Europe’s citizens need open debate
If the root cause of citizens' misgivings truly is, as eurocrats would have it, 'backward thinking', 'misinformation', 'left-wing extremism, 'right-wing extremism', 'electoral parallax', 'conspiracy theory' (take your pick, Mr MEP) then it is so because open debate on this, along with previous treaties, has been actively avoided by elected representatives rather than being confidently and committedly guided by them.
In the run-up to the constitution's ratification thus far, backbenchers Europe-wide, and across the political spectrum, made innumerous calls for more debate on the content and ramifications of the European Constitution.
Those calls landed on deaf ears.
Instead, governments are letting the debate on the constitution slip through their fingers, forfeiting their power of influence through neglect. In France, it has fallen into the laps of disparaging interest groups, eagerly flexing their muscles on a grassroots terrain.
The Union cannot and will not develop if our elected representatives, mesmerised by the magnitude of Brussels, regularly return home from their EU trips only to buckle under the dressing-room pressure they've experienced there.
The drive to achieve a favourable result back home sees them pushing through the latest thing they've committed to in Europe while seeking to keep their pride and political clout intact with which to return to the next European "round".
The relentless rollercoaster of top-down decisions has to end somewhere. France may well be the beginning of that end.
If an expanded, more federal Europe is all it's cracked up to be, it is high time its proponents in the European Parliament and in national governments do some (up to now, uncharacteristic) straight talking.
Above all, the question of national sovereignty has to be tackled realistically.
Citizens need to know where national (or state) law ends and union (or federal) law begins. Let the ratification on the constitution be delayed if it must. The illusion of there 'not being enough time' is nothing more than illusion: so much hangs in the balance.
As history has shown, Europeans are prepared to pull their weight, pay high taxes, forfeit social benefits, and rise to the demands and responsibilities of rapid demographic change.
They'll even forfeit policies of national interest if it comes to it. The price? The genuine commitment of their elected representatives to democratic principles and procedures. That is the key.
Joan Croker
Talblick 1
90765 Fürth
Bavaria
Germany.
