Press release - Tobias Pflüger (MEP) - Brussels Tübingen, December 20, 2005

On the intention of Federal chancellor Merkel to get the EU Constitutional Treaty through unchanged during the German Council presidency 2007, the European deputy without party affiliation, Tobias Pflüger, declares:

The ratification process of the EU Constitutional Treaty, signed in October 2004, has failed. The NON at the referendum in France and the NEE in the Netherlands prove that this treaty meets a large opposition in the European population. A broad social debate on the contents of the 500 page treaty was prevented in this way.

At all costs, the progressive militarisation of the EU is being promoted to constitutional rank. In Article I-41, Paragraph 3, an obligation to armament is laid down: “The member states of the European Union shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities.” Instead of a disarmament agency, there is envisaged an armament agency.

The current neoliberal policy is supposed to receive constitutional rank by way of an obligation to an “open market economy with free competition” (III-177). This is the open renunciation to a social Europe.

Even one of the “fathers” of the Basic Rights Charta, the internationally renowned French constitutional expert, Guy Braibant, in the meantime has spoken out against the EU Constitutional Treaty, because the Basic Rights in the Charta are being devalued by restrictive explanations in the social part.

The new Federal chancelleress Merkel now wants to save the EU Constitutional Treaty with a non-binding supplemental declaration on the “Social Dimension of Europe”. The Constitutional Treaty itself is supposed to remain unchanged.

This cheat package must be refused. We need a European debate on social, civil, and democratic constitutional contents. The Europe-wide demonstration against the service directive on February 11 in Strasbourg will be a good occasion for that.

Brussels, Tübingen, December 21, 2005
Translated by Carla Krüger