Zweedse Groenen tevreden met 'Neen' tegen euro

• 2003-09-15

SWEDISH GREENS ON SWEDISH EURO-NO: GOOD FOR GREENS

Swedish Euro-no is a great success for Green ambitions to make European cooperation more democratic, less centralized, more sustainable and more open to countries and peoples outside the European Union.


Per Gahrton, Member of the European Parliament - Green Party of Sweden:

Now the Swedish government must enter the Intergovernmental Conference on the EU Constitution with a clear goal - to change the centralistic product of the Convention profoundly in order to make the EU more flexible and less bureaucratic.The EU should concentrate on some few core activities of genuinly transboundary importancem such as environmental rules and limits for pollution and emissions into air and water. Several of present EU competencies should be decentralized, such as agriculture. The EU should get i more flexible structure where all member states do not have to participate in all aspects of cooperation, such as is already the case with Schengen and the EMU. Also judicial and defence matters may be areas where some EU-states prefer to retain an alternative policy. Overall the EU must outsource activities that are already dealt with better by other existing organisations , such as the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the UN etc.

Such a reformed EU would have much greater possibility to bridge the enormous gorge separating the EU-power elite from the populations in most EU states. Such an EU, based on real decentralized democracy, would also be more of a real alternative to the USA than a EU Superstate that would be a bad copy of the USA.

The Swedish no to the euro is an internationalist no to the further strengthening of Fortress Europe, a no to the egocentric, antisolidary EU that has once more manfested itself in Cancun by joining the USA in order to counter the just demands by the developing countries.