<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:verdana,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div style="font-family: verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">----- Mensaje original ----<br>De: Reinier Bakels <r.bakels@planet.nl><br>Enviado: miércoles, 23 de abril, 2008 14:19:20<br>> Still I am no an unconditional supporter of the EU, far from that. Yes, I acknowledge the need for more cooperation<br>> between EU member states. I am strongly opposed against the return of nationalism. History has shown than <br>> nationalism is bad. It is a reason to make war. Still there is no reason to oppose against a federal Europe per se.<br>> Federal states like Germany and the US ae characterised by loose rather than strong ties between their (internal)<br>> member states, as opposed to non-federal states such as The Netherlands or France. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Belgium
and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Spain have</span><br></span>><span style="font-weight: bold;"> <span style="text-decoration: underline;">become</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> federal states</span> fairly recently in order to solve internal problems, by giving more power to their<br></span>><span style="font-weight: bold;"> internal member states.</span><br><br>¿? Spain has never been a Federal State since 1714 -leaving apart <a href="http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Spanish_Republic">Ist Republic from 1873 to 1874</a>-, since Bourbons became Chiefs of State; any of you can check Spanish Constitution to check that <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">de iure</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Spain <span style="text-decoration: underline;">is not</span> a Federal State</span>.<br><br><span style="font-style: italic;">de facto</span>? 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-.<br><br>> It is very confusing. There is actually no reason whatsoever to be opposed against ANY constitution for the EU (as the<br>> Dutch thought): a constitution is similar to the statutes of a club: it regulates the internal organisation.<br><br>One may support the idea of having <span style="font-weight: bold;">an</span> european constitution ... however, the one we are rejecting is <span style="font-weight: bold;">this</span> European Constitution -now dubbed as <span style="font-style: italic;">Lisboa Treaty</span>-.<br><br>> Due to the incorrect focus, no attention was paid to the
content of the proposed constititution. But given the<br>> complexicty of any constitution, could the citizens be expect to have a proper judgement about its contents? Well, no<br>> politician will ever say that citizens lack the knowledge to judge. But I do. I am a lawyer and even I find it utterly<br>> complicated. How to solve such a problem? The standard solution is *representative democacy*: elected politicians<br>> are supposed to digest law proposals and to pinpoint problems in the publica debate.<br><br>In Spain there was no debate. Just PP and PSOE asked citizens to vote YES, that was all.<br><br>About the <span style="font-style: italic;">standard solution</span> -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 :)<br><br>> For the EU, the devil is in the details, not in the principles. The European Parliament is
disfunctional: it is invisible, no<br>> one knows hat they are doing, and media coverage is minimal. This leads to the "democatic deficit" problem. And the<br>> sensitivity of the EU to lobbyists. Another issue is the Commission which is a kind of government that is no<br>> government. Those problems must be attacked<br><br>In the beginning, an EU reform I guess falls out of PPI's scope; however, if the PIRATA's ILCs concept -simmilar to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiative">initiatives</a>, and quite related to liquid democracy- become accepted, there would may be an open door to receive proposals conceived to reform EU structures.<br><br>As I say, until ILCs -or other simmilar approaches- become adopted, I'm afraid EU structure topics fall outside PPI's scope.
Regards,<br><br><br> Carlos
Ayala<br> ( Aiarakoa )<br><br> Partido Pirata National Board's Chairman<br><br>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.<br></div></div><br>
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