"Why the Left should oppose the EU Constitution"

international | eu | opinion/analysis Wednesday November 17, 2004 20:56 by The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre

Below for your information are 3 items on "Why the Left should oppose the
EU Constitution"

*ITEM 1, "The Case for a Social Europe", is adapted from a short pamphlet published by the Centre for a Social Europe, London. This recently founded organisation supports EU membership but opposes the EU Constitution. In a foreword to its pamphlet Swedish Social Democrat MP Sören Wiebe writes: "W e strongly believe in internationalism, but we oppose giving up control. I am delighted that those on the centre-left in the UK have formed the Centre for a Social Europe." The URL for contacting the Centre is

http://www.social-europe.org.uk/Getinvolved/register.htm.

*ITEM 2 is a draft article on "The ideological Constitution" by a member of our Research and Information Centre, requested by some contacts on the Left abroad.

*ITEM 3 is a more systematic list of reasons why the Left should oppose the EU Constitution. It was drafted by some National Platform members and sent for suggestions or criticism to some leading Left activists around the country. It incorporates several changes they have suggested.

You may also care to note that the final text of the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" may be consulted at http://ue.eu.int/igcpdf/en/04/cg00/cg00087.en04.pdf

The "Reader-Friendly Edition of the EU Constitution" by Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde is undoubtedly the most useful text to enable citizens to understand the proposed Constitution, because of its invaluable Index and Glossary. This should be available at http://www.euabc or
http://bonde.com


*ITEM 1: THE CASE FOR A SOCIAL EUROPE

The current model of the European Union is not working. The EU is doing
too much, and doing it badly. It is wasteful and inefficient. Auditors
have refused to sign off the EU's accounts for nearly a decade because of
the scale of fraud. Voters do not understand why more and more powers
should now be transferred to Brussels.

The concept of the EU as a benevolent, socially-oriented international body
is being undermined. Trade Unions see the EU's commercial policy pushing
privatisation of services. NGOs watch EU Commissioners lobby the WTO(World
Trade Organisation) to liberalise trade rules at the expense of the
developing world. Taxpayers watch billions being wasted on the Common
Agricultural Policy.

In the era of growing global challenges, the EU is attempting to push
outdated 1980s neo-liberal economic policies. The European Commission is
putting pressure on Member States to liberalise their labour markets. The
eurozone's inflexible rules mean that governments have privatised public
services to balance their budgets. The European Central Bank has a
short-term obsession with inflation rather than with creating jobs.

As a result Europe's core economies have now suffered years of very high
unemployment. Europe needs to change in a number of important areas. But
the Constitution does not make for a social Europe. It means more of the
same policies and the problems they cause.

THE CONSTITUTION IS A STEP BACK FOR THE LEFT

The Constitution ignores the concerns of the EU's citizens. It gives more
power to unreformed institutions, weakens the ability of governments to
manage their economies, and undermines public services. The Constitution
takes the EU in the wrong direction. We should reject the treaty as the
first step to reforming the EU.

EU POWER OVER PUBLIC SERVICES: The Constitution would for the first time
give Brussels new powers to decide, by majority vote, what counts as a
"public service". This could also mean that it is up to the EU to identify
which areas of Member States' public services would be exempt from
competition policy, and which areas would be opened up to competitition
from the private sector.

MORE POWER TO BRUSSELS OVER TRADE POLICIES: The Constitution will
strengthen the EU's Common Commerical Policy as regards trade in such
services as health and education. This could mean more compulsory
competitive tendering in public services and more public-private
partnerships.

MORE POWER OVER THE ECONOMY: The Constitution further tightens the EU's
broad Economic Policy Guidelines, a policy framework the European
Commission uses to encourage Member States on the eurozone to cut public
spending. Member States threatened with censure under the Guidelines would
lose the right to participate in the vote on whether or not they should be
censured.

MILITARISATION OF THE EU: The Constitution sets up a European Defence
Agency which will encourage EU members to increase military spending. The
Agency has the power to "strengthen the industrial and technological base
of the defence sector" and is likely to lobby for more of the EU's research
funds to be ploughed into "dual use" military projects.

COMMON ASYLUM POLICY: The Constitution sets up a Common Asylum policy,which
will be decided by majority vote. This means that Mmeber States can be
outvoted on issues concerning immigration.

MORE CENTRALISATION: The Constitution marks a further shift of power to EU
institutions and away from local and national levels. Member States would
have to give up their right to veto in 40 new areas. The Constitution
contains an "escalator" clause which would allow the EU Presidents and
Prime Ministers to shift the few remaining policy areas where Member States
still have a veto from unanimity to majority voting by consensus amongst
themselves. This allows the Constitution to be amended without need of
further treaties or referendums.

ABOLISHING THE CROWN: The Constitution makes adoption of the euro into a
constitutional obligation, even though 13 of the 25 EU Member States still
retain their own currencies. If the Constitution comes fully into force, it
would make impossible any national control of interest rates or exchange
rates to achieve economic or social goals. They would be taken over
instead by the European Central Bank in Frankfort, Germany, which the
Constitution makes independent of all democratic control at either European
or national levels.

A RAW DEAL FOR WORKING PEOPLE: Trade Unions across Europe want guarantees
that the EU can deliver better consultation at work and protection during
industrial action. But Member Governments fought hard to ensure that there
is no new social protection in the Constitution and no new rights to help
Trade Unions represent people at work. The Charter of Fundamental Rights
was supposed to give people a set of common rights. The Constitution
provides that labour law matters will be decided at national level, as at
present. On other matters it will now be become a lawyers' charter, as
the EU Court of Justice will have to decide what it means. There will be a
new tier of expensive lawyers and judges between citizens and those
deciding their basic rights.

AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION . . . FOR A SOCIAL EUROPE

We are internationalists, but we oppose giving up control. We want a Europe
where there is diversity and democracy, not a Europe forced into the
straitjacket of an EU Constitution as the basis of an EU Federal State run
in the interests of the EU's bigger Members. A centralised Europe, run by a
Brussels elite, will be a weak and democratically unstable Europe. A Europe
based on dialogue and cooperation between democratic nation states will be
a strong Europe.

The Labour and Trade Union Movement, and the political Left, has always
stood for internationalism and democracy. We are not isolationists or
"anti-Europeans". We want a real debate in the Left on a better future for
the EU. We need to campaign internationally for a genuine social Europe.
Saying No to the EU Constitution is the first step towards real EU reform.



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* ITEM 2: AN IDEOLOGICAL CONSTITUTION
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AN IDEOLOGICAL EU CONSTITUTION

The proposed EU Constitution emerged from the Convention on the Future of
Europe, presided over by former French President V.Giscard d'Estaing. This
was mandated by the 2001 Laeken Declaration of EU Presidents and Prime
Ministers to make proposals to tackle the EU's acknowledged lack of
democracy, to consider restoring powers from Brussels to Member States and
to consider "the possibility in the long run" of a constitutional text.

Instead the Convention, which was dominated by Euro-federalists, rushed
headlong into drafting this Constitution that centralises the EU further.
It gives the EU all the legal constitutional features of a State except the
ability to impose taxes and force its individual Members to go to war. It
turns neo-liberal economics into fundamental constitutional principles of
this new European Union, removes important remaining powers from national
parliaments and citizens, and does not propose to repatriate a single power
from Brussels to the Member States.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE CONSTITUTION

If the proposed Constitution is rejected, the EU will continue on the basis
of the Treaty of Nice, with the voting arangements that treaty laid down
for an EU of 27 States. By standing firm and saying No to it, the Labour
Movement and the Left can force a proper debate on the kind of Europe we
really want - a social Europe, a more democratic EU. The Convention
should be recalled, put on a more democratic basis and told to make
proposals for an EU of this kind. It would be a Europe with National
Parliaments and citizens in the lead, not the tiny but powerful
bureaucratic and political elites who back this Constitution because it
gives them personally more power.

WHAT THE CONSTITUTION DOES

The Constitution of any normal State lays down the rules and institutional
framework for political decision-making. It does not seek to pre-empt the
ideological content of those decisions. That is left to political debate
between the parties of Left and Right, abiding by the Constitution's
decision-making rules.

* The EU Constitution is different. It lays down rules but it also
embodies an ideology: neo-liberal rightwing economics. It turns the
fundamental principles of classical laissez-faire, free competition across
national and State boundaries on the basis of free movement of goods,
services, capital and labour, into constitutional imperatives, implemented
by the rules and institutions it establishes and enforced by the EU Court
of Justice.

* It encourages the privatisation of public services and permits the
imposition of such policies on countries outside the EU through the trade
and investment agreements the EU concludes under its Common Commercial
Policy.

* It militarizes the EU further by setting up a European Defence Agency
which will encourage Member States to increase military spending.

* It makes membership of the eurozone a constitutional obligation,
regarding the opt-outs of countries like Denmark and Britain as temporary
in principle. It then enshrines as constitutional law the monetarist
economic policy of the European Central Bank, whose sole brief in setting
interest rates and controlling the money supply of the eurozone is to
ensure stability of prices. This contributes to high unemployment in the
core eurozone economies.

* In response to pressure from the European Round-Table of Industrialists
and others the Constitution has gutted the Charter of Fundamental Rights of
the capacity to strengthen workers' rights and bargaining power at EU
level. Article II-88 says workers have these rights "in acordance with
national law and practices" only. That is no improvement.

* The Constitution gives more power to the EU by abolishing the national
veto on some 40 areas or issues, for example harmonising crime and justice
matters, border controls, asylum and immigration policy, energy.

* As if this wholesale abandonment of national vetoes were not enough, the
Constitution has an "escalator clause" which enables the Presidents and
Prime Ministers to replace unanimity by majority voting in the few areas
where a veto still remains, as long as there is a consensus amongst
themselves. That could include indirect taxes(Art.III-171). This enables
the EU's top politicians to amend the Constitution without the
inconvenience of further treaties or referendums. A national Parliament
may block this by objecting, but their explicit approval is not required
and these days governments can easly enough bend parliaments to their
will.

* It lays down as one of the objectives of the EU "a highly competitive
social market economy", but there is no definition of the term "social
market", which is taken from the German Constitution, or anything to
indicate that something other than maximising competition is implied.

These ideological objectives and values of the "Treaty Establishing a
Constitution for Europe" seek to pre-empt society's fundamental political
choices into the indefinite future, as no other modern Constitution seeks
to do.

By standing firm and saying No, the Labour Movement and the Left can help
save Ireland and Europe from taking a fundamentally wrong course.

__________________________________________



__________________________
*ITEM 3: FIFTEEN REASONS:
_________________________


WHY THE LEFT SHOULD OPPOSE THE EU CONSTITUTION

The Constitution of any normal State lays down the rules and institutional
framework for political decision-making. It does not seek to forestall the
ideological content of those decisions. That is left to political debate
between the political parties of Left and Right, abiding by those
decision-making rules. The EU Constitution is different in that it lays
down such rules but it also lays down a right-wing economic ideology which
those rules must implement.


1. THE CONSTITUTION ENSHRINES EXTREME NEO-LIBERALISM AS THE BASIS OF THE EU
ECONOMY. It turns the basic principles of laissez-faire, free competition
across national borders on the basis of free movement of goods, services,
capital and labour, into constitutional obligations. These are to be
implemented by small committees of supranational politicians and
bureaucrats under the influence of the big corporate lobbyists like the
European Roundtable of Industrialists, outside democratic control. This is
the opposite of public control and economic planning of any kind, which all
sections of the Left recognise as necessary in some areas. The Constitution
suppresses political alternatives. It reduces workers' capacity to mobilise
and restricts the policy areas their organisations can effect change in. It
does not advance a social Europe. It amounts in effect to a contract not to
have socialism, understanding socialism as requiring the imposition of
social controls on capital in the interest of workers and the common good.
The new EC/EU Commission is dominated by economic neo-liberals. Its
President, Manuel Barroso, led an assault on public services and workers'
living standards while he was Prime Minister of Portugal.


2. IT ENCOURAGES THE PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC SERVICES and enshrines a heavy
bias against public enterprise in favour of private capital. The
Constitution gives Brussels powers to decide, by majority vote, what
counts as a "public service"(Art.III-166). This could mean that it is up to
the EU to identify which areas of public health and education services, for
example, would be exempt from competition policy, and which areas would be
opened up to private sector competitition. It permits such policies to be
imposed on developing countries through the trade treaties the EU
concludes under the Common Commercial Policy and the invesment rules it
lays down(Arts.III-314-17).


3. IT ENSHRINES THE PERMANENT DOMINANCE OF CAPITAL OVER LABOUR. Article
III-156 provides that there shall be no control on the movement of capital
either within the Union or between the Union and the rest of the world,
even though such controls may periodically be required to serve the social
interest.


4. IT MAKES THE MONETARIST ECONOMIC POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
CONSTITUTIONALLY MANDATORY. The ECB's sole brief in setting interest rates
and controlling the money supply of the eurozone is to ensure price
stability, not maximize economic growth, create jobs or reduce
inequalities(Art.185). This imposes deflation on the larger eurozone
economies. It prevents governments expanding demand to counter recession
and unemployment. It removes credit and financial policy from public
debate, subordinating it to the priorities of bankers, big business and
technical experts, and effectively makes democratic electoral mandates for
this area redundant.


5. IT MAKES THE ADOPTION OT THE EURO A CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENT, even
though 13 of the 25 Member States still retain their own national
currencies(Arts.8 and 177). Ireland's surrender of its ability to decide
its rate of interest is a key factor in our soaring house prices. If the
dollar falls and the euro rises, as at present, Irish business
competitiveness must deteriorate, for we do two-thirds of our trade outside
the eurozone. We cannot counter this by varying our exchange rate, for we
have surrendered that power by locking ourselves to the euro.


6. IT MILITARIZES THE EU. The Constitution points to the end of the formal
military neutrality of Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Malta by
replacing the Nice Treaty provision that the progressive framing of a
common defence policy "MIGHT lead to a common defence, SHOULD the European
Council so decide" with the provision of the Constitution that it "WILL
lead to a common defence, WHEN the European Council, acting unanimously, so
decides"(Art.I-41). It requires ALL member States "to make civilian and
military capabilities available to the Union for the implementation of the
common security and defence policy" and "to undertake progressively to
improve their military capabilities" etc. It "permits" EU military
operations to take place without a UN Charter mandate.


7. IT CENTRALISES THE EU FURTHER AND TAKES AWAY FURTHER POWERS FROM
NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS AND CITIZENS, TRANSFERRING THEM TO A TINY HANDFUL OF
EU POLITICIANS AND CIVIL SERVANTS. The Constitution abolishes the national
veto on some 40 new areas or issues, for example harmonising crime and
justice matters; sanctions and the definition of offences; border
controls; asylum and immigration; energy; the market for public services;
Europol and Eurojust; rules of the structural and cohesion funds etc.


8. IT ALLOWS THE POLITICIANS TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT NEED OF
FURTHER TREATY RATIFICATION. An "escalator clause"(Art.IV-444) allows the
25 Presidents and Prime Ministers to shift further policy areas - for
example indirect taxes(Art.III-171) - from unanimity to majority voting
without need of new treaties, parliamentary approval or referendums, as
long as there is consensus amongst themselves. This creates a permanent
democratic deficit. A "flexibility" clause(Art.I-18) permits EU Ministers
to take new powers to themselves if they think the Constitution does not
give the EU sufficient power to attain its very wide objectives. At
present they have this power with regard to the single market. The
Constitution extends it to all areas of government policy. These provisions
have no place in any democratic Constitution.


9. IT TRANSFERS POWER TO THE NEW EU TO DECIDE OUR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN THE
LARGE AND EXPANDING AREA COVERED BY EU LAW. National Constitutions and
Supreme Courts have this power at present, plus the Court of Human Rights
in Strasbourg, which is independent and separate from the EU Court of
Justice(ECJ) in Luxembourg. This introduces a new and expensive tier of
judges and lawyers between citizens and the final court that decides our
rights in many matters. It then provides for these rights to be possibly
undermined by providing that the rights set out in the Charter of
Fundamental Rights(Part 2 of the Constitution) may be limited "to meet
objectives of general interest recognised by the Union (Art. II-112). The
Charter permits the death penalty to be imposed in time of war for
EU-mandated military operations, even though all the individual Member
States have decided to abolish it in war-time.


10. AS A CONCESSION TO EUROPEAN EMPLOYERS, THE CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL
RIGHTS FAILS TO STRENGTHEN WORKERS' RIGHTS TO ORGANISE AND ACT
COLLECTIVELY. Article II-28 provides that workers have these rights "in
accordance with national laws and practices". In so far as the
Constitution allows fundamental rights to be limited in the interests of
the EU, some future ECJ judgement could threaten workers' rights that have
been long fought for and established at national level. As it stands, the
Constitution protects an employer's right to lock out his employees quite
as much as an employee's right to go on strike, depending on what their
national labour law lays down. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is
secondary to EU commercial policy and is circumscribed by that policy.


11. EURATOM, THE ATOMIC ENERGY TREATY, WHICH PROMOTES NUCLEAR ENERGY, IS
MADE PERMANENT IN THE CONSTITUTION. The 1957 Euratom Treaty was due to end
in 2007. Now Protocol 36 of the Constitution extends its life
indefinitely.


12. THE CONSTITUTION ENSHRINES IRELAND'S ABORTION PROTOCOL, PREVENTING EU
INTERFERENCE WITH IRELAND'S ABORTION LAW, OVER WHICH THERE WAS SUCH
CONTROVERSY IN 1992. This is transferred from the Maastricht Treaty on
European Union, which is now repealed, and reconstituted as Protocol 31 of
the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe".


13. IT SHIFTS EU LAW-MAKING BY THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS TO A
POPULATION-BASED VOTING SYSTEM WHICH ADVANTAGES THE BIG STATES AND
RELATIVELY DISADVANTAGES MIDDLE-SIZED STATES LIKE IRELAND. It abolishes the
weighted voting system that was agreed in the Treaty of Nice to provide for
EU enlargement and provides that EU laws will be made in future by a
"double majority" of States and population: 55% of the Member States, at
least 15, as long as they include 65% of the EU's population(Art.I-25).
Thus 15 States, if they satisfy the 65% population criterion, would be able
to outvote 10. On the number-of-States criterion a blocking minority must
be at least 11 States, so that will be harder to assemble than before. This
shift to a mainly population criterion for EU law-making makes it easier
for the Big States with their big populations to get their way. It reduces
the relative voting weight of middle-rank Member States lioke Ireland. It
would make EU laws easier to pass, which means there would be more of them.
Legislatve "efficiency" in the EU is not best gauged by the quantity of
laws it makes, but by their quality and democratic character.


14. IT ESTABLISHES A NEW EUROPEAN UNION WHICH IS LEGALLY AND POLITICALLY FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE PRESENT EU, GIVING THE NEW UNION THE LEGAL FORM OF A FEDERAL STATE AND REDUCING IRELAND AND THE OTHER MEMBER STATES TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF STATE-PROVINCES WITHIN THIS EUROPEAN FEDERATION

Up to now the name "European Union" has been a descriptive term for
various forms of cooperation between its Member States (See Title 1,
Article A of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union). One of these areas
is the European Community(EC), which still exists, which we are still
members of, which has legal personality and where Community law has primacy
over national law in any case of conflict between the two. The
Community(EC) covers mainly the economy, the single market and some linked
social policies. Here Member States have "pooled" their sovereignty and
the Commission has the monopoly in proposing EC laws. In all other policy
areas Member States retain their independence and cooperate with one
another as free and equal partners internationally - or
"intergovernmentally" in EU jargon: foreign affairs and security policy,
crime and justice, and domestic policies on health, housing, education,
social security etc. The present "European Union" refers to all these
different areas of cooperation combined together, but the EU as such does
not have legal personality or an independent corporate existence in its
own right. There is therefore no such thing as "Union" or EU law, only
"Community" or EC law. The Constitution's propagandists confuse these
terms deliberately, to prevent people realising that the proposed new EU,
based on its own Constitution, would be fundamentally different from what
people call the EU at present.

The central purpose of the EU Constitution is to abandon the existing EU,
namely the above combination of "SUPRAanational" and "INTERnational" forms
of cooperation, and establish instead a totally new European Union, that is
constitutionally, legally and politically fundamentally different from
what we call the EU today. It does this, NOT by establishing something
which is "close to" or "almost" or "virtually" a Federal State. IT
ACTUALLY DOES ESTABLISH SUCH A STATE. Even if this new EU State may seem
weak in that it does not yet have all the powers of some contemporary
Federations, it has other powers which go beyond what most Federations
have. Above all it lacks democracy and democratic institutions, whereas
most modern Federations are democracies. As Belgian Premier Guy Verhofstadt
states - and he should know: " The Constitution is the capstone of the
European Federal State.

The Constitution give the new European Union the legal and constitutional
forms of Statehood by the following logical and precise steps:

(A) It repeals ALL the existing EC/EU treaties(Art.IV-437);

(B) It thereby abolishes the existing European Community and its associated
Coal and Steel and Atomic Energy Communities;

(C) It establishes a new European Union founded on its own Constitution
rather than treaties between its Members(Article I-1);

(D) It lays down that this Constitution and law made under it has primacy
over the Constitutions and law of its Member States, without any
qualification or exclusions (Article I-6);

(E) It gives this new European Union, now founded on its own Constitution,
legal personality, which means that it is constitutionally separate from
any of its individual Member States in a way that was not previously the
case, just as Texas is legally separate from the US Federation and vice
versa, even though the USA includes Texas(Article I-7).

The Constitution COULD HAVE excluded some national powers and competences
permanently from the scope of the new Union and the primacy of its laws, in
which case Member States would have retained some vestige of sovereignty
and independence; but it did not do this. These steps turn the new EU, now
founded on its own Constitution rather than a series of treaties, into a
European Federal State.

The new EU State will not run everything of course, anymore than the
early USA or German Federation ran everything or most things. It ACTUALLY
runs some things and POTENTIALLY runs a lot more. How much more will
depend on which of their remaining powers Member States might agree to
transfer to the new Union in future. The two main powers of Statehood the
new EU Federation would not possess if the proposed Constitution is
ratified is the power to impose taxes and the power to force its Member
States to go to war against their will. However the "escalator" article
(IV-444) would allow the European Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers
to replace unanimity by majority voting for indirect taxes, and the
Constitution's Foreign Policy and Security provisions(Arts.I-41 and
III-310) would permit some Member States to take the EU to war, as long as
others "constructively abstain". Otherwise the new Union would have all
the key features of statehood: a Constitution, citizenship, a population,
a territory, a currency, armed forces, a legislature, executive and
judiciary, a Foreign Minister and diplomatic corps, some 100,000 pages of
federal law, the right to conclude international treaties with other States
in the ever-growing areas of its exclusive competence - and now of course
its own flag, anthem and annual public holiday, which are given a legal
basis for the first time in the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for
Europe".



15. THE CONSTITUTION UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY FUNDAMENTALLY.

The Left has always been among the the strongest upholders of democracy.
The Left has traditionally stood for the right of peoples to
self-determination and to chose their own government. This fundamental
democratic right, which is a basic principle of international law enshrined
in the United Nations Charter, is violated by the Constitution's proposal
to make the proposed new European Union, founded now for the first time on
its own State Constitution, into the supreme source of lawful authority for
its 25 Member States. The EU becomes the new legal sovereign for EU
citizens, who will owe it real allegiance, over and above their own
national States. Under the Constitution the sovereign powers of the new EU
would be vested in its Council, Commission, Court and Parliament, to which
we would all owe loyalty and allegiance. We would become real citizens of
the EU for the first time, not just as an honorary title, an adjunct to
national citizenship as at present under the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht, but
with rights and obligations direct to the EU Institutions rather than
through our national institutions as hitherto. In this EU Federation the
laws for 450 million Europeans would be made by what is effectively an
oligarchy, a legislative committee, of 25 politicians on the Council of
Ministers, who are irremoveable as a group and collectively responsible to
nobody. Those laws are based on proposals from the 25-member, eventually
18-member, EU Commission, who are governmental nominees and not
individually elected. The laws may be amended by the elected European
Parliament, but only with the agreement of the Council and Commission,
whose law-making power is therefore primary. The citizens of any EU Member
State cannot change a single European law, even if they wish overwhelmingly
to do that.


CONCLUSION

These structures of government are profoundly undemocratic, quite apart
from the neo-liberal economic ideology the Constitution requires them to
implement. As committed democrats therefore, socialists, Greens, genuine
liberals and others on the Left should work in parallel with democratic
non-socialists and others, rejecting all association with racist or
fascist elements, in the common international struggle to defend democracy
in face of the proposed EU Constitution.

* * *


N.B. This document has been vetted for legal accuracy by authorities in
European law. It may be adapted or used in whole or in part in any way
whatever, without acknowledgement to its source.




17 November 2004