Confession Campaign

During the "Parties Confession Survey" organized by the European Referendum Campaign only about 30% of more than 250 parties asked committed themselves to be in favour of a referendum on the EU constitution. In contrast to that 84% of the EU citizens are in favour of a referendum. The conclusion is that most parties do not represent their voters' demands. It shows very clearly that although all parties want to be elected by the people, most of them want to use their mandates for ruling as they please.

The result was presented on a press conference in the European Parliament on June 2, 2004.

Apart from Thomas Rupp and Marian Zdeb, who were representing the ERC, politicians from Denmark (Jens-Peter Bonde, June Movement), Germany (Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, FDP) and France (Geraldine Philibert, counsellor of the UMP) were also present.

The primary goal of the conference was achieved: we managed to attract a lot of attention of the media to the outcome of the Confession Campaign. The event has been broadly presented in many influential, opinion-making journals from Spain (El Pais), Austria (Der Standard), Belgium (De Standaard, De Morgen), France (Le Figaro) and Brussels (euobserver.com).

The politicians were interviewed by a German TV station ZDF and a German radio station Hessischer Rundfunk (HR).

Apart from the few parties who respect the people's wish for referendums the citizens obviously cannot count on the support of most of the EP candidates in this question. The voters should consider this fact when they are casting their ballot.

91 parties spoke in favour of a referendum on the EU Constitution. Here you see which parties were willing to let the citizens decide about the EU Constitution.

The elections for the European Parliament would have been a good opportunity for the parties to inform citizens about the content of the EU Constitution. But the chiefs of governments and heads of states agreed to agree on the draft EU Constitution only on June 18, 2004, only one week AFTER the elections. So the content of the EU Constitution was not the main topic of the election-campaigns. They were mostly dominated by national topics.

The Confession Campaign aimed at making the parties state publicly whether they are in favour of a referendum on the EU Constitution.

We are still is convinced that the best way to inform the citizens about the content of the EU Constitution is to hold fair referendums in all countries concerned.