Real democracy for Europe

On May 27th the Spanish Constitutional Court confirmed the Supreme Court Sentence whereby the members of the Basque electoral list Herritarren Zerrenda (HZ) are banned from standing in the elections on June 13th 2004 for the European Parliament.

Thus, the participants at such electoral list, as well as their possible voters, have found themselves deprived of the right of political participation, recognized by article 23 of the Spanish Constitution, without any final judicial sentence from any penal process, or from any civil process of incapacitation. The argument used for it, the continuity in the objectives or the militancy within an illegal political party, implies in addition an unjustifiable extension of a limiting norm of fundamental rights, the arguable Law of Political Parties, which being so should be subject of restrictive interpretation, and lets a part of our society out of legality and the representative democratic system.

Anyone who is not himself o herself deprived by a final judicial sentence of his/her right to constitute an electoral association, should be able to do it. And in elections in which there is a single constituency, as it happens in Spain as far as European elections are concerned, all the Spanish citizens -not only the probable voters of HZ, but everyone-, are perfectly entitled to have that electoral association running for the European Parliament, regardless of what consideration their political objectives deserve.

By means of their decisions, Spanish Supreme Court and Spanish Constitutional Court, on Spanish Government's initiative, have made an attempt against fundamental principles like legal equality and universal suffrage. Above all, when you take into account that at another electoral constituency, the French one, citizens can exercise their political rights under the same abbreviations.

With the aim of denouncing this situation, which undermines democratic legitimacy of the European Parliament that will be constituted after the elections on June 13th, demanding the rectification of the Law of Parties and vindicating the legal inclusion of all the political options, we make a call so that all the actors involved in the European construction demand the fulfillment of the European Convention on Human Rights from the Spanish State, agreement that establishes in its 11th article the following:

1. Everybody has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

2. No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, of the police or of the administration of the State.