After the Irish no – where to now?
My two cents:
- As I said yesterday, the current system of institutional reform in the EU is unreasonable and unfair because it makes decision-making impossible. So let’s ditch it.
- Before attempting to reform the Treaties again, we need to agree on a new procedure to ratify Treaty changes first.
- My proposal would be to do this by a single, EU-wide referendum. A positive result would require reasonable majorities of the form: at least x% of all voters and at least y% of the voters in at least z% of the Member States should vote in favour, with x,y,z at 50 or more.
- The percentage of Member States where a Yes-vote is required (z) would be somewhere between 50 and 80% of the total number.
- In return for the EU-wide referendum, which gives every citizen a direct say, all Member States abolish (the possibility of) constitutional referendums at home for EU Treaty changes.
- Let’s carry on with the Nice Treaty for the time being, that is: until the new ratification system is in place. As Carl Bildt also pointed out on his blog, Nice does seem to work better than expected.
30 June 2008 at 10:27
Ireland’s “no” demonstrates: 1:26 = 27 losers
500 million Europeans are taken in hostage by 862,415 Irish (less than 0.2% of the European population) – in the name of democracy. According to the elitist representative democrats this is the direct democrat’s fault, i.e. the “uneducated and unteachable people”. This disrespect makes the current EU-catastrophe even worse.
Because: in a democracy the tool democracy can only be always right. In Ireland it was however employed wrongly. For voting for a purely internal-Irish problem without European dimension an Irish referendum would doubtlessly have been the correct instrument. For a pan-European concern however, only the pan-European referendum can be the correct means. This would be the correct level, and only then the right sovereign is speaking. No matter what the result will be, YES or NO, only via this way the right has spoken the right.
In the EU the sovereign are the 500 million Europeans – and not a slight Irish referendum’s majority. Regarding the current archaic principle of unanimity it could even appear more bizarrely: even Malta or Cyprus could by their 315,000 resp. 500,000 eligible voters bring the EU to a final halt. Good gracious!
No matter whether for or against the EU: we should not be lead by a handful of nationalists. For important matters we do need a pan-European referendum! The Treaty of Lisbon would have given us this power! Although its fate is uncertain at the moment, we have to become active for the EU’s future, i.e. our future. Let us demand a pan-European referendum for all important EU-matters, such as enlargement, environmental issues, the future election of EU president etc. There is the possibility to stand up in an organized way and to vote at the citizens’ platform: http://www.we-change-europe.eu. Let’s change Europe – now!
29 July 2008 at 11:59
I’m an Irish no voter, and I really support the original post, as one of the major reasons i voted against this resurrected constitution, called forth from the dead by the unholy necromancy of Angela Merkel, was that no other european citizens, as you would be after the vote, had any say in the matter. And the 800k people who voted against the treaty vastly outnumber the 6500 politicians who have approved it in other countries, so i think we can leave the democracy complaint at the front door. No one has asked 500 million people for their opinions, and the people of France and Holland have been roundly ignored by their political leader.
So yeah, europe wide referendums (not in the Lisbon treaty by the way), bring it on, lets build a europe of people, not profits.