The EU Constitution Treaty is to be made "unreadable" in order to get it past the people and legislatures of Europe, says a former Italian prime minister:

"In comments posted on YouTube yesterday he [Giuliano Amato] said "EU leaders had decided that the document to be drawn up by an intergovernmental conference should be 'unreadable'.
"If this is the kind of document that the IGC will produce, any prime minister - imagine the UK prime minister - can go to the Commons and say 'Look, you see, it's absolutely unreadable, it's the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum'.
"Should you succeed in understanding it there might be some reason for a referendum, because it would mean that there is something new.''" (The Telegraph)

Not that anyone would really read the whole thing, anyway. Quite frankly, we all have better things to do with our time, and thus get our information on it from the media, who chew it up and regurgitate it in nice, manageable and understandable chunks for our perusal. But that they would deliberately make it a dense, unreadable document shows utter contempt for the people and legislatures of Europe. I expect them to make it end up as an unreadable document - but through their bureaucratic tendencies and general fondness of long words and complicated-sounding sentences, rather than through intentional design.

That such a thing could even be contemplated by an organisation that claims to be "democratic" - despite having a democratic deficit longer than your arm, and only supports "debate" where the public agrees with them - is horrendous. The EU is a seriously demented, sickened organisation if it believes itself to be a supporter of democracy and yet carries out these actions.

Any attempt at a Constitution or treaty that transfers any sovereignty, however small, to a supra-national organisation like the the EU should be ratified be a referendum. Britain doesn't have a history of referendums, but neither does it have much of a history of giving away integral pieces of sovereignty. Conservative governments have been wrong in giving away parts of our sovereignty to the EU without referendums as have Labour governments - and both have been wrong each and every time. But no more. Any treaty which hands the EU any extra power over us must be ratified by a referendum first. Whether it is called a treaty or a Constitution, if it gives Brussels any powers then the people must get to choose. The people may choose to go ahead with it, or they may not - but that is their - our - choice to make, not that of any government or Parliament.