MEDIA RELEASE
2 June 2005

Embargo: none



DOUBLE BLOW TO EU CONSTITUTION SHOWS FATAL FLAW AT EU'S HEART

The Dutch people yesterday joined the French in rejecting the EU Constitution by a large majority - 61.6%.

This double blow to the Constitution by two of the EU's founding countries plunges the EU deeper into turmoil about its structure and direction.

With a 'No' also very likely in Britain and polls now swinging against the Constitution in several other countries planning to hold referendums, the ratification process must surely now be abandoned and the EU Constitution scrapped for good.

To argue otherwise, like the EU elites, is to suggest that the views of the French and Dutch people need not be respected. The EU Constitution cannot be implemented without asking them to vote again and reversing significant opposition.

DM campaign director, Marc Glendening, comments:

"Real pro-Europeans will be celebrating the fact that the peoples of both Holland and France have now rejected the EU Constitution.

"These extraordinary victories, in countries which the EU elite arrogantly assumed would endorse this latest attempted power grab by large majorities, demonstrate that ordinary Europeans want decisions concerning their lives to be taken closer to them.

"These results – particularly the diversity of reasons for rejecting the Constitution - have illuminated the fundamental problem at the heart of the EU project. Namely, that single EU policies simply cannot suit the different needs and wants of Europe’s diverse countries and peoples.

"Europe’s political elite must now listen, and stop trying to squeeze a diverse Europe into a single political & economic straightjacket in pursuit of outdated superstate dogma dreamed up in the 1950s."

This double victory for democracy demonstrates what the DM has always argued: namely, that the struggle against the centralisation of power in Brussels not only transcends left and right, but is an objective shared by ordinary people of all nations.

Implementing any part of the EU Constitution despite the French and Dutch rejections, and denying us our chance to have a say, would be a blatant affront to democracy. The government must now guarantee that there will be no 'cherry-picking' of parts of Constitution to avoid a public vote.

While it's unlikely that Europe's political elite will heed the people's message and immediately give up their outdated goal of a centralised EU State, what their next step towards this aim will be is the key question.

What they don't yet realise is that the debate has now rapidly moved on to what form of European co-operation the people of Europe actually want instead of the misguided Constitution idea the elites came up with. These results show that top of the people's wish list is an end to the EU centralisation project and one-size-fits-all EU policies, decided by majority vote on an ever-wider range of issues.

Instead, people clearly want a new form of European co-operation that allows a great deal more flexibility and respect for different national priorities.

It's time for Europe's leaders to listen - drop the outdated superstate dogma and start acting on what people want.

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For more information, contact Marc Glendening on 020 8570 5861 or by e-mail.


NOTES:

  1. The Democracy Movement is the non-party grass-roots campaign against the EU Constitution - a campaign to save democracy and for a more modern, truly international future for Britain.

    With over 325,000 registered supporters and 120 local branches nationwide, it is the largest non-party organisation campaigning on the issue of Britain's relationship with the European Union.
 
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