Simplified EU charter
Apparently we need a simplified EU charter, so says Prodi.
During a "sentimental trip" back to Brussels, the new Italian prime minister and ex-president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, said the bloc needs a new "simplified" EU constitution text, developed in a more "optimistic atmosphere" and acceptable to citizens.
There is of course a serious problem in trying to make a simplified treaty. The majority of the text was there to replace existing treaties. So without adding a single sentence, the treaty will already by complicated.
So whats the betting that they will simply take the additions and make a treaty with those. They will then sell it to us as a slimmed down treaty evn though its essentially the same.
3 comments:
In all fairness the previous constitution was beyond absurd. While the American constitution managed to sum up the highest values of manking in just one paragraph, the EU constitution's preamble ran into six paragraphs and quoted from ancient Greek. It ended (the preamble that is) with a vote of thanks to the author.
Rather than writing a constitution they wrote a left winf manifesto with promises to establish a space programme. They could still have replaced all the treaties (many of which modify former treaties) in far less space.
It was beyond absurd, especially the charter of fundamental rights.
However, if you left out the content of all the previous treaties, it would have been much shorter.
So strip out everything that stays the same, and sell basically the same dogs breakfast, but just 50 pages long.
I am sure that the average person could be fooled.
There were some things that most people would like in the EU constitution, such as requirements of transparency, proposals having enough signatures from citizens to force the Comission to consider their proposals, much reduced methods of passing laws. There's a lot in there that most people would like, just, it seems, quite a bit they don't like too :)
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