What some of the Constitution’s authors say about it
Hans Martin Bury
“The EU Constitution is the birth certificate of the United States of Europe.”
Source:Die Welt, 25-2-2005
Hans Martin Bury - German Minister for Europe
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Guy Verhofstadt
“The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State.”
Source: Financial Times, 21-6-2004
Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister
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Valery Giscard-d'Estaing
“Our Constitution cannot be reduced to a mere treaty for co-operation between governments. Anyone who has not yet grasped this fact deserves to wear the dunce’s cap.”
Source:Speech in Aachen accepting the
Charlemagne Prize for European integration, 29-5-2003
“It wasn't worth creating a negative commotion with the British. I rewrote my text with the word federal replaced by communautaire, which means exactly the same thing.”
Source: Wall Street Journal Europe, 7-7-2003
Valery Giscard-d'Estaing, President of the EU Convention
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Jean-Luc Dehaene
“We know that nine out of ten people will not have read the Constitution and will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes.”
Source: Irish Times, 2-6-2004
Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Belgian Prime Minister and Vice-President of the EU Convention
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Giuliano Amato
“In Europe one needs to act 'as if' - as if what was wanted was little, in order to obtain much, as if States were to remain sovereign to convince them to concede sovereignty ... The Commission in Brussels, for example, should act as if it were a technical instrument, in order to be able to be treated as a government. And so on by disguise and subterfuge”
Source: interview with Barbara Spinelli, La Stampa, 13-7-2000
Giuliano Amato, Italian Prime Minister and later Vice-President of the EU Convention which drafted the Constitution
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Gisela Stuart
“The Convention brought together a self-selected group of the European political elite, many of whom have their eyes on a career at a European level, which is dependent on more and more integration, and who see national parliaments and governments as an obstacle ... Not once in the sixteen months I spent on the Convention did representatives question whether deeper integration is what the people of Europe want, whether it serves their best interests or whether it provides the best basis for a sustainable structure for an expanding Union. The debates focused solely on where we could do more at European Union level ... None of the existing policies were questioned ... Consensus was achieved among those who were deemed to matter and those deemed to matter made it plain that the rest would not be allowed to wreck the final agreement.”
Source: Gisela Stuart MP, British Labour Party representative on the EU Convention and member of its Praesidium which drafted the Constitution, The Making of Europe's Constitution, Fabian Society, London, 2003
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Joschka Fischer
“Creating a single European State bound by one European Constitution is the decisive task of our time.”
Source: Daily Telegraph, 27-12-1998
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
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