Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-18-Speech-3-270"
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"en.20060118.20.3-270"2
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"Mr President, listening to this debate I am reminded of Bertolt Brecht’s lines:
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Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?
The peoples of two core founding States have thrown your projects out, my friends. I know it is hard to accept rejection, but look at the figures: 55% of French voters; 62% of Dutch voters. You might try to argue that the voters have got it wrong; that they are suffering from what Marxists used to call false consciousness; that they need better propaganda; that it is up to us – the Euro-elite – to point them in the right direction. To which I say, ‘Do your damnedest’.
Current polls in the Netherlands show that 82% of Dutch voters would now vote ‘no’ – a tribute to the level-headedness of that brave people. But if you think you can turn them around, dear colleagues, be my guests. Doing so would at least prove your commitment to the democratic ideals you so frequently invoke.
Far more outrageous would be to push ahead with the implementation of the Constitution – or, at least, of its contents – without popular consent. Yet this is precisely what you are doing. Look at the number of policies and institutions envisaged by the Constitution that have been or are being enacted regardless: the European External Action Service, the European Human Rights Agency, the European Defence Agency, the European Space Programme, the European External Borders Agency, a justiciable Charter of Fundamental Rights: none of these has any proper legal basis outside the Constitution. By adopting them anyway, you demonstrate that you will allow no force – internal or external, neither your own rule book nor the expressed opposition of your peoples in the ballot box – to arrest the rush to political assimilation. In doing so, you vindicate the severest of your opponents’ criticisms.
In the words of my countryman Oliver Cromwell ‘I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken’."@en1
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