Treaty Ratification

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in East Anglian Daily Times on Thu 24th Jan 2008

The House of Commons has begun its marathon debate on the Bill which ratifies the EU's new constitutional treaty. MPs are expected to take up to three weeks to argue the matter, clause by clause, before the Bill passes to the House of Lords for similar, if more rapid, treatment.

As seen from mainland Europe, the British debate looks and sounds mighty odd. MPs seem to be transfixed on the single issue of how much the Treaty of Lisbon differs from the previous treaty which, in 2005, was rejected by referendums in France and Holland. Everywhere else, the focus of attention is on the more intelligent question of how the Treaty of Lisbon improves on the existing EU system.

The reason for this curious British behaviour is well known: Labour and the Liberal Democrats are (rightly) desperate to extricate themselves from their previous (foolish) promises to hold a referendum. They argue that the 2007 version of the new treaty is so different from the original 2004 version that all earlier pledges are null and void. Because the UK has now negotiated so many opt-outs from key areas of integration that claim is, indeed, more or less justifiable, at least for the UK.

The Tories, meanwhile, continue to pretend that they want a referendum. But do they really? Nothing would be more certain in a European referendum campaign than that Mr Cameron's party would be blown apart in a civil war.

The likelihood is that any referendum promoted to save the bacon of political parties too timid to shoulder the responsibility for taking decisions themselves, in Parliament, will rebound on those parties in the end. Harold Wilson's decision to save the Labour government by holding the first and only EU referendum, in 1975, served only to worsen the divisions in the Labour party until it eventually split a few years later with the foundation of the SDP. (The rest is history.)

So let's hope for a fair wind behind the Westminster debates. It is important that the relative strengths and weaknesses of the European Union, and of Britain's place within it, are given a good airing. It would be helpful for democracy, too, if the claptrap written by many British journalists about the EU were to begin to be modified by knowledge, tempered by integrity.

EADT readers who want to find out what the new treaty says and does not say are welcome to download my True Guide to the Treaty of Lisbon from my website www.andrewduff.eu.

Andrew Duff is the Liberal Democrat MEP for the East of England and was a member of the conference which drafted the Lisbon Treaty.