Posted on 07/10/2005 9:25:28 PM PDT by ScaniaBoy
Federalist European leaders insisted last night that the EU constitution had risen from the dead after voters in the tiny Grand Duchy of Luxembourg approved it in a referendum.
The Yes camp won by 56 to 44 per cent, making Luxembourg the 13th country to ratify the constitution.
A majority of the European Union's 25 nations have now ratified the treaty, noted the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, with "great satisfaction".
Many Luxembourg voters had voiced irritation at being asked to vote on a constitution already rejected at the polls in France and Holland, predicting that the current text would never see the light of day.
But Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, said yesterday: "If Luxembourg had said No, the constitution would have been dead. As Luxembourg has said Yes, the process can go ahead."
Mr Juncker had double cause to celebrate. He had threatened to resign if the referendum result went against him.
All countries would eventually hold parliamentary votes or referendums on the constitution, he suggested, hinting that, at that point, No voters such as France and Holland might like to reconsider.
"We will see the positions of the countries that said No at the end of the ratification period," he said.
Germany's Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, said of the result: "It is an encouragement and an invitation to all Europeans to seek joint ways of quickly overcoming the current crisis."
For the commission, Mr Barroso conceded that the future of the constitution remained "uncertain", following the No votes in France and Holland.
As an international treaty, the constitution must be ratified by all 25 member states to come into force. Both the Dutch and French governments have ruled out inviting their citizens to vote a second time, so there is currently no legal way for the document to come into force.
EU leaders fudged the issue at a summit last month, agreeing on a "pause for reflection" during which each nation would be free to decide whether to put the constitution to a vote.
To date, Britain, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Ireland and Poland have all officially postponed or suspended plans to put the constitution to referendums.
Britain is still blamed in federalist circles for rushing to suspend its own referendum after the French and Dutch No votes, rather than heeding calls to press on with the project regardless.
Britain holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of the year and Downing Street reacted to the Luxembourg vote with: "As Presidency of the EU, we welcome this result and congratulate Prime Minister Juncker and the people of Luxembourg on the open and lively debate during the campaign."
The statement went on to note, pointedly, the June summit decision to "pause for reflection" and give each EU member state the right to decide what to do next.
Only one other country has voted Yes in a referendum on the constitution: Spain, which is, like Luxembourg, a major net recipient of EU money.
With a population of just 460,000, Luxembourg boasts its own EU commissioner. It receives more EU money per capita than any other nation.
In the past 50 years, it has gone from an impoverished rural backwater to one of the richest countries in the world.
Before the French and Dutch No votes, opinion polls in Luxembourg had given the Yes camp as much as 76 per cent of the vote.
A woman in her mid-thirties exiting from a polling station in Luxemburg says:
"I voted yes. I'm married to an Arab, and I wish everyone in Europe should have that possibility, that's why I voted yes."
Ladies, I leave the comments to you.
PS: She didn't sport a burka, but come to think of it she seemed to wear a large scarf and maybe she bared her face just for the TV.
We should take up a collection, send her a DVD of "Not Without My Daughter".
Proving in one sentence that the EU is not about European Union, but the dissolution of Europe.
As far as marrying Arabs, and converting to the religion of murder, well, no one's stopping her from emigrating to the Arab countries.
Isn't it interesting that she still wants to live in the world created by Europeans? Sorta wants to have things both ways.
That whenever any form of people becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the government to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new people, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Thanks for that quote.
I think that is the way it eventually will have to be resolved. Hopefully a minor upheaval in Brussels will be enough, but if worst comes to worst there isa risk that we will have bloody revolutions in Europe unless the Eurocrats start to understand that they are no longer wanted.
I think that is the way it eventually will have to be resolved.
Most of us would hope for exactly the opposite of that "quote!"
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