Reply To: Proposed amendments to preliminary Article 1

[Jakub Jermar]

As for the suggested clause 5 and its saving part, it could look consistent with this federal constitution on the paper while in reality it could be quite the opposite. The former communist regimes were known for their willingness to break their own written rules / laws if it justified the cause. For this reason, I would suggest not to write blank checks like this and simply defer the decision to join or not to join the prospective World Federation to a later time when things will be more clear.

From the logic of our own approach to establishing the European federation, such a provision is not even needed because the decision whether to join the prospective World Federation will not be up to the European federation (as a state) but up to its citizens*. Maybe there is even a risk of putting something like that in our constitution as it reinforces the idea that states (or their constitutions) should somehow have a say in whether their citizens can form a federation or not.

On a more general note, I still think we should strive to make our constitution as small as possible. The more bells and whistles that are not absolutely essential for our goal, the more troubles during ratification.

*) I do realize the constitution expresses the will of the citizens