On Friday our neighbours across the border are set to vote Yes to the Lisbon Treaty.

They are now the only substantial obstacle blocking its path. But, you say, did they not throw the Treaty out when they voted upon it last year?

That they appear now to be about to change their minds is due partly to the assault by the Brussels steamroller, which has more or less flattened the opposition No lobby during the last few weeks' campaigning, and partly to the bid by Brian Cowen's ailing and unpopular government, abetted by the media, to frighten the electorate into voting Yes.

The ridiculous official argument has been that the Irish would face effective ejection from the European Union were they to dare to vote No again. Nonsense, of course — apart altogether from the small difficulty that there is no procedure in the existing treaties for expelling a member anyway.

Meantime, benefits and services are being cut back in the Republic. Unemployment is forecast to reach 15% next year. People are nervous. They are being told this is no time to antagonise the holders of the big moneybags in Brussels.

But sceptics have questioned the working of an EU machine which allows an American computer giant like Dell to shut its Limerick factory, throwing more than 2,000 workers on the dole, and moving, lock, stock and barrel, in the wake of massive grants, to a lower-wage corner of the EU in Poland.

Alarmed by the fall-out, Commission President Barroso flew to Limerick the week-end before last to announce resettlement grants of £13m for the displaced workers. The cash was actually allocated to the |Republic three years ago. Barroso wheeled it out now in advance of Friday's vote.

Two years ago, the Stormont Assembly called for a UK referendum on the Treaty. Only the SDLP and Alliance favour Lisbon; for the treaty does nothing to strengthen democracy in the EU: in fact, it will further weaken it. Very few of its champions have read the Treaty itself because it is drafted in impenetrable jargon, its text littered with amendments to (unquoted) clauses in its two predecessors (Rome in 1957 and Maastricht in 1993).

This renders it incomprehensible unless the reader has all three vast documents at his/her elbow.

The obscurantism is deliberate — so that “Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not put to the people directly ... all the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised ...”

The words are those of the French ex-President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, whose committee drafted the original EU Constitution (rejected in referendums in both France and Holland) which has now been repackaged as the Lisbon Treaty. Charlie McCreevy, the Republic's EU Commissioner, admits honestly that most of the member states would vote No to it if given an opportunity.

Its key provisions include 60 areas where both the UK and the Republic will lose the veto. They include matters of transport, energy, tourism and space research, and others so vaguely defined as — culture, commercial policy, administrative co-operation — that they could cover vast areas.

The competence of European judges in British and Irish law will be expanded. Critically, Lisbon will introduce a new population-based voting system which will greatly increase the muscle of the big fish and cut that of the small fry.

The German vote will go up to 17% and the British, French and Italian to 12%. But the Republic's will fall from the present 2% to less than 1%. Most insidiously, the Treaty provides a blank cheque for further integration on a broad front which it will be impossible for any single member to stop, and there is no requirement that their peoples be asked. Any 15 member states will be able to outvote the rest of the 27 on virtually anything, provided they command 65% of the EU population. The significance of Lisbon is that it sets the EU bureaucracy on a collision course with its populace, most of whom abide by the sound principle that they do not like being governed by those whom they do not elect.

As it expands its remit, the European Union's democratic deficit looms as an increasing threat. Its legislative proposals are formulated by an unelected Commission — in secret; then deliberated over by the Council of Ministers — in secret. Its bureaucracy, and even its Parliament, have been shown to be shamelessly corrupt.

Whistleblowers within who have exposed that corruption have been fired. As things stand, an Executive of any organisation that dare not consult its people on controversial policies is adrift in perilous seas.

At present, the opponents of Lisbon, by and large, are good Europeans. They value the union. They acknowledge its achievements. But they do not want to be ruled by it. The danger of Lisbon is that this disputed Treaty, in its working, will transform them into rebels who want out.