Wikitution:Project guidelines

From Wikitution

Pragmatism rules

We know that it may be fascinating for many people to write an utopic and perfect constitution, but we are writing a constitution for the European Union, which is quite a strange entity. Today there are 25 states, which are members of the EU. Our goal is to collaboratively create a constitution, which can be accepted by the majority of the european citizens in each member country. The constitution must be ratified in all (soon-to-be) 27 countries of the EU, don't forget this. So please be pragmatic!

European Point Of View (EPOV)

If you have written for Wikipedia, you may have heard about the "neutral point of view" (NPOV), which is a good guideline for encyclopedias and news-services, but we doubt that there is a neutral point of view, if you write your own constitution. If you think that europe needs a constitution and that you want to contribute to it, you have already shifted to a european point of view (EPOV). Today europe is a chimaere, it is more than just a federation of states but less than a real union. In daily political life the active participants are not the citizens of europe but representatives of the members states. The only exception is the european parliament, which is elected directly by the cititzens of europe. When you think, that the status quo isn't that bad, you are probably convinced, that europe does not need a constitution and you therefore you will not contribute. If this is your viewpoint, it's ok. But this is not our point of view.

We believe that europe needs a constitution and that we must improve the EU, first of all it must be more democratic and more "european", which means that more things shall be decided directly by the european citizens and not by officials of the member states.

Some basic guidelines may help to drive this work :

1. This constitution must be democratic :

• a) The source of democracy is people. An elected institution must therefore have more power than a non elected one.
• b) When a power (for instance the power to create new laws) is given to an institution, a control of the use of this power must be implemented and given to an other independant institution (for instance, a supreme court verify that new laws are not against constitutional rights)

2. A constitution must be easy to read : even if it is very complicated to write, the result must be easy to understand by anybody and not only by Doctors in law.

3. A constitution is talking about how institutions work and not about the policy that these institutions are going to implement. As long as it is democratic, anybody (from the left to the right ) must be able to adopt this constitution.

4. A constitution shall form the statutory framework for the legislation. Therefore, and in order to accomplish 2. and 3., it shall in no case contain laws that belong in a civil code. (Resolutions that have been passed by the institutions of the European Union before the commencement of the constitution may, within the framework, be introduced into a civil code.)

5. Amendment to this contitution must both require a strong consensus and be possible.