Reform of European Union
Reform of European Union - Comment - Times Online: “Reform of European Union
From Professor A. A. Dashwood
Sir, A rule that the Council of the EU must meet in public when discussing and voting on draft legislation was one of several things in the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe which would have helped to address the Union’s democratic deficit. So I very much welcome the initiative taken by the leaders of British MEPs (letter, September 6) in urging that this reform go ahead independently of the constitutional treaty. It may be true that the confidentiality of the Council’s proceedings facilitates compromise-building, but the cost to legitimacy is too high. In our country the myth of Brussels, the sinister tyrant, is fed by the public’s ignorance of the central role that ministers from the member states play in EU law-making.
Another reform which can be saved from the wreck of the constitutional treaty would be the greater involvement of national parliaments in the legislative process of the EU. In particular, the procedure enabling a third of them to force reconsideration of a legislative proposal, on the ground that it breaches the principle of subsidiarity (meaning that action should be taken at EU, rather than national, level only where there is clear added value in doing so), could be established by an agreement between the union’s institutions and the member states. National MPs are the right people to blow the whistle on intrusive and unnecessary EU legislation, since they have the most to lose from the abuse of the subsidiarity principle.
These would be constructive changes to the present system, which even the most diehard Eurosceptics would surely find uncontroversial.
ALAN DASHWOOD
(Professor of European Law, University of Cambridge)
Cambridge”
Sorry professor the EU set out its stall in its constitution, this has been rejected in its entirety, so the right way forward is to rethink the whole thing and re-present a new plan to the people. It is not to pick bits out independently of the whole, if you do that then someone else will pick their bit out independently, and before you know it we will have the EU Constitution by the back door.
But of course as a professor of European Law you already know that this is happening anyway, all you are doing is putting kind face on the facts. If we are to be concerned about the rejection of the Constitution we need to accept that all of those reforms do not now have the backing of people by the terms of the treaties, and stop any early enactment of the constitution.
In any event neither of the reforms you want will make the EU more democratic, the whole constitution was an attempt to pass more power out of the hands of the people we elect into the hands of those we do not, thus it did not increase democracy it did the opposite.
