[pp.int.general] Lissabon Treaty: very bad news

[Carlos Ayala]

----- Mensaje original ----
De: Reinier Bakels <r.bakels at planet.nl>
Enviado: miércoles, 23 de abril, 2008 14:19:20
> Still I am no an unconditional supporter of the EU, far from that. Yes, I acknowledge the need for more cooperation
> between EU member states. I am strongly opposed against the return of nationalism. History has shown than 
> nationalism is bad. It is a reason to make war. Still there is no reason to oppose against a federal Europe per se.
> Federal states like Germany and the US ae characterised by loose rather than strong ties between their (internal)
> member states, as opposed to non-federal states such as The Netherlands or France. Belgium and Spain have
> become federal states fairly recently in order to solve internal problems, by giving more power to their
> internal member states.

¿? Spain has never been a Federal State since 1714 -leaving apart Ist Republic from 1873 to 1874-, since Bourbons became Chiefs of State; any of you can check Spanish Constitution to check that de iure Spain is not a Federal State.

de facto? May be, though autonomous statutes are currently being judged at the Constitutional Court. Until the Constitutional Court makes its judgments about this issue, nothing would have changed here -the normal, legal way for Spain to become a Federal State would be a constitutional reform; however, our politicians tend to not being quite observant with laws and rules-.

> It is very confusing. There is actually no reason whatsoever to be opposed against ANY constitution for the EU (as the
> Dutch thought): a constitution is similar to the statutes of a club: it regulates the internal organisation.

One may support the idea of having an european constitution ... however, the one we are rejecting is this European Constitution -now dubbed as Lisboa Treaty-.

> Due to the incorrect focus, no attention was paid to the content of the proposed constititution. But given the
> complexicty of any constitution, could the citizens be expect to have a proper judgement about its contents? Well, no
> politician will ever say that citizens lack the knowledge to judge. But I do. I am a lawyer and even I find it utterly
> complicated. How to solve such a problem? The standard solution is *representative democacy*: elected politicians
> are supposed to digest law proposals and to pinpoint problems in the publica debate.

In Spain there was no debate. Just PP and PSOE asked citizens to vote YES, that was all.

About the standard solution -representative democracy-, hope that you, Reinier, can be able to attend to Uppsala, specially if we discuss again the liquid democracy as we did in Berlin :)

> For the EU, the devil is in the details, not in the principles. The European Parliament is disfunctional: it is invisible, no
> one knows hat they are doing, and media coverage is minimal. This leads to the "democatic deficit" problem. And the
> sensitivity of the EU to lobbyists. Another issue is the Commission which is a kind of government that is no
> government. Those problems must be attacked

In the beginning, an EU reform I guess falls out of PPI's scope; however, if the PIRATA's ILCs concept -simmilar to initiatives, and quite related to liquid democracy- become accepted, there would may be an open door to receive proposals conceived to reform EU structures.

As I say, until ILCs -or other simmilar approaches- become adopted, I'm afraid EU structure topics fall outside PPI's scope. Regards,


                                                                                      Carlos Ayala
                                                                                      ( Aiarakoa )

                                                              Partido Pirata National Board's Chairman

P.S.: Obvious to say that PIRATA would love ILCs or simmilar concepts to be adopted by PPI -for the non-core issues treatment-; and that also would love to recover liquid democracy for Uppsala like it was treated in Berlin.




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