In Aigina, Greece, a public meeting was held on 15th June, at the Maska bar, to celebrate the Irish "NO" to the Treaty of Lisbon. The meeting was called by the Enouranois website as a provisional solution to the problem of it so far not being possible to create a local ATTAC group in Aigina.

Following a description of the principles formulated by ATTAC as a necessity for inclusion in a democratic constitutional treaty it was shown how the Treaty of Lisbon failed to meet any of them, necessitating a campaign in support of a NO vote in Ireland .

"Irish Times" newspaper coverage was drawn on to describe official reactions to the Irish rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon. Specific mention was made of the reaction by Axel Schaefer, SPD leader of the German Bundestag committee on EU affairs. Mr. Schaefer was quoted by the Irish times as saying : "With all due respect for the Irish vote, we cannot allow the huge majority of Europe to be duped by a minority of a minority. It is a real cheek that the country that has benefited most from the EU should do this. There is no other Europe than this Treaty."

Two conflicting lines of thought were expressed in relation to this statement of Axel Schaefer. One line of thought, put forward by the Enouranois website, which is a signatory to the Saintes Appeal is that the "other Europe" to the Europe to the Europe of the Treaty of Lisbon is most succinctly encapsulated in the Saintes Appeal, and that Mr Schaefer and others of his viewpoint (that "There is no other Europe than this Treaty") should be invited to sign the Saintes Appeal so as to acquire membership in the "other Europe".

The other train of thought, put forward most articulately by Thanos Contargyris of ATTAC-Hellas, does not subscribe to the Saintes Appeal’s vision of a denuclearised Europe. Its viewpoint is closer to the view formulated in the text brought out last month under the auspices of the Mouvement de la Paix and signed, among others, by Hugo Braun of ATTAC Germany : "For a Europe of Peace and Solidarity"

The most important demarcation lines in the Nuclear Disarmament movement in Europe can be seen through comparison of these two statements emerging from two Nuclear Disarmament conferences held in France early in May.

The Mouvement de la Paix statement is really an anti-war statement, containing no committment whatsoever to abolition of nuclear power, and no committment to independent European nuclear disarmament.

The Mouvement de la Paix has no analysis of the specific unacceptability of French nuclear weapons comparable to the analyse of "The four-handed game of French nuclear policy" by Jean-Marie Matagne and other analyses made in the past by Diana Johnstone.*

However, both lines of thought in the Aigina meeting were in agreement that the basis for a new Constitutional Treaty can be found in Altiero Spinelli’s Draft Treaty Establishing the Europe Union, which was passed by the European Parliament in 1984. The disagreement was over whether Spinelli’s Draft Treaty can be supplemented by the Saintes Appeal to provide most of what is necessary for a new Constitutional Treaty.

Actually, the "other Europe" to the Europe of the Treaty of Lisbon is not reducible to, or encapsulable in, one statement or one text but must be elaborated by the democratically elected Constitutional Assembly that should be called upon to draft a new, politically and socially acceptable, Constitutional Treaty.

Aigina, Greece

Wayne Hall

*See also

In Denmark, former Danish MEP and chairman of the EU Democrats organisation, Jens Peter Bonde, called for the treaty to be shelved entirely.

“The treaty now needs to be archived together with the just-as-much rejected EU constitution . . . A new democracy process may start to find new rules of play which can unite us instead of splitting us,” he said.

“Why not elect a convention to establish draft rules with more transparency, closeness and democracy and then send the proposal for referendums in all EU member states at the same day,” he added.

In Austria, Siegfried Bernhauser from the Austrian branch of anti-globalisation movement Attac, called for a “completely fresh start”.

Mr Bernhauser, who has been in Ireland campaigning for a No vote since May, said his organisation was opposed to any attempt to “rewrite” the Lisbon Treaty.

“What we would like to see is a new treaty, a constitution for Europe, that is elaborated and adopted democratically,”