Perfect definition, Yankee Dave! :-)

for the state of democracy in the top-down EUro-state.

The EU is viewed as the ideal for what the left in the UN and Canada want for our respective countries: a top-down collectivist tyranny run by bureaucrats and financial/business interests, with the base alloy of the hypocrisy of sham democracy.

No thanks.

It looks smaller because the enlightened ones in Europe had to compromise with those mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging Anglo-Saxons and use a ruler with the Imperial and Metric system on it. It's obvious that this kind of compromise diminishes us all.

It says, on the website, that "The European Parliament, the Council and the Commission cannot, whether acting in a legislative, administrative or policy-making role, ignore a text that they have solemnly proclaimed and is part of the draft European Constitution."

So it's enough to draft a Constitution. You don't have to bother getting it ratified or boring stuff like that. Sheds a new light on the concept of democratic accountability, doesn't it!

Bob Doney

@ Emigrantus

The physical size of bureaucratic booklets is not the real issue.

That the Constitution was too "big" is a very serious issue.  It was an attempt to 'cement' (forever) an ideology, i.e. to put it above the normal play of democratic politics and elections, and in that sense it was profoundly undemocratic (and even similar to the meaningless soviet constitution).  A democratic Constitution's purpose should be to highlight the basic rights of the INDIVIDUAL citizens and to circumscribe the organisation and powers of government, in order to protect citizens from whatever governments will result from the changing fortunes of electoral politics.  A Constitution should not be 'burdened' with platitudes about ideological goals.  They are the stuff for 'common' or normal legislation over which elections can be fought and refought.  

Instead of wasting time and money on tiny booklets, the Directorate General for Justice should better concern itself with ensuring that the rights of Europeans are ACTUALLY and EFFECTIVELY protected, instead of on paper.  So when the Belgian government actually violates its own constitution by passing legislation that violates freedom of opinion/expression, the Directorate General should 'fight' it.  Since it doesn't, adding the words "...for justice, freedom and security" (to its title) becomes indeed laughable.

The 'cowboys' in America have a Justice Department - not a Directorate General (sounds so sovietish, but French too!) -  in Washington DC, which regularly instigates legal action against individual american states when their 'local' legislation tramples on constitutional rights of citizens. 

The Euro-lovers are those who genuinely care about the INDIVIDUAL rights of European citizens, instead of about the ideological goals of current parties-in-power.

First the Constitution is too big. Now this booklet is too tiny. The good people at the Directorate General have feelings too, you know.