The revised constitution is identical in obligations (engelsk)
Here you find an European Journal.
By Jens-Peter Bonde
President of the Group for Independence and
Democracy in the European Parliament
Jens-Peter Bonde is the author of 55 books about European integration, some of them in English. Bonde has edited a reader friendly edition of the proposed constitution with more than 3000 alphabetic index words. You can download them for free at http://www.euabc.com and http://www.Bonde.com
The Open Europe think tank has made a good job in publishing the original and the revised constitution together. They have found identity in 240 of the 250 articles and say 96 % is identical.
This is an understatement!
There are 105 new legislative and other competencies in the rejected constitution and 105 in the new.
There are 62 new areas where the national veto is abolished. There were 61 in the old. New areas are energy supply and climate. Intellectual property rights will not have qualified majority voting (QMV).
Two more, one less. This is more and not less as said by many governments. And even worse, most changes are not real changes but different presentations.
The French president Nicolas Sarkozy won his elections by scrapping the rejected constitution in favour of a little practical “mini treaty”.
The new “mini treaty” will now have more than 3000 pages of constitutional law. The rejected constitution has 560 pages. The major difference is that all legal obligations from the 560 pages have been spread over 17 different treaties with 2800 pages in total.
The new amendments adopted in Brussels include 273 pages. So the final result from the summit in Lisbon 18 – 19 October will give us an unreadable constitution under a new name: The Reform Treaty.
I refuse to use this name. It is not a treaty but a constitution with primacy over national constitutions until a member state may decide to leave. The principle of primacy of community law both above normal national laws and national constitutions or constitutional principles like in the UK could be read in plain speak in the rejected constitution.
Now this fundamental obligation is moved to a foot note. The obligation is the same.
The name “constitution” disappears but can be found through the same footnote where they accept the verdicts from the European Court in Luxembourg.
In a statement (1/91) about the EEC treaty it is explicitly stated that the EU acquis commaunutaire means “the Community treaties established a new legal order for the benefit of which the States has limited their sovereign rights ... the essential characteristics of the Community legal order which has thus been established are in particular its primacy over the law for the Member States”
The flag, hymn, motto, national day and currency disappear as article. At the same time it is said the symbols continue. The
European parliament has further stated that they will increase the use of the flag and the hymn against this symbolic change.
The Charter of fundamental rights will be legally binding. It already is. The Court has used it in 117 cases according to an answer I got from President of the Commission José Barroso.
The legal inclusion will make no change. But it will certainly invite the European Court to further development of fundamental rights – and duties.
Britain has an opt out – from what? I have asked in the Constitutional committee at several meetings and asked to have the scope clarified. The Parliament’s representative on the intergovernmental conference, liberal democrat, Andrew Duff was honest enough to admit there was no content in the British opt out.
Formally it is very simple to explain. The Charter does only contain existing legal obligations from two sources: the Human rights convention in Strasbourg and the common fundamental rights from the national constitution.
This limit is explicitly stated (to avoid referendums). In real terms there are no limits because the core is a right for the Court in Luxembourg to develop the common fundamental rights.
The right to life. Sounds nice. But does life start with the birth or nine or how many months before?
Freedom of expression. Is it the limited version we know from the Court in Luxembourg when they decided that a British civil servant in the Commission was not allowed to write a book in his absence of leave? Or the freedom of expression normally protected by nation state constitutions and the all-European Human rights court in Strasbourg?
On the number of words and articles there are differences. The obligations are identical. Therefore it is cheat to sell it as a mini treaty. It is misleading to sell it under a new name. It is a fundamental breach of promise to the voters to use the new presentation to avoid referendums. Referendums were never decided for presentations. They were decided for the legal content.
In Denmark the government and the Social Democratic party try to escape from an all ready planned but uphold referendum. (27 September 2005. Denmark and Germany agreed to move 9 areas from the constitution to the articles where Denmark has an opt out. Then, they think they can avoid having a referendum until the UK has ratified.
I think they will fail in this cheating exercise. Danes can still read and will soon see the exercise only is to avoid their say. More than 80 % of the Danish voters want a referendum.
Denmark has 14 members of the European parliament. 2 ½ of the 5 Danish Social Democrats have called for a referendum. 9 of the 14 MEPs want it. Half of the parties in the national parliament. The former leader of the Committee on European Affairs in the Danish Parliament, Ove Fich, has also called for a referendum.
It will come, at least when Brown has given in his choice to be elected as chancellor or accept a constitution not called for by many British voters - to make the understatement of the year.
In the European Convention the British participants with Peter Hain and Gisela Stuart used all their skills to limit the obligations. They could not stand the pressure and had to give in.
Gisela Stuart since had the courage to state the treaty is not good enough or too bad.
No, it is not. It establishes a European government without the parliamentary control known from all parliamentary democracies. We will have a president, a prime minister, a foreign minister (“High representative”) and a full government to be appointed by a majority of prime ministers and approved by a majority in the European parliament.
The new EU will have “legal personality”. It is not the member states but “The Union” entering international treaties. Seen from all other states in the world the EU will also be a state.
There are some limits seen from inside. The economic competencies are still limited but can be extended by unanimity without amending the constitution. New areas of cooperation can be inserted through special paserelles where it is not necessary to ask the peoples and parliaments of the member states.
Every member state can withdraw on their own decision. This is the main article showing the treaty is also a treaty. This article is taken from the original constitution and does not change the character of constitution. Without comparison: Stalin’s constitution from 1936 had the same freedom for the Soviet states to leave.
There will still be national flags in the UN, just like Ukraine and other Soviet states had their own representation and voting right in the EU. But the EU member states will be represented by the common foreign minister who will also be the vice president of the European commission.
The core in democracy is the right for voters to go for elections, have a new majority and then new laws. This core does not exist in the revised constitution. Here laws are decided by non-elected commissioners having a monopoly to propose laws and a qualified majority among civil servants and ministers in the Council.
The European parliament gain more areas of involvement. MEPs can propose amendments for the non-elected commissioners. They decide if they had good advice from the elected representatives.
If this is a good system, why not delete the right for Westminster MPs to decide laws? Give instead the right to civil servants in the ministries. Let your MPs send amendments to the heads of the ministries who can then meet behind closed doors to decide whether they had good or bad amendments from the elected members of parliament.
Today 85 % of all European laws are decided by civil servants in 300 working groups in the Council. The laws are prepared by 3000 other secret working groups under the Commission.
The EU is not a democracy today. With the constitution member states democracy will be further eroded. This is the reason it can only be adopted without referendum.
Therefore we are a group of MEPs who have initiated a European Referendum Campaign where citizens can sign for referendums at x09.eu