Different views on the Constitutional Treaty

Labour MEP Richard Corbett responds to Alan Milburn's article in The Times from 18 May on the Constitutional Treaty. You can read Alan Milburn's article by clicking here.

One of the most depressing features of the debate on Europe in Britain is the extent to which Eurosceptic assumptions and cliches and distortions permeate the debate, even to the extent of being taken as assumptions by those who should know better and those who claim to be pro-European.

Alan Milburn's article (18 April, The Times) rubbishing attempts to salvage parts of the Constitutional Treaty falls into this category. His article is riddled with such features:

• He claims that it is “the German Presidency of Angela Merkel” that wants “to resurrect” the Constitutional Treaty in the guise of a new treaty. No, this is not a German plot – it was agreed by all 27 governments to return to this issue at the June European Council and to try to find a way forward.

• He trots out the old tired Eurosceptic line that “turnout at European elections are a joke”. If so, then the US Congress is even more of a joke. Local Councils up and down Britain should be laughed out of court. Of course, turnout at European elections will never match the more important national elections – but the latter have been declining dramatically in recent decades, while turnout in European elections in Britain has been rising.

• So, “the EU speaks a bureaucratic language that is foreign to the public”. Unlike Westminster , of course, whose second readings on hybrid bills, early day motions, black rods, dissolutions and prorogations are all words that trip off the tongue every night at my local.

• “Too often it seems as if an unaccountable elite takes decisions behind closed doors” – yet it is precisely the Constitutional Treaty (itself drafted in public by a convention of MEPs) which would have required the Council always to meet in public and would anyway require all EU legislation to be approved not just by the Council of Ministers (each one of whom is accountable to his or her national parliament) but also by the European Parliament whose members are directly elected. It is a myth that the Commission takes all EU decisions.

• So, the results of “the” 2005 constitution referendums gave voice to scepticism. Never mind that more people voted in favour than against (if you add the various referendums together), nor that two thirds of the member states (18) have approved the Constitutional Treaty compared to the two that have rejected it. This is simply not a case of overwhelming rejection, but rather a case of divided opinion – and Alan Milburn's article offers nothing to show how we are going to bridge the gap between the 22 governments who say they wish to keep the constitution intact and those who wish to modify it.

• He refers to “a bureaucrat's Europe ” though he should know full well that the European Commission has fewer employees than Leeds City Council or the BBC and that anyway, they only have the power to propose not to decide.

Of course the EU has to demonstrate its relevance, to modernise its policies and to deliver for people. The problem arises when its institutional structure is not able to perform – or even when it is able to perform but is seen to be unaccountable. Just as Labour has modernised the structures of the British state, whilst remaining primarily focused on the economy, on education, on health etc, so the EU cannot entirely neglect the need to adapt its own structures as it continues to accept more and more members.

Milburn calls for action on “security and terror, the environment and immigration”. This is precisely the territory in which the Constitutional Treaty envisaged a more effective capacity for the EU to act.

Milburn opposes “grand institutional re-design” – yet even a cursory look at the Constitutional Treaty demonstrates that it is more a series of modest, incremental reforms to the current system than a new design.

If he indeed believes that “unaccountable decision making no longer works” and that a “new democratic thirst exists among citizens(which) requires from the EU a more modern modus operandi” then he is actually advocating precisely the sort of changes the constitutional changes the treaty would have brought in. The Constitutional Treaty enhances the role of national parliaments and of the European parliament in the EU system, it provides for greater transparency, it sets out more clearly what the EU can do and can't do, it strengthens subsidiarity and it takes up precisely Alan Milburn's suggestion that the people of Europe should have “a citizen's right to initiate new laws”.

If Alan Milburn and others were to take part in the debate not on the basis of what they have heard Eurosceptics say about the Constitutional Treaty, but on the basis of what that treaty actually contains – which is often precisely the opposite of what Eurosceptics claim – then we might have a more balanced debate in the UK . But if pro-Europeans give up the ghost before they even start, then those who want Britain to play a constructive role in Europe will have lost in advance.

Richard Corbett MEP

EPLP and Socialist Group Spokesperson on Constitutional Affairs