swallace wrote:
Frans,
What's your take on the EU constitution? Did you vote for or against? Do you favor dropping the Euro or keeping it?
Although most no-voters were (far-)rightwing, and my own party (Greens) were in favor of it, I did vote against it. The main reason was that it's not democratic enough. The EU at the moment is very un-democratic: it has a Parliament (EP) but that's mostsly a lion without teeth nor claws. Then you have the european commission (EC) which consists of a bunch of big-corp nutcases in most cases, and you have the council of ministers.
The EC makes laws, the EP has an advicing role (but the EC can ignore them completely) and the laws are then agreed upon by the council of ministers, which is formed by the ministers (secretaries of state/foreign policy/defence etc.) of all countries in the EU. If one is against it, the law is not accepted.
The new constitution didn't change this. It made the EP a bit stronger it seems, but still the EC can ignore the EP completely. The ministers in the new constitution can't block a law on their own, it's agreed upon by majority. The parliaments of the countries can then decide against it, but that's just a 'yellow card' and simply says: "Hey EC, we're against it", but the EC can simply ignore it. The parliaments of the countries can then go to the EU court, but that can take years, and the outcome is not clear.
There are other things in the constitution which are bad (a lot should be privatised, i.e. small government, but this is bad as with small countries in the EU you'll get privatized monopolies) and uncertain. For example, the dutch government did a very bad job negociating about the constitution. For example there are sections which contain exceptions for some rules for certain countries (gooze abuse in france for fois gras production, no abortion laws in ireland etc.) there aren't sections which protect our liberal drugs policy, euthanesia law or abortion law. With the new constitution, the possibility to have a group of countries forcing a strict drugs law on us is very high, and although I'm no drugs user, I don't think that's the way it should be done.
The eu is an economical organisation, it shouldn't become a federal government, because then you'll get the discussion 'what's state law and what's federal law' ? Well, your country has those problems as well, with the recent action of the supreme court to make the use of medical marihuana a federal crime. Whoever cooked that up, hasn't seen a loved one die of cancer.
