This page is part of the Proceedings of Wikimania 2005, Frankfurt, Germany.

Wikitution - The Constitution for Europe

Author(s): Jan Ulrich Hasecke
License: GFDL
Language: German (if required in English)
Slides: ?
Video: ?
Note: Short presentation (10 minutes)

About the author(s): Jan Ulrich Hasecke is the founder of Wikitution. He is a writer and runs some cultural and political internetprojects, for example www.sudelbuch.de, a satirical and essayist magazine, or www.generationenprojekt.de, a project collecting personal memories of historical events.

Abstract: In a multilingual wiki-project volunteers from several European countries try to save the idea of a European constitution, which seems to be dead after its rejection in referendum in France and the Netherlands. On Wikitution everybody can collaborate on a European constitution in their own language. The project was started in June 2005.

For pragmatic reasons the project leaders take the rejected, official draft of the constitution to improve upon, rather than writing a new constitution from scratch. They hope to cover all possible issues in this way.

According to its guidelines the aim of the project is to write a constitution, which can be accepted in all European countries. It shall be democratic and understandable. And the volunteers shall work with a European point of view, not with a national one.

A road map draft was written. First step is to provide the official draft in all native languages. After a first editing period a translation committee shall be elected, which will make a first common draft from all language versions. This draft will mark all major differences in the different language versions and is the basis for the second period of editing, where controversial questions will be decided by a voting process. After this the translation committee will work on a final common draft, which should then be handed over to the European parliament to be subject of a general European referendum.