These two situations
June 23, 2007Today, the European leaders agreed upon a new treaty, to replace the shot-down constitution. In The Netherlands, where we voted against the original treaty in a referendum, this has been a major discussion point for months now. The big question is whether or not our government will issue another referendum; if they don’t, they lose face, if they do, it will be shot down again.
Anyway, if we get to vote, I will again vote “no”. There are two major reasons for this.
- The treaty does not speak of the ridiculous situation where the European Parliament is seated in both Strassbourg and Brussels/Bruxelles. This is a money-wasting and bureaucratic nightmare, and should have never been allowed to become a reality in the first place. The European capitol is Brussels/Bruxelles, and that’s the end of it.
- The official internal language of the EU should be English. Currently, a whole army of translators are needed to translate all the proceedings, live, so that all countries’ representatives can speak their native language. This is a ridiculously expensive situation. I’m as much a nationalist as the next guy, but there’s a limit to everything. Come on lazy French, time to learn English, goddamnit.
I will vote “no” against any referendum concerning the EU as long as these two situations are not addressed. These are relics form the past, and the apparent inability to address them tells me that the EU is not at all ready to move on into the future.
Politics | 
I hope they let the voters decide, because for the most part it seems like the constitution except using the word treaty instead, probably trying to bypass the need for referendums?
Comment by Andrew — June 24, 2007 @ 2:00 am
Interesting to hear a European say that everyone should speak English…that’s usually a very American attitude ;-).
Comment by jayson knight — June 24, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
I agree with you about moving the capital exclusively to Bruxelles (even though it would be fun to be the first national entity with a “backup capital”).
Regarding the English language problem, I think you don’t have very clear the cultural situation in southern Europe (I’m Italian BTW). Aside from France (which shows a stubborn and proud ignorance of the language, although a lot is changing), you should remember other countries like Greece, Spain and Italy (I would even include Germany) AND all the newly included eastern Europe countries.
Now I won’t judge all the other countries I mentioned, but regarding my own I can tell you that our politicians are able to speak in such an embarrassing way to make you want to pay yourself for an interpreter! Although I hope it’s not the same for our neighbors I can assume a similar situation. Obliging those people to speak in a language they often don’t even know would probably save all the paycheck for the interpreters but block all the parliament activities. And you tell me what’s more expensive.
I totally agree in principle with you, there should be one and only one language spoken in the parliament, but that’s something you can’t achieve in a short term and shouldn’t be the only reason to vote against a referendum.
I hope I made my point clear.
Comment by /V — June 25, 2007 @ 12:42 pm