We the people...

A proposal for a European Constituent Assembly

On October 1, the first national assembly of DiEM25 activists in Italy took place in Naples. The result was a proposal for a campaign on the European Constituent Assembly, below.
This proposal is aimed at all Italian DiEM25 DSCs (local groups) and activists, as a basis for a national campaign of DiEM25 in Italy. We also ask DSCs and DiEM25 activists of throughout Europe to discuss this proposal and share their thoughts, with a view to this gaining widespread support within the movement and ultimately becoming official DiEM25 policy.
Meanwhile, we’ll continue to develop this proposal, together with the Italian thematic committee on the European Constitution, open to all DiEM25 activists interested. We encourage all  European activists interested in the issue to create thematic committees on it, including at national level, and to share with the movement their conclusions.


DiEM25’s Manifesto foresees, as a mid-term goal (two years’ time), the convening of a pan-European Constituent Assembly ‘empowered to decide on a future democratic constitution that will replace all existing European Treaties within a decade’.
As DiEM25 Italy, we believe that creating a united, democratic, federal Europe by 2025 is the core of the political project of our movement, as the very name Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 illustrates. Capturing the citizens’ drive, in all the countries of the Union, to have their say, and believing that we cannot leave referendums in the hands of reactionary and nationalist forces, we therefore propose that DiEM25 launch a pan-European campaign to hold a non-binding referendum for the whole continent. The goal: to ask the Europeans to elect a Constituent Assembly for the EU together with the 2024 European elections. This Assembly would then write a democratic constitution that would replace all existing European Treaties.
To achieve this, DiEM25 should contact all local, regional and national representatives and institutions, so they can share our cause and host the electoral ballots on the day of the referendum. DiEM25 should also engage with associations, movements, trade unions and social forces spread on the continent so that they can support the cause of the referendum and share their buildings to host the electoral ballots, should the institutions be unwilling to cooperate.
To increase participation – especially in those territories where it might be impossible to install electoral ballots – we should develop an electronic voting system guaranteeing safe and non-manipulated casting of votes. We believe DiEM25 should tap into the 2019 European election campaign to launch the proposal for the referendum – to be held approximately by the end of 2019 – and that, should the results be in favour of the Constituent Assembly, the European Parliament should hold the elections of the Constituent Assembly together with the 2024 European elections.
Should DiEM25 decide to establish its own ‘electoral wing’ and candidate it to the 2019 European elections, we ask that the proposal for the referendum become the key point of that electoral campaign, together with the European New Deal, and that DiEM25 employ its MEPs to support the referendum and its results.
From now on, until 2019, DiEM25 should engage with local institutions and representatives, social, political forces, and trade unions, so that, when the 2019 electoral campaign starts, the proposal of the referendum will have solid bases to rely upon.
This should be the core campaign for DiEM25: a campaign that has the capacity to unite the movement at the local, national and European level in order to achieve what DiEM25 was born for – because Europe will be democratised, or it will disintegrate!
 

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