Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-18-Speech-3-248"
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"en.20060118.20.3-248"2
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".
Mr President, I should like to ask the ostrich majority in this House: have you not heard that 55% of French voters voted ‘no’, against the advice of 90% of their deputies and senators? Have you not seen that 62% of Dutch voters did not follow the advice of the 80% in the national parliament? Have you not read the Treaties calling for unanimity in Treaty changes? Why break your own rules? You seem to have both eyes and ears. Use them!
The proposed Constitution is dead! Still you urge national parliaments to break the law. You continue to propagate the text. On the outside of this building you still proclaim ‘yes’ to the Constitution. Could you imagine a national parliament praising Labour policies and condemning Conservative ones on the front of the parliament building itself? No, you could not, could you? You still use taxpayers’ money to distribute millions of brochures propagating what was rejected. You started ratification of a text which had not yet been properly translated. You refused to publish a reader-friendly edition of the Constitution, because you wanted the text approved without being read. You manipulated the time schedule for holding referendums and hoped to drive the UK into a corner after 24 ratifications. But, dear colleagues, you lost, as I have done several times.
Now it is your turn to follow the verdict of the voters. Instead, you finance further propaganda: EUR 300 000 to the European Movement; EUR 110 000 to the European Federalists; millions of euros to those in favour of the Constitution.
We demand a free, fair and open debate with equal representation of the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ sides. Shame on those of you who will vote for overruling the Dutch and French voters! The SOS Democracy Intergroup has started a minority report. We reject the idea of a state constitution, ask for the existing Treaties to be reviewed and for a cooperation agreement to be established instead.
A new agreement could be drafted by a directly elected convention and put to referendums in all the Member States, perhaps at the same time as the next European elections. Then we would know the verdict of the citizens. The French voters have not regretted their ‘no’; many Dutch voters have changed their minds, but they were the ones who voted ‘yes’. Listen to the voters, let us make a fresh start."@en1
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