arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30 2001

THE European Union is failing its people and the number of critics of its operation are growing by the day, a damning report circulating among its leaders concludes.
The EU is facing an identity crisis and a wide gulf is opening between the people and Brussels, the current presidency of the EU has concluded. The report will be seized by eurosceptics for use in their campaign against British membership of the euro.

Comment : not only by Eurosceptics I think.
Other thing : how about Verhofstadt's (some say : Mr.
Verafstoot which means Mr. Disgust)plan de campagne
to desinform citizens and sceptics and draw us/them
into the broadening of EU-based capitalism ?

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The report says that citizens find that the EU is involved too little in the issues that matter and interfering too much in matters best left to national governments and parliaments. They also find that too much is being done behind closed doors, without their knowledge or democratic control.

Europe must reform and "reinvent itself", says the report, which was presented to Tony Blair on Monday.

The picture it paints of an EU that has lost its way is remarkably frank. Even more surprising is the fact that its author is Belgium, one of the original six founders of the old Common Market, the headquarters of the organisation, and traditionally one of its most pro-integrationist members.

Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister, who drew up the report after consultations with a committee of "wise men", including Jacques Delors, the federalist former President of the European Commission, and former Prime Ministers from Belgium and Italy, discussed the paper with Mr Blair in No 10 on Monday.

Comment : Which shows that you'd better not underestimate these boys.

The Times has obtained a copy of the document, The Future of the European Union, which will become an EU declaration at the summit in Laeken, Belgium, in two weeks. It will lay the groundwork for the next major conference on Europe's future in 2004.

The paper was discussed last night by Mr Blair and President Chirac during the regular half-yearly Anglo-French summit in Downing Street. They agreed that the draft requires several changes.

The French Government, in particular, believes that the draft prejudges too many issues that should be debated further and decided by heads of government in 2004.

The draft contains a series of controversial proposals that will be unacceptable to Britain, including the idea of an all-EU constitution and enshrining the Charter of Fundamental Rights into EU law, which Mr Blair successfully fought at the Nice summit last year.

It floats the idea of crossEuropean political parties, a European "political area", the direct election of the European President, and proposals further extensions of qualified majority voting. Other proposals, including the drawing-up a new division of responsibilities between the EU and individual member states, are strongly backed by Britain.

However, it is the open admission of the EU's failings that will be most noticed, and which apparently surprised Mr Blair when he first saw the document.

Michael Ancram, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that he was not surprised by the document's conclusions. "I find increasing numbers of people who believe that the EU is alienating its citizens. The alienation of people from Europe's institutions has finally struck home," he said.

Dominic Cummings, campaign director of Business for Sterling said: "This document shows the extent of the problems facing the EU. The euro economies are in in trouble and the EU institutions are both ineffective and undemocratic. This is exactly why the British Government's priority ought to be the radical reform of the EU that even the Prime Minister has admitted it needs. Our priority certainly should not be joining the flawed euro experiment."