Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Giscard regrets constitution sent to French people

It was a crucial mistake to send out the entire constitution to every French voter, the architect of the EU's first constitution Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has said in an interview. In an interview with the New York Times, the former French president apportions most of the blame to president Jacques Chirac for failure in the referendum campaign. One crucial mistake was to send out the entire three-part, 448-article document to every French voter, said Mr Giscard. Over the phone he had warned Mr Chirac already in March: "I said, 'Don't do it, don't do it'". "It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text". "The present generation of leaders, whatever their strengths, never put Europe at the top of their agenda". Today Mr Giscard believes the constitution probably would have passed in France if the EU leaders had not left open the possibility of full EU membership for Turkey. This week the bloc's leaders will meet in Brussels to decide the fate of the constitution, or "my document", as Mr Giscard puts it. The ratification process should continue across Europe, the former president advises and predicts: "In the end, it will pass", he added. "There is no better solution".

3 Comments:

At June 15, 2005 9:36 PM, Blogger Crusader Rabbit said...

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."
-James Madison

 
At June 16, 2005 12:21 AM, Blogger Don Miguel said...

rune,

That sounds like something Goebbels or Hitler would have said.

 
At June 16, 2005 5:30 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

"It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text".

This neatly sums up the EU "Constitution". 300 plus pages of gibberish that only the author purports to understand. No wonder it was rejected - I'm surprised that many people did vote in favour of this piece of trash.

 

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