UPDATE 11.03.2012
In bijlage vindt u de klacht van de B.U.B. dd. 9 maart 2012 aan de Europese Commissie en enkele leden van de Hongaarse regering omtrent de schending van artikel 195 van de Belgische grondwet.
En annexe, vous trouvez la plainte du B.U.B. du 9 mars 2012 auprès de la Commission européenne et quelques membres du gouvernement hongrois à propos de la violation de l’article 195 de la Constitution belge.
Als Anlage finden Sie die Klage der B.U.B. vom 9. März 2012 bei der Europäischen Kommission und bei einigen Mitgliedern der Ungarischen Regierung betreffend des Verstosses gegen Artikel 195 der Belgischen Verfassung.
Dear members of the European Commission,
Dear Ministers of the Hungarian Government,
The Belgian Parliament is currently revising the constitution in violation of the constitutional rights of the Belgian citizens. In fact, the situation is worse than what is happening in Hungary.
According to article 195 of the Belgian constitution, there should first be a declaration of revision followed by elections. Only after the new parliament is installed, there can be a revision, which must be limited to the articles in the declaration of revision.
The problem now is that the political parties, which negotiated the agreement to form a new federal government in December 2011, intend to revise articles that were not listed in the declaration of revision of 2007-2010. For this, they will, for the first time in Belgian history, suspend article 195 of the constitution, which is strictly forbidden by article 187 of the constitution, which provides that the constitution can never been suspended neither totally nor partially.
This inconstitutional manoeuvre in order to split Belgium up even more (in two, three or four parts – nobody really knows) is designed by the ruling parties to avoid the second step in the procedure of constitutional revision, i.e. the holding of elections. This is a very serious illegal act in a country without a tradition of referendums. As a consequence, the parliament creates a dangerous precedent by making it possible to revise the constitution in the same legislature without any prior democratic control.
Unfortunately, the Belgian constitutional court declares itself incompetent to supervise the application of article 195 of the constitution.
As a result, the European Commission is the last instance to stop this extreme violation of our basic rights as Belgian citizens.
Attached hereto, you will find our complaint in Dutch and French and the relevant documents.
We also refer to our text on our website (in Dutch and French), which compares the Belgian situation with the Hungarian one: http://www.unionbelge.be/?p=5186
We were also informed that our political adversaries, the “Flemish” nationalists of the N-VA, have filed a similar complaint with the Council of Europe and that it will be discussed at an urgent assembly on Monday 12 March. Although our complaint is completely independent from the latter, this coincidence proves that this is not a purely political move, but a sincere concern of free citizens who are struggling for more democracy in the multilingual Belgium.
We thank you very much for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Hans VAN DE CAUTER
President of the Belgian Union (B.U.B.)
