Dodgy bits of the Lisbon treaty: energy policy

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This is in response to a comment on another blog. The Lisbon treaty isn't dodgy on energy policy per se, what's a bit dodgy is that this is not the first time someone is claiming that Lisbon is important for energy policy when, as far as I can tell, it changes nothing.

So here, side-by-side are everything the EU treaties say about energy, before and after Lisbon. Before is taken from a consolidated copy of the treaties after Nice published by europa.eu and after is taken from a consolidated copy of the treaties after Lisbon published by the Institute of European Affairs (why I have to do the crappy work of putting this together is yet another reason to dislike the entire treaty process).

.

Before	After
Article 3 1. For the purposes set out in Article 2, the activities of the Community shall include, as provided in this Treaty and in accordance with the timetable set out therein: (a) the prohibition, as between Member States, of customs duties and quantitative restrictions on the import and export of goods, and of all other measures having equivalent effect; ... (u) measures in the spheres of energy, civil protection and tourism.	2. Shared competence between the Union and the Member States applies in the following principal areas: (a) internal market; ... (i) energy;
No text	Article 122 1. Without prejudice to any other procedures provided for in the Treaties, the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, may decide, in a spirit of solidarity between Member States, upon the measures appropriate to the economic situation, in particular if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products, notably in the area of energy.
Article 154 1. To help achieve the objectives referred to in Articles 14 and 158 and to enable citizens of the Union, economic operators and regional and local communities to derive full benefit from the setting-up of an area without internal frontiers, the Community shall contribute to the establishment and development of trans-European networks in the areas of transport, telecommunications and energy infrastructures. 2. Within the framework of a system of open and competitive markets, action by the Community shall aim at promoting the interconnection and interoperability of national networks as well as access to such networks. It shall take account in particular of the need to link island, landlocked and peripheral regions with the central regions of the Community.	Article 170 1. To help achieve the objectives referred to in Articles 28 and 174 and to enable citizens of the Union, economic operators and regional and local communities to derive full benefit from the setting-up of an area without internal frontiers, the Union shall contribute to the establishment and development of trans-European networks in the areas of transport, telecommunications and energy infrastructures. 2. Within the framework of a system of open and competitive markets, action by the Union shall aim at promoting the interconnection and interoperability of national networks as well as access to such networks. It shall take account in particular of the need to link island, landlocked and peripheral regions with the central regions of the Union.
No text	TITLE XXI ENERGY Article 194 1. In the context of the establishment and functioning of the internal market and with regard for the need to preserve and improve the environment, Union policy on energy shall aim, in a spirit of solidarity between Member States, to: (a) ensure the functioning of the energy market; (b) ensure security of energy supply in the Union; and (c) promote energy efficiency and energy saving and the development of new and renewable forms of energy; and (d) promote the interconnection of energy networks. 2. Without prejudice to the application of other provisions of the Treaties, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall establish the measures necessary to achieve the objectives in paragraph 1. Such measures shall be adopted after consultation of the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Such measures shall not affect a Member State’s right to determine the conditions for exploiting its energy resources, its choice between different energy sources and the general structure of its energy supply, without prejudice to Article 192(2)(c). 3. By way of derogation from paragraph 2, the Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, shall unanimously and after consulting the European Parliament, establish the measures referred to therein when they are primarily of a fiscal nature.

The treaty adds new text - the first piece of new text is so vague as to be meaningless. The second piece of new text sets out the goals for the energy, which had not been set out before. As far as I can tell there are 0 new powers or abilities added in the field of energy. Despite not having the goals set out before the EU managed to agree a policy last year exactly along these lines, to combat climate change and provide energy security (see my letter for details and link). How did they manage to do that before ratifying Lison? I can only assume it's because we don't need Lisbon for the EU to do this.

Global Research Network. Hmmm...

I sometimes read the postings of Stephen Lendman and find them to be interesting and sane. I poked around his blog where he mentions the Global Research Network (feed).

So far I have only listened to 1 show (hour 1, hour 2) of GRN and I have mixed feelings.

If you were to judge it only by the commercials you would run a mile. They're all for about fear, impending doom and financial freedom. They reminds me of the contents of my spam folder except they're audio and actually paid for. I guess they pay the bills.

The radio show itself is not terribly slick either, Michel Chussodovsky, the host of the shows I've listened to, seems to be taken by surprise by the commercials and has to cut the guest off in mid flow, he is also a little abrupt with his guests, cutting across them to get his own feelings in. It's not in such a bad way, I suppose, he's usually in agreement with the guest but it's in contrast with other shows like Democracy Now or Electric Politics where the hosts tend to be a bit more focused on letting the guest say what he wants to say and muting their own views (which tend to be mostly expressed through their questions I guess). It's not a major thing but I notice it for some reason.

Finally, the content is interesting, if a little further towards the Gnomes of Zurish style conspiracy stuff than I'd like. The first hour is about F. William Engdahl's new book Seeds of Destruction. It was interesting stuff about genetic manipulation, terminator seeds (seeds which grow into plants whose seeds are sterile, so the farmer must buy new seeds every season instead of just using a small amount of the harvested seeds from last year - also here), patents on genes, the switch to only offering terminator seeds for food-aid. It also strayed towards tinfoil-hat territory a little. Nothing outright insane but much as I dislike Bill Gates, I don't think his foundation is aimed at repression of the poor - but what do I know?

I think I have to listen to a few more before coming to a conclusion. Also it's somehow Canadian, although they have yet to mention Mr Chip Hatflaps :)

k-12 mathematics is horrible

So says Paul Lockhart in Lockhart's Lament, a paper on how the US maths curriculum for kids kills creativity and enjoyment of maths. A lot of good points in there. I have no experience the US system so I don't really know if it's the same as the Irish or quite different. It's a good read anyway.

Listing the rational numbers

Here's a nice series of posts about how to list every rational number in its lowest terms, with no repeats (ie. only include 2/5 not 4/10). The key is to make a tree with 1/1 as the root and for each node i/j, put i+j/j as the left child and i/i+j as the right child. It's all laid out very clearly in the series of post which is based on a terse maths paper.

In the comments I found a link to another paper which comes at this using matrices and relates this tree with another previously known tree that also lists the rationals. It's a fairly readable paper too but a bit more technical.

My Lai massacre

Interesting article on the My Lai massacre. The court martial found that the task force commander had wrongly made no clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants and this kept the blame from rising too far up the chain of command. The article's author obtained a copy of the top-level directive which governed this type of action. It basically said that if an area was temporarily controlled by the Viet Cong then you should be careful not to kill civilians so as to avoid embittering the population. In areas sympathetic to the Viet Cong - "accepted VC bases" - there are no civilians so they could "kill anything that moved".

Spitzer, The Fed, Banks and Bush

Greg Palast is always good fun. In this article he talks about the sub-prime crisis and the massive bailout given to the banks (but not the home-buyers) hit by it. Makes me really glad I don't live over there but it's not like anyone's immune to the goings on.

I wonder did all of the ratings agencies rate the sub-prime junk as AAA or just a select few. Are they now out of business? Do their customers have a right to sue for negligence. It's not that AAA rated stocks must never go boom but an unafforable loan to someone who can't pay it back is exactly the opposite of AAA.

Letter to the editor: Lisbon treaty and energy security

The interesting thing here is that what Sharon Keating said appears to completely untrue. I assume that anyone writing a pro-Lisbon letter actually has a reasonable grasp of what the treaty contains. There are reasons to vote No that are independent of the content of the treaty - it's unreadability, the process by which it came about, the undemocratic nature of its ratification in many countries - but the same is not true for voting Yes. So if Sharon has read and understood the treaty, getting its content on energy completely wrong is presumably deliberate.

There is another possible explanation for getting the energy details wrong. If you only read the Lisbon treaty, it appears to be inserting several new paragraphs on energy. If you look at the Nice treaty then you can see that they were mostly there already. The actual change is much smaller than you'd think from the "delete this, insert this" in Lisbon. So maybe Ms. Keating just made an honest mistake but then you have to wonder if she actually knows what she is saying "Yes" to!

She also massively distorts what I said in my letter so I'm not inclined towards the innocent explanation.

Sharon Keating claims that the Lisbon treaty gives the EU new legal powers to address energy security. Wading through the treaties myself I find that this is just not true.

The EU has had competence in the area of energy since at least 1992 and Lisbon doesn't change that at all. The Maastricht treaty promoted the building of trans-European energy networks, including reference to the special needs of islands on the periphery of Europe.

Lisbon clarifies the EU's energy policy goals but all these and more are already included in the European Energy Policy, agreed at the European Council meeting in March 2007 (available at http://ec.europa.eu/energy/energy_policy/index_en.htm).

The only new item is that the European Council "'may decide, in a spirit of solidarity between Member States, upon the measures appropriate to the economic situation, in particular if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products, notably in the
area of energy".

This is so vague that it's impossible to know how and when this would translate into concrete action and seems completely irrelevant to the original question of how Lisbon will attract inward investment.

This treaty does nothing for energy security that the EU is not already doing. It provides no "new legal powers".

Finally, I never said that we should vote "No" and "casually sit back". All along, I have simply been asking the advocates of Lisbon to provide any evidence at all for their claim that Ireland will lose foreign investment if we vote "No". I'm still waiting,

The following sources were used to construct this letter, the Maastricht treaty, the Nice treaty (I also found a copy of this that had been nicely marked up to show what the Nice treaty actually changed but I closed the page so I don't have the link to hand, I think it was from EU Observer), the Europa energy policy page which has a link to the agreement containing the European Energy Policy which I found about from this report on European energy policy

It really is a lot of work to correctly argue against the twaddle that the Yes people come out with. It's far too easy to get wild claims published and careful refutations are difficult to make short and interesting.

Renaissance Hedge Fund and Black Swan talk

Interesting article about the Renaissance hedge fund and it's founder, Jim Simons. There was a reference to him in a Long Now talk (MP3, summary. by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who wrote The Black Swan. I haven't read the book but the talk is well worth a listen, the guy is quite funny and he takes quite a few shots at economists. He says his next book take shots at many more classes of academic!

(Slightly wacky) Film about Lisbon Treaty

I watched End of Nations- EU Takeover & the Lisbon Treaty. This 82 minute report on the Lisbon treaty is quite interesting and has valuable information in it. It's illustration of the new voting rules leave France and Germany with enormous power in comparison to other nations is quite good. Also the comments by Anthony Coughlan are very interesting. Kathy Sinnott also some good stuff including a few anecdotes on what democracy means to some some eurocrats.

Unfortunately the whole thing is not helped by the fact that the makers have quite a bit of time for the more extreme conspiracy side of things - including an advert at the end for Alex Jones' latest "documentary" - the same Alex Jones who believes that 9/11 was a conspiracy involving tens of thousands of people who for some reason are all keeping quiet about it.

It's a pity they wouldn't release a "respectable" version of it, just containing the good stuff.

Letter to the editor: Confused about Lisbon Treaty

Looks like I forgot to post this letter on the blog. It was published a few days after I sent it. There was a reply and I followed up. Feels like I end up writing a letter every night when I get home from work!

I need some help on the Lisbon Treaty. Apparently we have to vote Yes or foreign businesses will stop investing in our country. They wouldn't do that if there weren't good business reasons.

So could someone please tell me what exactly in the Lisbon Treaty will make Ireland more attractive to foreign investment but will not make other EU countries equally more attractive?

If your answer involves phrases like "Ireland at the heart of Europe" please keep it to yourself, I've read enough of that already, 

Letter to the editor: Lisbon treaty and competitiveness

Sir,

Paul Nolan thinks I missed the point with my question on the Lisbon treaty  (letters April 2nd). I did not. I asked a very focused question in an attempt to get a waffle-free answer and it worked. Thank you.

Mr Nolan tells us that Ireland's competitiveness versus other European countries will not be changed by the Lisbon treaty. We will still be the highly-educated, English-speaking, low-tax, gateway to Europe even if we vote "No".

With that question resolved, I would like to ask the other half of the question. What exactly in the Lisbon treaty will make Ireland and Europe more attractive for foreign investment versus the rest of the world.

Mr Nolan raises this issue himself and says, "the Lisbon Treaty includes a number of specific provisions" to make Europe "a better place to invest and do business". However he does not say what they are.

It is exactly this kind of answer, a serious sounding statement but no details, from the "Yes" campaign that has driven me to ask such narrowly focused questions.

As before, waffle-free answers please. Being "at the heart of Europe" might give politicians a warm fuzzy feeling but I suspect it doesn't do much for the shareholders of large companies,

Update: there was a pretty poor reply to this to which I have responded.

Dodgy bits of the Lisbon treaty: more intellectual property

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It has been pointed out to me that Europe already has a say on IP issues and that this is not new. This is true, I followed and contributed a little effort to the software patent battle (that page contains the marvellous example of what European democracy can involve - 'When Brinkhorst spoke at the Council's "public session", the microphones were switched off. Thus we do not know what he said.'). I also recently asked some questions recently about Charlie McCreevy's new scheme to extend the duration of copyright for session musicians. Apparently this scheme will give them more money while not costing anybody anything - a modern day economic miracle of the loaves and fishes. One of my questions, yet to receive a reply, is about the "empirical studies" which back up this economic miracle.

So yes, Europe already has a hand in IP but that does not mean I have to be happy for that to be formalised and set in stone, particularly in the current form where there is no rationale, principles, social bargain or even a mention of the limited duration of an IP monopoly and certainly nothing about fair use.

Interestingly this seems to apply to the entire commercial section. I'll write about that too if I get a chance.

Funnily enough, I don't know whether your IP rights beat my rights to freedom of expression under the new human rights stuff. I presume this has been worked out before in a court somewhere but it doesn't seem to be included in the documents.

Letter to the editor: Facts on global warming

A long letter, maybe too long to print. I tried to write it for easy chopping

Sir,

I'd like to thank Dick Keane for rising to the challenge and
presenting tangible claims in contrast to the rhetoric of other
climate change sceptics.

He is correct that CO2 is a very small part of the Earth's atmosphere.
He is also correct that there is far more water vapour in the
atmosphere (although NASA's Earth fact sheet puts it at 25 times
greater than CO2 in contrast to Mr Keane's 100). Neither of these two
facts justify his claim that CO2 is therefore "almost completely
irrelevant as a greenhouse gas".

Different gases have different properties, including different greenhouse
properties. Despite its relative rarity, CO2 is still a major greenhouse gas.
Water vapour is indeed the greatest greenhouse contributor and probably
contributes 2 to 4 times more than CO2 but CO2 is far from "irrelevant".

The other important point is that the amount of water vapour in the
atmosphere is relatively unaffected by human activity. If we add extra
water to the atmosphere it soon condenses and falls as rain. CO2 in
contrast stays in the atmosphere until it is extracted by photosynthesis
or absorbed into the ocean.

Finally, Mr Keane says that it is "warmer oceans", not human activities
over the last 150 years that have caused the observed increase in CO2.
There are two problems with this.

It is indeed harder for CO2 to dissolve in warmer sea-water, however
over the industrial period, the oceans have been a net
absorber of CO2. This could only happen if the level of CO2 in the
atmosphere from other sources was enough to overcome the effect of the
warmth and force the oceans to absorb even more.

Secondly, all the oil, coal and gas we've burnt neatly accounts for the
increase in CO2 that we've seen. To suggest that something else caused
the increase begs the question, "what happened to all that we released?".

Nature spent hundreds of millions of years extracting a vast amount of
carbon from the atmosphere and burying it as fossil fuel. The idea
that we can release it all back into the atmosphere over a couple of
centuries with no side-effects is extraordinary. As such it requires
extraordinary evidence to back it up. This evidence has not been
presented.

The sources of my data are The Royal Society's report on ocean
acidification, NASA and www.realclimate.org,

I got the information on total human CO2 emissions from realclimate.org and I also used thier comparison of the relative strengths of greenhouse gases

Dodgy bits of the Lisbon treaty: self-amending

All posts on Lisbon

One of the big complaints of the "No" crowd is that the Article 48 of Lisbon treaty (again politics.ie is still down so linking to Libertas's copy of this article) makes the EU treaties self-amending. The result being that this is the last referendum we'll ever need, from now on the EU can change itself without consulting us.

This appears to be wrong although I still think there is an element of dodginess. Here's what we're getting.

Article 48

An Article 48 shall be inserted to replace Article 48 of the TEU:
"Article 33


1. The Treaties may be amended in accordance with an ordinary revision procedure. They may also be amended in accordance with simplified revision procedures.

Ordinary revision procedure

2. The government of any Member State, the European Parliament or the Commission may submit to the Council proposals for the amendment of the Treaties. These proposals may, inter alia, serve either to increase or to reduce the competences conferred on the Union in the Treaties. These proposals shall be submitted to the European Council by the Council and the national Parliaments shall be notified.

3. If the European Council, after consulting the European Parliament and the Commission, adopts by a simple majority a decision in favour of examining the proposed amendments, the President of the European Council shall convene a Convention composed of representatives of the national Parliaments, of the Heads of State or Government of the Member States, of the European Parliament and of the Commission. The European Central Bank shall also be consulted in the case of institutional changes in the monetary area. The Convention shall examine the proposals for amendments and shall adopt by consensus a recommendation to a conference of representatives of the governments of the Member States as provided for in paragraph 4

The European Council may decide by a simple majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, not to convene a Convention should this not be justified by the extent of the proposed amendments. In the latter case, the European Council shall define the terms of reference for a conference of representatives of the governments of the Member States.

4. A conference of representatives of the governments of the Member States shall be convened by the President of the Council for the purpose of determining by common accord the amendments to be made to the Treaties.

The amendments shall enter into force after being ratified by all the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.

5. If, two years after the signature of a treaty amending the Treaties, four fifths of the Member States have ratified it and one or more Member States have encountered difficulties in proceeding with ratification, the matter shall be referred to the European Council.

Simplified revision procedures

6. The Government of any Member State, the European Parliament or the Commission may submit to the European Council proposals for revising all or part of the provisions of Part Three of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union relating to the internal policies and action of the Union.

The European Council may adopt a decision amending all or part of the provisions of Part Three of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The European Council shall act by unanimity after consulting the European Parliament and the Commission, and the European Central Bank in the case of institutional changes in the monetary area. That decision shall not enter into force until it is approved by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.

The decision referred to in the second subparagraph shall not increase the competences conferred on the Union in the Treaties.

7. Where the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union or Title V of this Treaty provides for the Council to act by unanimity in a given area or case, the European Council may adopt a decision authorising the Council to act by a qualified majority in that area or in that case. This subparagraph shall not apply to decisions with military implications or those in the area of defence.

Where the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides for legislative acts to be adopted by the Council in accordance with a special legislative procedure, the European Council may adopt a decision allowing for the adoption of such acts in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure.

Any initiative taken by the European Council on the basis of the first or the second subparagraph shall be notified to the national Parliaments. If a national Parliament makes known its opposition within six months of the date of such notification, the decision referred to in the first or the second subparagraph shall not be adopted. In the absence of opposition, the European Council may adopt the decision.

For the adoption of the decisions referred to in the first and second subparagraphs, the European Council shall act by unanimity after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, which shall be given by a majority of its component members.".

First of all, anyone who writes 'An Article 48 shall be inserted to replace Article 48 of the TEU: "Article 33 ...' needs help and this is the type of thing that makes me really object to this whole thing on grounds of comprehensibility but that's for another post.

The key to this seems to be that both revision procedures (ordinary and simplified) state that any revisions must be approved "by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements". So it seems pretty clear that nothing can change that would go against our constitution without a referendum. The "No"s appear to be legally wrong here but there is dodginess here indeed.

In the past, all amendments to the EU treaties have been put as referenda due to the "Crotty Judgement" which I gather said that we can't transfer sovereignty in any area to the EU without a referendum. The implication being that all the treaties involved some transfer of sovereignty. Of course not everything in the all the treaties involved that but they come as a package so we got a referendum even on the parts we could have passed in the Dáil. We could have chopped out certain parts of them and avoided the referenda. In fact they chopped out some parts of the Constitution to make Lisbon and thus avoided a referendum in France and Holland. [Updated: This is not actually the case, there was no need for a referendum in France first time around but they had one anyway, the changes between the EU Constitution and Lisbon were arguably trivial - the government just decided not to have a referendum the second time around - fuck you democracy!

It's likely we would have a referendum on all future EU treaties too - they are such a pain to get organised that the EU stuffs as much as possible into them. The result is that they will probably always contain something somewhere that requires a referendum. There's also the fact that people are just used to it and as I said in the previous post, if we passed an EU treaty without a referendum, people would be somewhat miffed.

Article 48 solves that "problem". From now on, the EU can quietly and quickly amend the treaties in lots of ways without the need for a treaty and therefore without triggering a referendum in Ireland. Only certain kinds of changes will require a referendum and those changes will no longer be bundled along with all of the others. From my vague understanding of Crotty, it would only be changes which add new areas of competence to the EU that would require a referendum. Changes in policy would not.

Article 48 would not allow the EU to start regulating religion or abortion for example (TBH I'm guessing but these seems like two areas we're fairly sure on) because it doesn't currently have powers in those area. It does however have power to regulate the environment and so Article 48 would allow the EU to switch from liking the environment to hating the environment (to pick an exaggerated example) with no referendum in Ireland - of course they would still need to get it past the national parliaments (unanimously or in qualified majority, depending on the area) but that's not as strong a situation as we have now.

So Article 48 is not the what the "No"s claim it is, however it seems like it really does change what say The People will have on the contents of future EU treaties compared to the say we have had in the past. Since I haven't heard anyone discussing the points I make here, just lots of "yes it is", "no it isn't", I consider it dodgy on 2 grounds

1. The "Yes"s are dismissing this as not changing the status quo - yet another black mark against the "Yes"s and by association against the treaty.
2. The real implications of this are not being debated at all, only the caricatures, it could actually be pretty undesirable - I'm not sure - which is good enough reason for me to say "No".

Dodgy bits of the Lisbon treaty: majority voting

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For this point I am inferring things from the FAQ's on the Dept of Foreign Affairs' pro-treaty explanatory website (pro-treaty might be arguable but they certainly have a shiny-happy take on all of it). I simply could not be arsed trying to dig this stuff out of the text of Lisbon and the post-Lisbon version (I've had trouble finding a definitive pre-Lisbon version of the treaties being amended, the ones I can find are unclear whether they're before or after Nice).

We are moving from unanimous to majority voting in various areas, this is supposedly to allow work to get done. I don't think there's anything dodgy about this, you either agree with it or you don't.

What seems dodgy is what happens once the treaty is ratified. The areas which only require majority voting can change. I deduce from

13. What role does the Reform Treaty give to National Parliaments?

The Treaty gives a new role within the EU to national parliaments. All proposals for EU legislation will be forwarded to national parliaments for their consideration. National parliaments will have a period of 8 weeks in which to vet proposals and offer opinions on them. If enough national parliaments object to a proposal, it can either be amended or withdrawn. Any national parliament can block moves to increase the number of policy issues that can be decided by majority voting.

that it will not take a referendum for us to switch from unanimous to majority in any area.

Update: See my post on the "expanded" role of national parliaments for why this FAQ answer paints a rosier picture than is actually the case.

This fact seems like a pretty important point but if you were to read

7. Does the Treaty involve giving up national vetoes in many areas?

The Treaty does not involve changes in areas of sensitivity to Ireland such as taxation and defence. Unanimity is preserved for all decisions in these areas. This means that all Member States must agree to any new proposals in these areas.
There will be an increase in the number of areas in which decisions can be taken by Qualified Majority Voting (QMV). Most of these are of a technical character or relate to areas where the union has only limited competence. Examples of new areas where QMV applies are: the procedure for entry into the euro; administrative cooperation; internal EU financial regulations; humanitarian aid operations; and police cooperation (where Ireland is not obliged to take part but has the right to participate in individual measures).

In a 27-member Union, it is essential be able to take decisions by a majority vote if Europe is to function efficiently.

You would think that unanimity is guaranteed for key areas but leaves out the fact that any of these areas can be dropped by a Dáil vote.

So, am I wrong? Are there subtleties in the full text that invalidate my conclusion here or does this just come from the self-amending nature of (the famous article 48).

To describe the ability to block such a change as a new role for national parliaments is correct but a little misleading, the possibility never existed before, so this is not something used to be for the EU to decide but has been ceded to national parliaments. It's something that would have required a whole new treaty and presumably a referendum but is now just a vote in the Dáil.

To put it another way, this is not a transfer of power from the EU to national parliaments, it's a transfer of power from The People to national parliaments (at least in Ireland).

I don't even know if I object to this in itself but I do object to it being portrayed as the opposite of what it really is.

There is one other point here that appears to be relevant at first glance but I think isn't. This power might already belong to the national parliaments. It might not actually require a referendum to change one of these voting areas right now. Since the power has already been ceded to the EU, accepting changes to the manner in which decisions are made might be within the power of the Dáil anyway and so I'm wrong above to say that this is a power that used to belong to The People. I don't think this matters in for 2 reasons:

1. It doesn't make the Yes side's explanation of the changes any less dodgy.
2. After all the "no this treaty isn't self-amending", any attempt to amend this treaty or alter the voting arrangements that isn't put to a referendum (whether legally required or not) would result in uproar if not bloodshed.

...

I caved in and searched the treaty. This may or may not be Article 333 in the final text (sorry no better link, politics.ie seems to be down at the moment)

                                     Article 333
1. Where a provision of the Treaties which may be applied in the context of enhanced
   cooperation stipulates that the Council shall act unanimously, the Council, acting
   unanimously in accordance with the arrangements laid down in Article 330, may
   adopt a decision stipulating that  twill act by a qualified majority.

This is in the "enhanced cooperation" section which seems to be the bit about adding more rules/powers. So basically we can give up unanimity on anything (interestingly we don't seem to be able to get it back or switch something that's currently majority to unanimous).