Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-019"
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"en.20030924.1.3-019"2
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"Mr President, I warned the Italian Presidency about its timetable for the Intergovernmental Conference. Twelve meeting days have been set aside this autumn for negotiating a constitution that extremely few people have yet heard of. It is to be adopted on 13 December and signed on 9 May, whereupon we can go to the polls and participate in referendums, but not change the Constitution. That is not fair, and it is not at all democratic.
The peoples of Europe have not yet asked for a Constitution. None of them have been properly involved in the EU elite’s plans to transfer electoral power to Brussels. In the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, we agreed, with 22 votes in favour and 3 against, to call upon all the countries, where possible, to hold referendums. The Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities supports that decision wholeheartedly. Take that decision now, for it is only when people know that they are to vote on the plans that they begin to take an interest. When matters become serious, people get involved in them. If all the EU countries make up their minds to hold referendums at the same time as the elections to the European Parliament in June, we shall have the opportunity to hold the first common European debate. It will then become apparent whether we can also reach a common conclusion.
I hope and believe that the voters will reject the draft prepared under President Giscard d'Estaing’s fairly authoritarian leadership, referred to as consensus. I collected 200 signatures with a view to reversing the procedure so that it might begin with openness. My petition was signed by all the elected representatives from the national parliaments and supported by all the Members of the European Parliament apart from Mr Duhamel. What was requested does not, however, form part of the final report. I collected 123 signatures with a view to ensuring that all the countries should continue to have Commissioners. No such arrangement is, however, part of the consensus. We have instead obtained a division into Commissioners with and without voting rights – a proposal that was not submitted to, or discussed in, the Convention until the very end. The main thrust of the draft Constitution is to transfer much more power from our parliamentary democracies to the Brussels of the officials and lobbyists.
It will soon be impossible for our countries’ electorates to change many decisions that can at present be overturned by voters in elections. Our democracies are being vigorously pruned back, and the national parliaments are surrendering power to a degree not matched by the additional influence acquired by the European Parliament. If democracy is to be cut back, the decision to do so should at least be taken democratically by the voters themselves in referendums. Let us therefore call upon the Intergovernmental Conference to urge all the countries to hold referendums. Why not, moreover, prepare two different proposals, namely a democratic federal constitution and a draft treaty for a Europe of the democracies. In that way, we can safely let the European voters take the decision about our common future."@en1
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