EU Constitution an 'elite project'

The recent appeal by the president of the European Commission, Mr Barroso, to EU member states to avoid referendums on the proposed EU Constitution further reinforces the increasingly held view that this is simply an elite project, about which the opinions of electorates will not be countenanced. 

The present attempt to resurrect the constitution is being led by Germany and the commonly held belief is that it has concluded ratification of the proposed constitution. However, the ratification has been merely at parliamentary level and falls far short of complete ratification.

A member of the Bundestag, Dr Gauweiler, has brought an action in the German constitutional court listing in detail the rights, guaranteed by the German constitution, which are violated by the proposed constitution for Europe. That court has decided that it will start its work on the case only when the 27 member states agree that the text of the proposed constitution will remain unchanged. As a precaution, the court has reached agreement with the German president that he will not approve the parliamentary ratification before the court decision.

If, however, the EU submits a new text for the constitution, then the vote of the German parliament is invalid, as the German constitutional court has already decided that "if any alterations or supplements will be made on the text of the contract or on the annexed protocols then the parliament and the federal council have to decide anew on the total text. Then the plaintiff is free again to take another constitutional action against this."

But of course, German citizens were not asked to vote on the matter but it seems that if they had been that the result would have been as disastrous as in France and the Netherlands. After the referenda in these countries, BILD, the biggest German newspaper, asked 390,694 German citizens how they would vote and 96.9 per cent of them said: NO!

So, viewed from the perspective of the electorates, the largest country in the EU, Germany, has not ratified and would appear to have significant difficulty in doing so. Neither have Britain, Sweden, Poland nor a number of smaller countries. In total, the combined population of these countries approaches 70 per cent of the total population of the EU. Therefore, the view often expressed that ‘a majority' of the EU has ratified the proposed constitution, truly refers only to the elites and not to the citizens. Is it any wonder that the EU is perceived as an ‘elite project', a view that is reinforced by the arrogance of Mr Barroso?

Frank Keoghan, Dublin 9