http://europefrombelow.cafebabel.com/en/ Focus on the political and social issues of the European integration process with a special view from below. This blog will follow , step by step, the European people movements acting for a different, more democratic and federal Europe. You will find news and updates concerning European wide campaigns, actions, rallies, demonstrations, strikes, forum and assemblies aiming to build a political and social "Europe from below". Making Europe depends on you, too! en Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:33:31 +02:00 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Dotclear http://europefrombelow.cafebabel.com/en/post/2007/06/23/EU-summit%3A-proclaimed-success-is-democratic-failure#c40 urn:md5:214236607d52715eb5d8c1c3d6a1fed9 Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:36:09 +02:00 cuzcco <p>Seifert worries that "Europe will not be able to speak with one voice in the world", surely this is ignoring the cogent fact of the matter that on many things EU member states do not speak with one voice. Surely if 'Europe' were to speak with one voice this would be whilst gagging the other voices trying to have their position heard.<br /> I see a few contradictions in what Seifert says and what he claims to want. Seifert decries the current lack of citizens' input in EU policy and then he incongrously says "if there is one lesson to be learned from the Summit failure, then it is that no future reform can work with the same outdated principle of secret intergovernmental bargaining and unpredictable ratifications in 27+ member states." He seems to forget that citizens ability to ratify treaties by referendum is one of the only times they get to directly influence the EU; surely removing this right distances the EU still further from the citizens of it's 27 member states.<br /> I'll finish by quoting a line from the start of this article where you talk of what you see to be the EU's biggest structural problem: "the right of every random government to stop Europe from moving forward and tackling the challenges of our future". Indeed Europe hit it's current impasse precisely beause two 'random' European nations threw out the Constitution...we should have ignored the voice of the people, it only gets in the way!</p>