mr Bennett "believes that they may be a violation of European law and the Irish Constitution". The comments were "in clear breach of the assurance which Secretary General Trojan gave Ms McKenna about not interfering in the Irish referendum process, and . . . inherently inappropriate for a European Commissioner".
"Our client is amazed therefore, that you as a member of the European Commission should speak in a campaigning capacity in the State on the Amsterdam Treaty after the referendum Bill has been put before Parliament here. Our client fears that your remarks in Westport are only the first in a series of illegal interventions which you and other European Commissioners are planning with the aim of influencing voters in the referendum."
