MANIFESTO NFI 2007 MANIFESTO FOR A NEW EUROPE - ΜΑΝΙΦΕΣΤΟ ΓΙ | Page 18

Manifesto for a New Europe
participatory development, the network structures in question
lack transparency. What is particularly unclear is the democratic
legitimacy of the civil society organisations involved in Com-
munity decision-making and discussion processes. As a result,
big interest groups and lobbies, such as confederations of in-
dustries, find it easier to assert their interests than less power-
ful civil society groupings.
These democratic deficits culminate in mounting scepti-
cism among citizens vis-à-vis Community decision-making
processes, causing loyalty to wane and disaffection to grow.
Shrinking voter turnouts in elections to the European Parliament
and the rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty are signs of
dwindling support. Dynamic PR work alone will not suffice to
halt this development.
Moreover, decision-making structures and systems of
the Community bodies, especially of the Council of Minis-
ters, tend to favour the interests of big states. The consensus
principle leaves little scope for marginalised interests to form
coalitions.
Even though, the EU is not a state modelled on the West-
phalian Order, it has developed pronounced features of statism,
indeed even of the ‘authoritarian state’. In the discourse on
‘internal security’ more and more constitutional ‘safety devices’
are being dismantled and the ‘authoritarian state’ is enabled to
interfere with people’s lives and privacy. Large-scale electronic
surveillance and the exchange of data within the Schengen
information system endanger both the informational self-de-
termination of citizens and democracy as such. There can be
no democracy without guaranteed rule of law and the observ-
ance of human rights.
WE DEMAND
The EU needs to be democratised by way of constitutionalisa-
tion. The Constitutional Treaty of the EU has to be revised with
a view to putting fundamental and human rights at the centre,
while putting the Community’s prevailing economic targets
into perspective. When crafting decision-making procedures,
small and less powerful members of the community of states
must not be disadvantaged, and the principles of transparency
and equal vote must be upheld (majority principle and public
deliberation procedures). All EU citizens must be given the op-
portunity to vote on the Constitutional Treaty.
Citizens’ rights of participation must be extended to all lev-
els of the multi-level system, so that Europe’s sovereign citizens
can exercise their dispositive power. The directly elected Euro-
pean Parliament must be given full democratic, parliamentary
powers and must be enlarged by a second chamber of nation-
state representatives. This ‘federalisation’ of the Community
needs to be complemented, in a spirit of transparency and
equality, by the integration of European civil society groupings –
third chambers for public debate and dispute at Community
and regional levels. This proposal implies that Europe’s civil
society has to be reshaped and its purpose extended beyond
serving as a means of legitimisation.
A democratic Europe is conditional on a social Europe. The
principle of ‘social democracy’ counteracts a purely competi-
tive orientation of the EU. Social rights are the basis on which
EU citizens can exercise their political rights and become active
18 International Friends of Nature
‘citoyens’. The process of depolitisation can only be counter-
acted by social democracy.
Democratisation is also conditional on enforcing and
guaranteeing information security and on protection from
interference by the authoritarian state. Human and citizens’
rights must not be restricted on the pretext of safeguarding
‘internal security’.