Voters in Luxembourg briefly revived the European constitution on Sunday when they strongly endorsed the measure weeks after emphatic "no" votes in France and Holland.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who had threatened to resign if the Grand Duchy had voted the same way, emerged triumphant after the constitution was approved by 56.52 percent to 43.48 percent.
As an arch-federalist, Juncker immediately attempted to use the results to keep the debate alive.
"If Luxembourg had said `no' the constitution would have been dead," he declared on Sunday night.
As Luxembourg has said "yes" the process can go ahead. There is a way for the European constitution to be adopted.
"If Luxembourg had said `no,' Europe would have been in an ultra-serious crisis. Now that Luxembourg has voted `yes,' Europe is still in crisis, but there is a silver lining," he said.
The Luxembourg prime minister earlier concluded that French and Dutch "no" votes were not a rejection of the constitution but were motivated by other concerns. On Sunday he appeared to suggest that only Luxembourg has a veto.
However, Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, offered Juncker some hope Sunday night when he hailed the vote as "a strong signal" that most European countries support the constitution.
Every other EU member to have approved the constitution has relied on a parliamentary vote, except for Spain. Barroso balanced his upbeat language by admitting that the future of the constitution is "uncertain."
Choosing his words carefully German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said: "It is an encouragement and invitation to all Europeans to seek joint ways of quickly overcoming the current crisis."
The remarks reflect the private view of many European leaders who believe it is all but impossible to see how the constitution can survive the double rejection by voters in France and the Netherlands on May 29 and June 1.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema