The Voluntary Option

After the second referendum, Ireland has now accepted the Treaty of Lisbon. Sure, it was not very elegant but the process is now engaged. Generation 112 thinks that the arguments of Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, are deeply old-fashioned [1]. Generation 112 now wants to take advantage of the right of initiative as included in article 11 of the Lisbon treaty as fast as possible. We’d like the European Commission to establish a Civic Erasmus programme. The Civic Erasmus programme will be open for both boys and for girls. Young Europeans spending a certain time abroad will have the possibility to engage in a local humanitarian association. In order to carry out this new European project:

1) The Erasmus programme must be generalized via a more generous grant system, e.g. more bursaries for those who need it the most.

2) Young apprentices and young farmers must get the chance to participate in the project as well .

Being aware of the fact that the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon will still take several weeks and that new regulations concerning the new right to initiative will be made only after a european regulation under the Co-decision procedure, we urgently ask the Czech president to not look behind him anymore and to accelerate the procedure as fast as possible.

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1) The Czechoslovak government led by Edvard Bene ordered, after the following of the second world war, that all German speakers in the Sudentland region of Czechoslovakia should be deported and their property seized. Klaus now claims that the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is incorporated in the Lisbon Treaty, might become the basis for property restitution lawsuits by descendants of those German-speakers