UK MEP, Andrew Duff, (ALDE) has just published a new book, ‘Saving the European Union; The logic of the Lisbon Treaty’, a robust defence of the Lisbon Treaty, cheekily illustrated with a photo of Gordon Brown grinning as he signed the Treaty.
Andrew Duff MEP (ALDE)
When asked what he was saving the EU from he replied, “From itself. From the present clumsy, inefficient ineffective EU we have under the present structure and an EU that can’t properly face up to the severe crisis we are now confronted with”.
Duff feels the Lisbon Treaty is “it’s not as good as some of the original proposals made by Giscard d’Estaing’s convention, but it is very good never the less. It will increase the capacity of the EU to act globally, will increase its effectiveness, efficiency and democracy and all of those things are essential”.
He’s less confident on the chances of the Treaty being adopted soon, “That depends on the Czechs and the Irish. I hope the Czech senate will be able to ratify it before too long, but with the Irish there’s a lot of persuasion to do there. We need to hear their complaints, the anxieties they expressed in the first referendum, but I think that we can appeal to their sense of generosity and set out the obvious point that Brussels is a safe place to be in a time of economic crisis”.
He thought that discussion of the Treaty was too often a discussion about people’s thoughts on Europe, rather than the actual document. “We’ve been too fixated on process, on how the treaty could be brought into force, and we’ve neglected the importance of its substance and that’s a pity”.
On referendums he said “It’s up to each state to decide the process of ratifying the Treaty, but they’ve all agreed in principle that it needs to be brought into effect. Some have gone the parliamentary route, others have chosen a plebiscite and that’s fair enough but one shouldn’t underestimate the seriousness of the consequences should the Irish get it wrong twice.
Looking forward to after the European Parliament elections, Duff wasn’t sure that the results would be but he hoped that the new parliament would want to exploit the new powers granted to it in the Lisbon Treaty.
Describing his motivations for writing the book, Duff explained that If you wish to understand a complicated, long and sometimes obscure treaty, you need to write about it as well as read it.” The book was written to “try to drag back debate onto the treaty itself” and he declared his aim was to “persuade the Czech senate and Irish people to change their minds on the Treaty”.
He admitted that he had changed his mind on the the process of drafting the treaty, saying, “We were wrong to claim that this treaty and its predecessors would be a settlement of the issue of building the EU. That put people off, it frightened quite a lot of people, especially when Giscard d’Estaing said this would be cast in concrete for fifty years. I think that was a mistake, we should have said that this is the optimum we can achieve at present but we are completely open to fresh ideas on how to improve things further, but I believe this is the best we can do at present.”
