EUROPE of Free Citizens - The Vision without Limits

More than 10 years ago the "Citizen's Initiative for the Europe of the Citizens" (Bürgerinitiative für das Europa der Bürger), in Munich, Germany, began to work on a Constitution for Europe as an "alternative to the Maastricht-Europe". From this work the vision of the "Europe of Free Citizens" was derived.

The basic reason for starting the Citizen's Initiative was the feeling that the era which has started after the end of World War II has come to an end, that we needed to find an entry into a new era, but that the "Maastricht-Europe" was definitely the wrong way to go.

On 17 November 2002, at the "European Referendum Campaign's" international conference, in Bratislava, Slovakia, the citizen's initiative presented the vision of a "Europe of Free Citizens" for the first time.

This presentation of the vision of the "Europe of Free Citizens" consisted of two parts.

The 1st part was a collection of state philosophial and democratic principles, very simply presented, and put into systematical form to serve as background and foundation for a European Constitution. The roots of these ideas go as far back as Plato but were all presented in modern language and modern concepts.

The 2nd part of this presentation contains the outline of a European Constitution and is derived from the first part. It explains which institutions will be needed for a functioning European State. This is drafted in such a way as to be capable to serve us far into the 2nd half of this century.

The European Constitution and the future European State are defined from the bottom up and not from the state down. That means the citizens are at the center of the state and all the power comes from the citizens. The Basic Rights are the core from which the state and its constitution are built.

The vision of this future European State has the form of a confederation. Its objective is to improve the quality of life for all its citizens so that everyone can benefit equally.

This means that this state will not support the concept that our lives should be determined so much by the economic factors. There are many other qualities to life and these need to be developed as well.

The reason for creating this vision was the conclusion that our current system has reached its final stage in many ways. Therefore we need a completely new start and a completely new system and organisation of our lives, to be implemented gradually with a long term view.

And we need to start soon because we may be running out of time quicker than we realise.