As we have been reporting through the last months in Slovenia there have been measurable actions by the civil society to ensure the referendum on the Renamed EU Constitution through a collection of signatures. NGO Hervardi have organised a network which succeeded in gathering approximately 2.700 signatures “in the street” in less than 7 days whereas 2.500 were needed (2nd step requires 40.000 signatures).

After filing a referendum initiative at the National Assembly it’s president has acted according to the practice from his predecessors although no legal basis for his move is actually specified. In the vague and unprecise Law on Referendum and Public Initiative there is no stipulation that these signatures ought to be taken to the Ministry of Interior for the check. The only legal clause regarding signatures stipulates that their “genuinity” should be proved.

President of the NA, dr. France Cukjati - again to the practise of his predecessors - has not bothered to return an official reply to the Hervardi appeal. Instead he has only issued a press release saying that “MoI has found more than 400 signatures invalid”. They did not investigate if the voters have actually signed the initiative, they simply graded the design of the signatures. If it was much different than his/her signature from e.g. 20 years ago when an ID card has been issued to the voter they announced such a signature for “not valid”.

One month later Hervardi have filed a complaint to the Constitutional Court of Slovenia and here you can find links to the original in Slovenian (date 7th of March 2008). On Thursday 14th of March Hervardi have been officially informed that their case is valid and has a legal status of a constitutional case. Procedural number delegated was U-I-49/08.

What does all this mean? Quite a lot in fact. Although Slovenian media has not spend much ink or bytes on this news (first news, second news) any constitutional lawyer (from the German legal sphere since Slovenian Constitutional system has used a lot from the German one) can explain that when a legislative-procedural faux pas of such proportions is under scrutiny it also means that the original law/statute which has been passed under dubious conditions has to be put on ice until matter is resolved in front of CC’s Senate.

How the Slovenian EU Presidency will explain all these undemocratic developments to the European media and public remains yet unknown.