>Why are the Euros rejecting the EU constitution?
>Anyone?

Well, living in holland and I had the chance to vote for or against the EU constitution last week, I can tell the following.

- First of all the EU constitution is half a phonebook thick and in general people don't have a clue what is in it or what its consecuences are.

- The former is caused by the arrogant attitude of our politicians that we accept blindly what they propose. They did a terrible job in telling the people what this EU constituation means to us. As a result people say no to anything they do not understand.

- Also, for the first time in history we could directly vote for or against a decision other than the elections. I don't know the exact english word for this, but we call it a "referendum". A lot of people now used their right to vote to directly tell our politicians they did a poor job and they should pay attention to the voice of the people. On the news they drew parallels to the murdered politician "Pim Fortuyn" who shocked the classic policitcian in his "Normal people" approach to politics. Since he got murdered just before the election and the party of Pim Fortuyn made a real mess without its strong leader, the "classic" politicians thought the storm would lay down. However the people still have no confidence in our politicians as they are too far away from "Joe average"....

- There are also other things. In holland we have a liberal drug policy and we really want to keep it. Not because we like to get stoned all the time, but because it takes away from the criminal arena and as a result a lot less problems arise (less theft, less serious drug addition, etc). The constitution could throw away what we have build up in decades within one signature.

- Holland is by far the biggest netto payer (most euros per citizen) by twice to number 2 and by 4 to number 3. So we pay a hell of a lot to brussels (the european capital) and the citizens don't like that, esspecially now the economy has fallen a lot the last few years.


However, In general I don't think the dutch are against a EU constitution, but the way it is pushed down our throats withouth know what we vote for. We'd like to have more information what it means and what the consequences are. Also we'd like to see our contribution to the EU come down. We'd like the politicians to listen to us and keep us updated in understandable language. I do consider myself quite educated, but from the media I did learn very little about what this was all about. Hell, if I don't know, how can I expect elderly and less educated people to know what it is about ??

But to make clear, there is a EU union, there is a EURO currency. That is going to stay. The EU union will still make decision about economical issues. However they have to do a better job in constructing, explaining and promoting this....

Walter,