PETITION OF THE CITIZENS OF EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES
AGAINST LISBON TREATY RATIFICATION

12.769 + ?

We, the citizens of the sovereign countries of the European Union, aware of our civil rights and in an effort to prevent steps leading to a bureaucratic lack of freedom across Europe, hereby express our disapproval of the Lisbon Treaty ratification.

The Lisbon Treaty is basically the European Constitution, which has already been rejected once. It gives the EU new powers to the detriment of the member countries (the right to veto measures is cancelled 68 times). It takes away our independent foreign, economic, social and energy policies and much more. Countries will lose control over indirect tax rates.

The Lisbon Treaty gives the EU the opportunity to acquire new powers and to cancel vetoes in other areas without any additional ratification. (Section 48, whose paragraph 7 enables the council to continue to increase the number of areas in which Brussels makes decisions and in which it makes decisions by qualified majority. In the future, such extension will not require the approval by the parliaments or citizens of the individual member countries, as was the case until now.)

The Lisbon Treaty increases the power of unelected bureaucrats: it extends the so-called “flexibility clause” under which only civil servants of the European Commission can issue binding decisions on trading standards, for example. Even now, there are ten times more such decisions than the number of directives discussed by the European Council and European Parliament.

In addition, the Lisbon Treaty reduces the weight of votes of smaller countries’ representatives in the Council of Ministers and increases the weight of large countries’ votes. Three of the four large countries (Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain) may at any time obstruct any of the European Commission’s plans. On the other hand, it is sufficient for them to get the support of eleven countries, no matter how small, to push through what they need – 55 per cent of the countries with 65 per cent of the population are sufficient, as compared with the current situation where each country has a veto. It destroys the sovereignty of the smaller countries in a number of important areas, making them dependent territories under the rule of a higher power. Member countries will no longer have a commissioner in each commission, thereby losing a large portion of their influence on the Union’s decision-making process.

On the basis of the above, we refuse ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and ask the governments of the various countries, in the interests of maintaining the liberty of the nations and their future generations, to initiate negotiations on a new direction for the European Union, to be built on equality and true liberty without bureaucratic regulations.

Prague - 2. 5. 2009

Petition initiator at the European level:

FREE CITIZENS' PARTY
Tržiště 1
PO BOX 51
118 00 Praha 1
Česká republika
petition@svobodni.cz

Author of the idea of this form of freely expressing the opinion
of the citizens of all European Union member countries: František Matějka