Today Peoples Movement against EU and June Movement have demonstrated the broad and popular support to an appeal of referendum to the Danish Government and Parliament.

This is the 4th Video Journal in the ERC2 production and it entails interviews with some of the most exposed personalities in the referendum campaign.

Austrian political Platform Volxabstimmung is organising peaceful protest in Vienna on Saturday. They will attempt to make human chain around the Austrian Parliament. Be there at 15:00.

Dear friends all over Europe!

To this e-address kuuleminen@tem.fi yourself can send your comments to the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) program of Fennovoima (34% ownership by E.ON which also builds such beautiful projects as wind mills…) for building new nuclear reactors in Finland. If you would really like to help please do it before April 7th!

EUobserver.com launched the following news from Ireland:

Irish PM Bertie Ahern has abruptly resigned as a result of a corruption scandal. ‘I’ve never done anything to corrupt my office’ he said upon the announcement. A commission spokesperson refused to speculate what effect early elections may have on the upcoming Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Mr. Ahern has therefore earned himself an honorary title of “The perfect European”

Subtitle: Poles blew it

Based on today’s decision in the Polish Seym one can paraphrase: “You can’t ratify the Renamed EU Constitution and keep your own Constitution legally above it.” This simply won’t work but only time will tell. Well not just time - in near future top lawyers will have to explain clearly to Poles, to Germans (when they decide to repeat their own legal case) and finally to all other Europeans the true legal nature of the “Mother of all EU Treaties”.

Yesterday the Irish business people (IBEC) have developed brand new argument for voting YES on the dubious treaty. In their Press Centre you can read following:

Not quite the EU-Renamed Constitution news but it has to do with referendum legislation and procedures regarding calls for a referendum in Europe.

They have everything! They have 1st class democracy, they enjoy all the fruits of developed European economy, they can travel all across Europe without being bored at the border crossings. So what is it they are prepared to demonstrate against?

As you could already see we started using letters REC for “The Renamed EU Constitution”.

Austrian NGO’s are well aware that through REC Austrian status of military neutrality will be gravely endangered. This is why they are organising large demonstrations in Vienna on Saturday, 29th of March 2008.

Recent news from Poland and Ireland suggest that instead on focusing primarily on basic question of a loss of member state’s sovereignty as such public debate tends to bend towards rather unexpected issues such as abortion in Ireland or “gay-marriages” in Poland.

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).

From the French initiative www.29mai.eu we have received following appeal:

Dear Sirs,

*the new Treaty, identical to the treaty it replaces to establish an European Constitution, was adopted in December at the summit in Lisbon. The French President announced that he would not give the French another Referendum.

Besides referendums there exists a variety of political and legal tools to prevent unitaristic and homogeneous Europe to emerge. TEAM will try to collect and present some examples of the struggle against enforced political unification. First examples will be mainly describing legal aspects but we are always interested in learning new ways. You are invited to apply any of them or shape new ones within the practice of your national frameworks and then share your experience with us.

First story: Denmark and the ratification of the renamed EU-constitution

Denmark has had so far six referendums on EEC/EU of which the first was in 1972 when a majority voted in favor of joining the EEC.

The Norwegian prime minister admits that the people had made the right choice in staying out of the Union, writes Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson, but he is still nostalgic about the idea itself, claiming he would still have liked to join the rest in Berlin to commemmorate the 50th Anniversary of the Treaties of Rome.

EU accession would be disastrous for Switzerland, not only economically, but also in terms of freedom and liberty. Yet while accession proponents in authority pretend that EU accession is currently not a subject, behind the scenes everything is being done to get Switzerland “ready for accession” by continuously adapting our legislation to EU standards to eliminate all differences, writes Lukas Reimann, TEAM board member and president of the Swiss organisation Young for FUN - Freedom (Freiheit), Independence (Unabhängigkeit) and Neutrality (Neutralität).

‘A few weeks ago there were some discussions in Iceland concerning the possibility of adopting the euro without joining the EU itself. However, these discussions are now as good as dead after the EU confirmed what was previously known, that Iceland could not adopt the euro without joining the EU first. EU membership is not on the agenda for both parties in government in Iceland’, writes Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson.

“There is nothing that actually indicates that Iceland will ever join the EU. The core arguments of the pro-EU movement are not based on telling the people that joining the EU would be good for Iceland – not anymore – but telling them that sooner or later Iceland will be forced to join,” writes Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson, founding member of the political organisation, Heimssýn.

“Despite all the hype by the Spanish government and illegal interference by the Commission, the turnout in the Spanish referendum was only 42%. The government had predicted a 60% turnout, instead nearly 60% did not vote. This means the majority of the peoples in Spain do not support the European Constitution, whatever the Constitutionalists say,” says John Boyd, TEAM Coordinator.

The new EU Constitution Referendum Bill is designed to maximise the government’s capacity to cheat in the run-up to the vote, claims The Democracy Movement (DM) in the UK. “The DM, with the voluntary contributions of the British people, will now be waging a campaign - Stop the Cheating! - to pressure the Electoral Commission into reigning in Tony Blair and making the referendum fair”, says DM’s director Russel Walters.

Read more on The Democracy Movement’s website.

The Spanish TEAM-member Another Democracy is Possible have launched a legal challenge against the government. The group questions that public money is being spend on promoting the EU Constitution. “Contents of the governmental website are flagrantly biased for the ratification of the constitutional treaty”, argues the group.

Read more on Another Democracy is Possible’s website

Evaluation report on the EU referendum held in Hungary on April 12th 2003.

This report was drawn up on the request of TEAM, The European Alliance of EU-critical Movements, for the European Referendum Monitoring (ERM) Conference, held in Svaty Jur, Slovakia on 20-21 June 2003.

The crucial problem of Slovakia’s EU Accession referendum was that citizens were treated in the pre-referendum campaign as if they were a people governed without law. The basic law of the Slovak Republic, its Constitution, was seriously flouted. Lies and misrepresentation in the name of the higher EU good were widely seen as justified.

“Those were the days”

1. Ignorance of the law is no excuse

The Constitution of the Slovak Republic has been seriously undermined during the last referendum. Untruth and ignorance in the name of a higher idea justified all means used. Higher interests defeat the sense of basic human rights. The Constitution guarantees basic rights, such as freedom of thought and conscience, regardless of political or other beliefs. Everyone has the right to publicly express his or her opinion. The Constitution also guarantees the citizens’ right to administer state power through their elected representatives or directly. Citizens have the right to participate in the administration of public affairs either directly or through the free election of their representatives.

Ljubljana 20th March 2003

The undersigned represent two Slovenian parties and the Danish “People’s Movement against EU” declare the following in connection with the upcoming referendum on Slovenian EU-membership:

The governmental “information” campaign for accession to the European Union has not been balanced in fact only presenting possible benefits from membership. This campaign has also failed to even treat the current constitutional process within the Union transforming the EU from a treaty organisation to a politically unified, federal Superstate.