A Yes-But Initiative
“ Yes to the Constitution, But with Democracy As Well”

Trans-European Petition
Let us democratize the European Union !

In order to further the democratization of the European Union, I, the undersigned, Mr. Mrs……, request the national and common governments of the European Union to institute the following four changes immediately or at the latest upon the adoption of the current draft of the Constitution :

A. To assure that all future amendments of the European Constitution should in the future be ratified by a trans-European referendum, with a simple double majority of citizens and of states (in other words, that in order to be adopted, an amendment should win more than 50% of the votes from the EU as a whole and in at least half of the member states).
B. To assure, according to the same logic of democracy, that any expansion of the EU should nevertheless submit to the same process of approval by trans-European referendum, to the simple double majority of citizens and of states. This procedure should be applied to all expansion subsequent to those involving Rumania, Bulgaria and Croatia.
C. To assure the automaticity of the transformation of all valid citizen petitions (as anticipated by the current draft of a European Constitution) into propositions of the European Commission to the Council and to European parliaments. So it’s a question of suppressing the current clause permitting the Commission to refuse the contents of a petition while respecting at the same time the criteria of validity in terms of signatures and of nationalities.
D. To immediately suppress judicial immunities that benefit functionaries of the European institutions, and to return to the latter accountability before the law in the countries where the institutions that employ them are located, in order to assure the equality of all Europeans before the law.

While assuring the right of citizens and European peoples :

first of all, to decide what essential changes will affect the functioning and the nature of the European Union (modifications of the Constitution and future expansion),
second of all, to be able to intitiate such changes,
and finally, to establish the equality of all European citizens before the law,
these four propositions describe the foundations of what I hope will tomorrow be a democratic European Union.

Translated by Emily Robin Jackson