Dear Madam, Dear Sir,

On November 19, at a dinner that you want to be historic, you intend to appoint the first president of the European Council as it is defined by the Treaty of Lisbon.

This dinner will indeed be historic because it reveals once again how little attention you pay to democratic considerations in the nomination of the highest two representatives of the European Union, the President of European Council and the Foreign Minister.

Whatever you may say, these two positions are essential to EU international policy and European governance cohesion. For the first time ever in History, Europe as a democratic political entity equips itself with this kind of institutions. This is a very meaningful signal for EU citizens and as world’s biggest economic power.

These representatives will be the official representatives of the EU and the privileged interlocutors of the international community. In the name of whatever democratic principles remain in the functioning of the European Union, they must be elected as transparently as possible.

Instead, and despite the fact that the Lisbon Treaty is not yet implemented, you intend to decide, during a dinner organised in haste, who these representatives will be, without anyone knowing what their convictions – or at least opinions - are, and without anyone seeing the least draft of what their program will be!

We, European citizens, cannot be satisfied with a simple dinner being at the origin of the choice of the two most important representatives of the European Union on the world stage, nor can we allow the EU to be ran in the next two and half year by puppets whose names came out of a hat between two courses and three glasses of wine!

Newropeans’ position is clear in this regard. We stick to the guiding lines of our Madrid Declaration drafted on the eve of the Lisbon summit in 2007.

In a true democratic process - since some of you still talk about democracy while appointing in this manner the representatives of 500 million Europeans -, the two main representatives of the European people would have been elected by the European citizens or, at least, by their elected representatives in the European Parliament, in light of a comprehensive political programme including clear commitments on strategic aspects of European policy: social and economic crisis, environment, enlargements, etc ...

We, European citizens and Newropeans, the first European political party which 100 million Europeans could vote for in the June 2009 European election, request that you nominate our two highest representatives along a process as transparent and democratic as possible, and show some sense of decency and responsibility to the citizens that you represent!

Any other process will contribute to widen further the gap between European citizens and European institutions, and to weaken the European Union both in its internal functioning and on the international level.

Newropeans

Newropeans strongly opposes the continuation of European military involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

The USA have independently decided to send a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, assuming this is the answer to the problems of Afghanistan. Furthermore, they expect the Europeans to send between 5 000 and 10 000 additional troops without any kind of European involvement in a joint assessment of the future strategy for Afghanistan.

As Newropeans stated in it’s international policy programme, we are against the notion of the EU increasing it’s global influence through military means and are in favour of EU foreign policy and defence issues being under European democratic control. Current European involvement in the Afghan conflict is clearly following a contrary path on both aspects:

Not only are a large majority of our citizens against military involvement in this conflict; but our governments are by any means trying to prevent democratic processes from influencing their policies, submissive to Washington’s interests and not to their citizens’ will.

For Newropeans, as well as for an increasing number of European military experts, the war in Afghanistan has already been lost and attempts to escalate it will have a detrimental effect on democracy in Europe and to the reputation of Europe worldwide; not to mention the irresponsibility of putting young European soldiers lives at risk for absolutely nothing.

Therefore, we, the Newropeans strongly oppose the continuation of European military involvement in the war in Afghanistan. We ask you, the European governments, acting as representatives of the citizens of the EU to refuse the request from Washington to increase troops. Newropeans demands that the European Parliament proceeds to vote against further military support of EU member states in the war in Afghanistan by 2011.

Newropeans proposes the organization of an international conference concerning the future of Afghanistan involving the EU, the USA, Russia, Iran, China, the Arabic Gulf States, Central Asian states, Pakistan and India as well as all Afghan major stakeholders (including the Taliban). This conference should be organised by the EU and should take place in 2010. Then, a European strategy should be developed, coordinated by the newly appointed European Foreign Affairs Minister, and aimed at organizing European civil support toward an Afghan-own project for the future of Afghanistan.