06-01-2005, 12:13 PM
Hi,
Or you should have elected a different political party to represent you in the process of creating the constitution.
(Sidenote: As far as I know, the proposed constitution has been created by merging the last two EU contracts (Maastricht and Nizza?), and adding some more details/making some compromises. There had been referenda about these before.)
The main problem in my view is that the EU as a whole doesn't get the attention and media coverage it deserves. Its influence on national politics is huge, and yet nobody is really interested about it, or knows how it actually works (I'm not really an exception to that). I have been positively surprised about how much media coverage the process of creating the constitution got here in Germany; the daily newspaper I read wrote about it for months now. I know that's not necessarily true for other media and other countries, though. Hard to say who's to blame: The media for not reporting about it, or the population for their lack of interest.
The polls that showed that a majority of French who voted against the constitution had no idea what it said really frightened me.
-Kylearan
eppie,Jun 1 2005, 09:52 AM Wrote:As you all know the coming time there will be some referenda in several european countries to ask the people if they want to have the (a) european constitution. France was up last week (non) [...]It seems there have been a lot of French mixing up "Referendum about the proposed European constitution" with "Referendum about Chirac and his politics". I guess they were not aware of the harm they have done. :(
Quote:My first contra is here that we are asked a simple question (so it seems) but the answer is not so simple. What if you are for a constitution but not for this one. Or what if you are against some points in this constitution.Then you should have joined a political party and tried to have some influence on the proposed constitution during its creation. I'm not sure how you want to work out something as complex as a constitution via a referndum?
Or you should have elected a different political party to represent you in the process of creating the constitution.
(Sidenote: As far as I know, the proposed constitution has been created by merging the last two EU contracts (Maastricht and Nizza?), and adding some more details/making some compromises. There had been referenda about these before.)
Quote:And the second is that they are a bit late, first everything is decided just by the government (EU, currency etc.) and now in the end they ask us if we want a constitution.I'm quite sure it's not the "if" we have to discuss: I think we agree that now with 25 countries in the EU, we *need* a constitution for it to work. Now is the proposed constitution a good one? No, I don't think so. However, I think it's a lot better than what we have now, and thus a step in the right direction. It adds a lot more democracy to the EU (albeit not enough for my taste) and replaces the old contracts we had, which had been designed to work with only 15 countries, not 25.
The main problem in my view is that the EU as a whole doesn't get the attention and media coverage it deserves. Its influence on national politics is huge, and yet nobody is really interested about it, or knows how it actually works (I'm not really an exception to that). I have been positively surprised about how much media coverage the process of creating the constitution got here in Germany; the daily newspaper I read wrote about it for months now. I know that's not necessarily true for other media and other countries, though. Hard to say who's to blame: The media for not reporting about it, or the population for their lack of interest.
The polls that showed that a majority of French who voted against the constitution had no idea what it said really frightened me.
-Kylearan
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider