Citizens of Europe against the illegitimate regime (CECRI)

Organizing the resistance to the Lisbon Treaty, and to any “constitutional treaties”:
Proposal for tenacious popular demonstrations, at the same date and time Europe-wide

While asserting their love for democracy, European nations’ political officials have been engaged for 50 years in a constituent process, excluding the people that they are supposedly representing; in some cases they even do it against their constituency, as in France and the Netherlands, where elected officials force through what their own people just explicitly rejected by referendum.

The serious allegations we have against European institutions (see box on the next page), which include barring citizens from any political power, are not taken into consideration by political, economical and media-related elites: the democracy our representatives impose on us is now clearly fictitious.

However, the alarming signals impelling us to assert our permanent control over the institutions are numerous: the great onrushing financial crash; the police-state control carried out by the so called “liberal democracies” where torture is practised upon jailed citizens without defense or trial in the name of the “war on terror”; massive use of nuclear weapons (thousands of tons of uranium ammunition) in countries devastated by wars against unseizable “terrorists”, wars that the people have no ability to prevent; the exponential proliferation of GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms) without the means to resist; the scuttling of public services under the pretext of a fictitious public debt, due to the abandonment of currency creation to private financiers who thus control public policy; the abandonment of the people by their own representatives – professional politicians owing their seats to financial interests – and of their constitutions, from now on written directly by presidents and ministers, and passed without referendum! Enough is enough and it is time to act! It is time for citizens to take back control of their representatives.

We, the citizens of Europe from all walks of life, attached to the people’s right to self governance, are solemnly objecting to political elites redefining their own powers without consulting of the people they represent. Elected officials are not the owners of popular sovereignty and their modification of institutions has no legitimacy whatsoever.

The very expression “constitutional treaty” confesses an abuse of power: we do not write constitutions by treaties. European institutions must not be modified and defined by ministers, parliamentarians and judges: only the people – on proposal of a disinterested constituent assembly, which is one where members do not write rules for themselves – have the political legitimacy to set and restrict the power of their representatives, through a referendum and a real public debate.

But on the contrary, European leaders took advantage of their power and abused it: the constituent process through treaties makes European institutions entirely illegitimate. It seems important and urgent to us to resist that tyrannical drift and to organize this resistance movement for as long as it will be necessary.

A reminder: before the wall fell, East Germans were demonstrating every Monday at six o’clock to forcefully declare “We are the people!” Sometimes a handful, sometimes tens of thousands, they were always there, visible. This courageous stand in constant resistance can inspire us in our struggle against the despotic process at play with these unconstitutional European treaties: we could ourselves institutionalize the resistance as much as possible, multiplying the places where the discontent protest.

In each and every city of Europe where there are determined men and women, WEEKLY DEMONSTRATIONS should be organized, every Wednesday at 18:00 for example.

During these demonstrations, we could give international publicity to the main initiatives of citizen, making them more visible and stronger. For example:

• A lawsuit against the state has been filed by thousands of citizens at the 
  European Court for Human Rights, for violating the right to elect our 
  legislative body. This lawsuit is organized by citizens and supported by
  www.29mai.eu;

• A petition against financial parasitism unleashed by complacent European 
  institutions forbidding States to disturb free circulation of money, a petition 
  organized by citizens and promoted by www.stop-finance.org;

• The petition for the undependable and very popular Citizen Initiative 
  Referendum (RIC), a citizen project through www.ric-france.fr; etc.

In big cities, each district or neighbourhood could have its own weekly demonstration, so that each and all can participate in them without spending useless hours in commuting; it shows the general discontent even more efficiently, if numerous demonstrations take place all over Europe, even small ones.

A website (wiki or spip to allow collaborative work) would serve as a platform for a general map of demonstrations, joining up all European cities and villages in open resistance, as well as the most valuable people’s initiatives (slogans, lawsuits, actions, events, manifestos, images, texts…).

Will this seed of an idea grow everywhere in Europe ? I hope so :o)

Etienne Chouard. (April 8th 2008)

http://etienne.chouard.free.fr/Europe/forum/index.php

Here is a list of the main flanks against European institutions which are built up without the citizens and indeed against them:

a) First and foremost, mass unemployment is greatly encouraged by European institutions through a monetary policy opposed to the general welfare: the sacred mission of the European Central Bank (ECB) to contain inflation cannot be modified as it is ruled by law and that the bank is strictly independent from people’s representatives (art. 119, 130 and 282 §2 and §3 TFEU). This utmost priority imposed by European institutions favors only the rentiers and willfully maintains mass unemployment and low wages. Only a few have an advantage in such a policy, the richest and the ones who like peoples to be docile. If only for that reason, the salaried (90% of the workers) should go to demonstrate against this Lisbon Treaty, the last act of a European-wide coup d’Etat.

b) Then, the currency creation is totally abandoned to private banks, which is a true financial hara-kiri: the European constitution (art. 123 TFEU) forbids central banks to lend money without interest to states, which force them to borrow that money with interest to private financiers who look for investment opportunities ( to make money without working). This disgraceful rule is forcing states (that is all of us) to pay ruinous interest rates in order to fund public investments – and thus accumulating a debt which looks extravagant for the general welfare (France pays more than 40 billion euros interests a year) – whereas if our central bank could fund public projects, the paid interest could be redistributed to the community instead of profiting private financiers. Not only this rule ruins us, but public debt (inescapable by institutional rule world-wide) bars our representatives from any political power, making them mere puppets depending on financial forces. This other major vice alone should be enough to provoke a general rebellion.

c) The ban placed on states to limit movements of capital (art. 63 TFEU) and freedom of establishment (art. 49 TFEU) deprived workers of any power in the face of shareholder value, submitting them to total competition; it puts our economy to the risk of frantic speculation, repeating stock-market crises and an imminent general collapse. After having subdued workers, financiers will present them with the bill they have to pay with wages and taxes. Whose interest is it to have a free fox in a free chicken coop? Surely not that of the general welfare. This is another major vice that the “elite” does not want to discuss, but which should make peoples stand up against all European “constitutional treaties”.

d) The clause for mutual defense among EU member states does not modify the obligations toward NATO (art. 42 §2 and §7 TEU). Thus confirming art. 5 of the Atlantic pact, this clause submits to NATO any European defense, because the states belonging to both are the member states with the most power, military, economically and politically. Such subjection is as dramatic as EU and NATO allow their member states to join each other for foreign deployments and NATO’s political and military authorities look forward for a restructuring of the Alliance, based on possible first “pre-emptive” nuclear strike and possible operations without the consent of the United Nations simply by consensus.

e) Ministers and presidents are accumulating legislative and executive powers for a whole range of domains hidden under the misleading name of “special legislative procedures” (art.289 §2 TFEU for the principle, and the rest is spread –hidden- elsewhere) and of “non legislative acts” (as in art.24 TEU or art. 290 TFEU for example). Ministers –supposedly part of the executive- gather in a “Council” – mysteriously forgetting to say that it is a ministers’ council- and declare themselves being co-legislators (art. 16 TEU). These are blatant violations of the fundamental principle of the separation of powers that The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (art. 16 DRMC) considers as the utmost marker of a return of Tyranny: unseparated powers ones are at the mercy of private forces of the moment.

f) The powerful european judges careers are also controlled by the executive powers: judges are appointed for a renewable and relatively short 6 year term, thus creating a dangerous dependency (art. 253 TFEU). This violation of the fundamental principle of judges’ independence from the other powers flout once again the protective principle of the separation of powers, once again to the advantage of ministers (who appoint and renew a judges term or not); we see that everywhere they have written the rules.

g) The legislative power – both common and constituent – is essentially controlled by non-elected entities. Examples: Intergovernmental conference (made up of ministers) modifying the institutions (art. 48 §4 TEU), European Commission (non-elected) having the exclusive right to legislative initiative (art. 17 §2 TEU, a true insult to representative democracy), ministers that are co-legislators (!) (art. 16 TEU), central bank producing binding norms of overwhelming reach (art. 132 TFEU), etc.

h) Citizens have no means to resist an abuse of power and citizen initiatives are muzzled through a misleading “invitation initiative” procedure that has no binding power (art. 11 §4 TEU). Citizens are treated as imbeciles by being offered some empty gifts.

i) Revision procedures allow executive powers to modify institutions themselves, without even consulting the people (art. 48 TEU). It is non elected entities that are in charge of revising the European Constitution and that control any proposal. By omitting referenda the people is put aside: the “democracy” imposed by our elected officials is fictitious.

j) According to us, all that comes from the constituent process that is itself deeply vitiated by the ruling persons that under the guise of European construction write rules for themselves (art. 48 §4 TEU), whereas only a disinterested constituent assembly could create sound institutions: members of that assembly must not have a personal interest in citizens powerlessness: thus they must first be declared ineligible for the functions they are instituting, and political parties must not be able to exert a monopolistic control over the process of designating candidates; free and independent candidates must be equally supported, both financially and by the media.

See all referred texts here (French)