Bill's Comment Page

EU – European Convention – Draft Constitution

The European Convention, headed by former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, published Volume I, Revised text of part one of the proposed Treaty to establish a Constitution for the European Union (document CONV 724/03) on 26th May 2003. You can download the full text of this document and other texts in draft format, in English, by visiting the EU European Convention website and clicking on the relevant links from that page. (NB/ All documents appear to be in PDF format so you will require a PDF reader to access them; if you do not already have this, it is available for free download from www.adobe.com) The documents are also available in the other official languages if the EU, if you require these.

Whilst I am generally in favour of further integration within the European Union, it is inevitable that there will be much ‘horse-trading’ between the Member States (present and prospective) before compromises are reached allowing some form of revised Treaty establishing the EU Constitution to be adopted by the member States.

Within the UK there is already much debate about precisely what the Constitution will mean for British sovereignty; in other Member States, specially some of those with smaller populations, there is a fear that the establishing of a fixed Presidency (rather than the rotating six-monthly Presidencies we have at present) will reduce their importance and ability to influence events when compared with member States with larger populations.

The other major EU-related debate within the UK at present relates to whether we should adopt the Euro € as our currency; again, I am generally in favour of this, but I certainly recognise that our adoption of the common currency would have major impact on the management of the British economy in terms of interest rates, employment levels and competitivity. It is good that we are having the debate as, perhaps, some of those countries which have already joined have begun to realise (for example, Germany with its high unemployment levels or Ireland with its high levels of inflation).

The British Labour government of Tony Blair has adopted the position, at present, that adoption of the Constitutional Treaty does not require a referendum and that as a ‘representative democracy’ it is more appropriate for this decision to be taken by Parliament, because the general public would not be in a position to judge the issue on its merits. The government further states that the Constitutional Treaty is merely a ‘tidying up’ of the present position by consolidating existing Treaties into one document. I find the basic premise of these arguments to be wrong (not to say outrageous); if the British people are not considered competent to judge such matters then there really seems little point in having a vote at all. No, this matter needs to be decided by all of us, and we must all be prepared to accept the outcome, whatever it is, whether it represents our own views or not. This is the difference between a democracy and a dicatorship, Mr Blair.