A European Constitution that is not founded on the principles of peace? That is the doubt expressed in a document entitled “Peace, European Constitution and NATO”, signed to coincide with the opening of the Intergovernmental Conference on the European Constitution. Its signatories include Father Alex Zanotelli, Father Luigi Ciotti and Gino Strada, who head some important pressure groups active in the social field in Italy. “In the new Constitution of the European Union says the document it seems clear that peace is not one of the principles on which the Union’s foreign policy is founded, but is only one of the objectives of its action, and that the repudiation of war is never taken into consideration”. From the European Constitution it emerges, moreover, “that peace may be interrupted by military missions contemplated for military assistance, the prevention of conflicts, the maintenance of peace, combat in crisis management, stabilization at the end of conflicts, and the fight against terrorism, even on the territory of third states”. “It is incredible says the document that the new Constitution should make provision for ‘a European agency for armaments’ and also a Fund formed by the contributions of member states”. All this “does not take into account the new European sensibility expressed by the great peace demonstrations in the capitals of Europe on 15 February”. The document also invites reflection on the role played, and the influence exerted, by NATO in the European Union, especially because the main change within the Alliance in recent years has been the “new strategic concept” defined in the Washington summit of 1999. “It radically transformed the Alliance from a defensive to an offensive organization, a means of asserting the interests of member countries in any part of the world in which they feel themselves threatened”, says the document. Moreover, “in the Prague summit this year, NATO substantially embraced the strategy of ‘preventive attack’, enunciated last year and immediately put into practice by Washington”. In Italy, over 800 associations, groups and movements delivered to the President of the European Commission Romano Prodi an appeal for a clear clause of the repudiation of war to be inserted in article 2 of the Constitution.
