Sarkozy must be careful to leave EU's options open

Nikolas Sarkozy's first speech in the European Parliament as President of the European Council was the closing highlight of the final Strasbourg session before the summer recess.

His speech was far more conciliatory than perhaps people had been expecting - especially in the light of his trenchant, and largely unjustified, criticisms of Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. In particular, he attempted to re-assure those who fear that the French presidency will pursue a more protectionist agenda by saying that while Europeans had a right to expect "protection" from the EU this should not mean "protectionism". He also rejected the argument used by some French and German voices following the Irish referendum that a "multi-speed" Europe should be pursued, describing this scenario as "a last resort".

It was also interesting to hear him refer to the need for European politicians to take into account the specificity of sport when framing EU law, commenting that, just as the culture sector has some derogations from internal market rules, so exceptions should also apply in sports policy.

More controversially, he stated that there could be no further enlargement of the EU without the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, on the grounds that an enlarged EU required new institutions.

Of course, it is true that one of the reasons for reforming the treaties is the constant enlargement of the EU, and it is highly desirable to streamline the institutions to avoid sclerosis. But simply announcing that there can be no further enlargement - even to Croatia, which is nearly ready - is treading on dangerous political territory. It effectively holds potential accession countries, hostage pending the EU resolving its institutional future, or at the very least postpones their accession to the long term.

But it is the prospect of EU membership that has provided a massive incentive to the Balkan countries of the former Yugoslavia and to Turkey to reform their political and judicial structures. In many ways, enlargement is one of the biggest successes of the EU. Paddy Ashdown famously described it as "undoubtedly one of the EU's most effective means of exercising soft power" to secure stability and reform among its neighbours. To throw away the prospect of medium-term accession to the EU would remove the biggest carrot of all in Europe's soft-power armoury.

It could also be counter-productive in securing reform. Opponents of the Lisbon Treaty might well seize on this position to say that blocking Lisbon would therefore block Turkish accession, which would be popular in some quarters. Even though Turkish accession is years away and anyway requires a separate unanimous decision and national ratification, it would not stop a populist campaign along the lines of "stop Lisbon to stop Turkey".

So, Sarkozy's position is shooting himself in the foot - twice over.

Those of us who support both the reforms contained in the Lisbon Treaty and the enlargement of the EU need to be clear that blocking the latter to achieve the former is a highly dangerous tactic. It also slams the door on one potential way out if Lisbon remains blocked, namely incorporating some of the institutional reforms into a country's accession treaty (which anyway has to address issues like the new country's votes in the council and seats in the European Parliament).

Closing down your options is not the right thing to do at the present time.

Sarkozy address

Whether or not Britain remains in the grip of Sarkosis (deep obsession with Sarkozy and his wife), the state visit has been an interesting one.

At the State Banquet at Windsor Castle, which I had the privelege to attend, and in his speech to Parliament, the French president went out of his way to thank Britain for saving France in the two world wars, which he said France would never forget. This is something that not every previous French President has been happy to say so clearly and eloquently.

He likened France and Britain to two brothers, born in the same era, who had grown up together and as teenagers had squabbled a lot, been jealous of each other's possesions, pinched from each other, and yet had fought side by side in early adulthood (20th Century) in defence of their independence and their shared values of liberty and democracy. Now their relationship had matured into deep friendship and although their lifestyles, tastes and friends might often differ, this, as in the best of families, in no way detracts from their brotherhood. Indeed, they also mutually admire many of each other's achievments.

They are both also part of a wider family of countries in Europe. Both need the European Union, just as the European Union would be inconceivable without them.

Well put.

The election of a new French President (who faces no new Presidential or Parliamentary elections for another five years), coinciding with an Intergovernmental Conference to quickly adopt a set of amendments to the current treaties, could provide us with an opportunity to solve one problem that has been niggling away at us for some time now - the issue over the Strasbourg Parliament seat.

We must try to convince France that maintaining the seat in Strasbourg is not in its interests. The refusal of France to budge on this issue is damaging its reputation across Europe, not to mention the reputation of the EU itself (the Strasbourg seat was a major factor when the Dutch rejected the Constitutional Treaty). The constant travelling MEPs and their staff (not to mention lobbyists, journalists, and so on) have to do every month to Strasbourg from Brussels not only presents a logistical nightmare, it constantly generates bad press over the wastefulness of the EU and the hypocrisy over the EU's bold environmental targets when travel between the two cities leaves a huge carbon footprint.

Mr Sarkozy presents himself as a bold reformer. What better opportunity to solve a problem that will otherwise continue to fester for many years?

So, Sarko beat Sego, as widely expected, despite her creditable perfomance in the campaign. Although the knives will now be out for her, her score compares well. Only one socialist candidate - Mitterrand - has ever won the French presidency since it bcame directly elected nearly half a century ago. In two out of the eight elections, (1969 and 2002) the Socialist candidate did not even reach the second round. Often, it has been the factionalism of the French left that has led to their downfall.

One important consequence at European level is on the debate on the Constitutional Treaty. Sarkozy supports a simpler treaty, avoiding the constitutional implications that could require a referendum. This puts him on a similar line to that of the Dutch government, supported recently by Tony Blair, as a way to salvage the key reforms contained in the constitutional treaty without raising the constitutional questions that some feared were raised by the Constitutional Treaty.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of Member States (including the two-thirds who have already ratified it) want to salvage the whole treaty, but the combination of Britain, France, Netherlands, and probably some others supporting a less controversial scaled-down text could prove decisive. Let's hope that it doesn't mean we'll lose the really useful reforms contained in the treaty, that Blair rightly hailed as a positive result for Britain and for the whole of Europe.

This morning, I addressed the French equivalent of the CBI (the MEDEF) in Paris - only 85 minutes from Brussels thanks to the High Speed Train (TGV).

I enjoy telling French audiences how France is the real problem country in Europe (why would anyone think it was Britain?), not just because they rejected the Constitutional Treaty but because they have one of the poorest records of applying European law, they ignored the stablity pact on macro-economic policy, they are overly protectionist, they oblige the European Parliament to shift from Brussels to Strasbourg for four days per month, and they have been extremely reticent about accepting new countries into our Union.

This is not new: the French only approved the EEC treaty by a narrow majority, rejected the EDC treaty, and even boycotted all EU Council meetings for a while when they weren't getting their way in the 1960s. They held up British membership for ten years and blocked the start of elections to the Eurpean Parliament for twenty. I could go on...

Indeed, CIVITAS, a British think-tank, has done precisely that with a new publication called "How France Has Undermined The European Project" and its accompanying press release entitled "EU would work better without France".

Interestingly, far from being provoked, the audience seemed to largely agree with my point. France is going through a period of soul-searcing on its attitude to Europe, having to get used to the fact that it is far from playing the leading role as it once did, but unsure how to react. Above all, the French are unsure about what it is that they disliked about the Constitutional Treaty, with some having opposed it because it was too "liberal", others because it was too "social", some because it was too integrationist, but more because it was too limitative of integration ("too British"), some through opposition to other European matters such as Turkish accession or the services directive ("the context not the text") and many through simple opposition to Chirac and the government. How will France be able to identify the points it might like to address in revisiting the Constitutional Treaty? What will its future attitude to Europe be?

What to do about the EU constitutional treaty? That's the question we debated yesterday and voted on today.

There are at least two views. One is that this text of the Constitution is dead following the referenda in France and the Netherlands; that we had better start thinking of something else and preparing a different way forward.

The other view is to say: hang on a minute, this text has actually now been ratified by a majority of Member States. The 25 national governments themselves did not declare it dead. Instead, they extended the period of ratification and opened a 'period of reflection'. In that period of reflection we must listen carefully to those who said ‘no’, but we must also listen to the majority who have said ‘yes’ and find a way forward that can ultimately bring the two together.

Eurosceptics shout loudly about the French and Dutch referenda showing that "Europe" has lost touch with public opinion and that the constitutional treaty (presumably unlike any other treaty) was an elitist project which the public is now revolting against. They never mention the referenda in other countries which endorsed the treaty, nor the fact that, in total, more people voted in favour than against.

What we have is not a mass revolt, but a divergence of views. In the EU, when countries' views diverge, the traditional pratice is to talk things through to try to overcome that divergence and to find a compromise solution. In the past, when new treaties have been rejected by a member country, ways have been found, with the agreement of the country concerned, to reassure public opinion and to allow the treaty to be adopted after a new referendum.

This time, it is far too soon to draw conclusions as to the best way forward. The period of reflection has begun by addressing issues of context rather than the text. It is only now that several governments have begun to float ideas as to what could be done about the text.

Parliament concluded that the period of reflection must be extended at least until 2007 to enable a longer and deeper reflection. Until then, all options should be kept open. Of course – as is to be expected – Parliament would prefer to maintain the text, but it recognised that that would only be possible if measures were taken to reassure and convince public opinion. What those measures might be is left open. Parliament pointed out that there are, in theory, many options: supplementary interpretative declarations, extra protocols, rewriting part of the text, rewriting the whole text, drafting a new text and so on.

Which option is best and feasible will only emerge at the end of the period of reflection. The conclusion cannot be drawn now. But one thing is certain: the status quo – that is, the current Treaties – is not sufficient for this Union in its enlarged form to function effectively or democratically. This issue will not go away.

"He who is limping is still walking."

Does this old Yorkshire (or is it Chinese?) proverb apply to the European Union? There is no doubt that the rejection of the EU reform package by France and the Netherlands last year has injured the EU and left it limping.

But it is still very much walking. Common European-wide laws continue to be agreed in those areas where member states consider that this would be mutually beneficial. A medium term budget has been agreed. Countries still outside the EU continue to join the lengthening queue to become full members. Even with a limp, Europe is still moving ahead.

So Austria wants to review the EU constitution. I wrote in the Guardian on the subject:

"The reasons which led all 25 governments to agree that our enlarged EU needs a new rulebook have not simply disappeared. …

"The French "no" campaigners argued that rejecting the constitutional treaty would lead to a re-negotiation where the text could be "improved" - although they did not all agree on what those improvements might be. Nonetheless, it is clear that their intention was to kill the text but not the process - and possibly not all of the text.

"According to the most recent opinion polls, 64% of Dutch and 65% of French people want the constitution to be re-negotiated rather than killed off.

"In that sense, the ball is in the court of France and of the Netherlands. It is up to those countries to say exactly what it is they consider necessary in order for the process to be revived. If they consider that there is no scope whatsoever for agreeing anything along the lines of the constitutional treaty, they must say so and save the rest of us a lot of time."

There will be much in the press regarding Britain's rebate negotiations. I recently wrote an article for the Guardian on the subject:

France cannot hold the rest of Europe hostage to its addiction to agricultural subsidies - especially when one sees who actually benefits from these subsidies: not so much the poor peasant farmers of the Massif Central as the rich industrial farmers of the Paris basin.

I note that the remaining restriction on the export of British beef (which affects cattle over 30 months old) is now also likely to be lifted. If approved by veterinary experts in January, this will mean that British been will once again be sold without any restriction whatsoever across Europe, 10 years on from being banned in the wake of the BSE crisis. All 25 EU countries will then accept all categories of British beef.

Readers will remember that France initially refused to accept British beef even for those categories that were declared safe some time ago (namely cattle up to 30 months old). We had to have recourse to the European Court of Justice for France to change its mind. All the other EU countries accepted British beef as soon as it was declared safe.

Outside the EU, there is little we could have done about the French ban - just as we have no mechanism for lifting the ban that remains on British beef across 80 other countries worldwide, including the USA. Inside the EU, all bar one country accepted our beef as soon as it was declared safe - and we had a legally binding procedure to deal with the one that didn't!

For those who are interested in the details of the French Socialist Party following my last post, the three main factions are:

• Socialistes pour Reussir à Gauche (supporting the motion drafted by Party First Secretary Francois Hollande, supported by Straus-Kahn, Royal, Lang, Aubry, Guigou and most of the other leading figures) whose motion obtained 54%. This motion supports a return in due course to the institutional issues in the draft treaty, meanwhile continuing to negotiate with Turkey, strengthening beneficial EU policies, strengthening the EP and working closely with other PES parties.
• The Nouveau Party Socialiste (NPS), not the equivalent of New Labour but a far-left grouping around Henri Emannuelli, Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg, [who actually said “Nul ne peut douter du patriotisme de parti du NPS, qui a montré plus que d'autres qu'il savait respecter les choix collectifs qui nous engagent”, which must rank pretty high in the stakes of hypocrisy as they campaigned against the party on the European Constitution], whose motion obtained 23% of the vote. It is strongly anti-globalisation, strongly against the EU as it is now but in favour of building a “European Republic” with an avant-garde group of countries and domestically calls for a new Sixth Republic by cutting Presidential powers in France.
• Rassembler à Gauche (around Mélanchon, Vidalies, Quilès and above all Laurent Fabius, a former Prime Minister on the right wing but who tried to make an opportunistic alliance with the far-left to boost his chances for the presidential nomination) which obtained 21%. Their resolution opposes a “liberal” Europe, calls for a new European Social Treaty, a moratorium on EU enlargement, a reform of the European Central Bank to limit its autonomy and a constituent Assembly to draft a new “short and clear” European Constitution.

There are also two smaller factions, with just over 1% each.

Over the weekend, I represented the Labour Party at the French Socialist Party Congress in Le Mans. It was both a political and a cultural experience!

The latter is best illustrated by the lunch arrangements: a nearby sports hall has great long tables set for no fewer than 2000 people to have a sit-down four course lunch complete with aperitif, wine and coffee - all delicious and served within 1 1/2 hours. Not quite what we're used to in Blackpool or Brighton!

Outside the Conference Hall, just like at Labour Party Conferences, there are stalls displaying the wares of think-tanks, campaigns of all kinds, the Young Socialists, and so on. I find the exhibition of the history of the French Socialists most interesting - it makes splits in the Labour Party seem like genteel nuances in comparison.

The bookshop is a revelation - it seems to be de rigueur for every MP and MEP to have published a book. Works that I'd never seen before by most of my colleagues are on display. Elisabeth Guigou and Bernard Poignant kindly give me autographed copies of theirs.

Most delegates do not seem to regard Labour as a role model, considering us to be neo-liberal. I am, however, taken to meet one deputé (MP) who, I am told, is “very close” to us - but it turns out that this “closeness” is simply geographical as he represents Calais!

The conference itself is in a massive arena, where one can best see the speakers on big screens above the centre of the hall. Most delegates and others spend much of their time milling around, chatting, plotting and so on in the arena itself. TV interviews, including one with me, are carried out live in the middle of all this. The ambient noise level is therefore high and distractions plentiful. It's a bit like the European Parliament when the tail end of a debate is just before voting time - except that here in Le Mans, massive amplifiers ensure the speakers can be heard. Whether they're being listened to is another matter!

This changes when a major figure speaks - every third or fourth speech seems to be from someone hoping to be the Socialist candidate at the next Presidential election. The style is then like that of the Leader's speech at party conferences in Britain, albeit from aspiring leaders rather than serving ones. The French socialists only have a party congress every three years, and then only for three days, so it is a rare opportunity to appeal directly to members. The speeches are strong on rhetoric and short on detail: “nous ne sommes pas un parti fataliste mais un parti socialiste” (Fabius), and “Il faut élargir le domaine du possible” (Straus-Kahn).

Prodi was the principle foreign guest speaker, ostensibly because he represents the next likely victory for the centre-left in Europe, but in fact (I was told) because Hollande thought he well illustrated the need to be open to alliances with centre parties and to be pro-European. For this reason, apparently, Fabius refused to shake his hand!

The politics are complex. Prior to the conference, different factions (”courants”) table general motions each covering all policy issues. The membership then vote on these at local meetings held simultaneously across the country. The tally each motion gets then determines the strength of each faction and the number of delegates from each at party congress (and subsequently the proportional share of candidates on party lists at elections).

This time, several major figures (Hollande, who is the First Secretary i.e. current leader of the Party, Straus-Kahn, Royal, Guigou, Lang) had come together behind a common motion which obtained an absolute majority by itself. I gather this means they could constitute a “homogenous” party executive. However, the big issue is whether to negotiate a “synthesis” resolution with the two main minority factions (whose motions obtained just over 20% each) to show party unity and to bring some of their representatives onto the executive too. The leaders of each faction apparently want this, but the grass roots don't - especially from the majority who don't see why they should concede ground to the others, particularly those eurosceptics who broke from the party line (determined by a vote of all members) in the referendum on the European constitution. One of these Eurosceptics, Laurent Fabius, gave a speech claiming that he was not anti-Europe at all, but the reaction of many from the floor showed that his U-turns had left much bitterness.

During the last night of the Congress, the leaders of the three courants did nonetheless negotiate a “synthesis” resolution, which was approved by 571 votes to 3 with 18 abstentions and 22 “refusals to vote”. This compromise now constitutes party policy. On Europe, it affirms the party’s support for a federal perspective, a strengthening of the common external tariff to protect European industry, democratic control of the Central Bank, the adoption of a directive to safeguard public services from competition, opposition to the Services Directive, the drafting of a new constitution focussed on the values and institutions of the Union, and an increase in the EU budget to 2% of GDP, notably through additional corporation tax.

The choice of the party's candidate for President will only be made next year through a vote of all party members. All the names mentioned above (and more) are in the running. I find the idea of a President called Royal quite intriguing - and entirely appropriate for the monarchical style of the French Presidency! There is extra intrigue here as her husband is also an aspiring candidate – Francois Hollande.

There is just one problem: their voting system to choose the candidate. Just as for the Presidential election itself, the internal party ballot has two rounds, with the top two candidates going through to a run-off. But with so many candidates, what if the top two are from the extremes of the party with, say, 18% each, the mainstream candidates splitting the majority courant into several scores of around a dozen % each? After all, this is what happened in the Presidential election proper three years ago, letting Le Pen through to the last round. Shouldn't they introduce, I asked, transferable preference voting at least for their party ballot? I was mostly met with blank looks as this system is not known to them, but some at least asked me to explain how such systems work. I assure them that if the Labour Party can use it there should be no problem for their members either to get used to it.

A strange non sequitur arises (not for the first time) in a piece by Dirk van Heck, researcher for the European Foundation, an organisation whose innocuous name conceals a heavily Eurosceptic agenda.

Mr van Heck surveys the results of the French and Dutch referenda on the constitution, and attempts an analysis of what went wrong. He makes some valid points:

"The prevailing view in Britain is that France's current malaise owes much to its beiong part of the eurozone and that it has not undergone necessary free market economic reforms in the way that the UK has. In France, however, the prevailing view is that it is the advance of the Anglo-Saxon economic agenda at EU level that is undermining the French economy and ultimately French society."

But here's the non sequitur. Mr van Heck is keen to insist that voters were indeed objecting to the constitution itself, and not to other, more general worries about their governments, their economies, or the EU itself. Yet he then goes on to report:

"Many polls and countless interviews in the course of the campaigns helped to establish what was uppermost in voters' minds. French concerns included: the free market elements of the constitution; the prospect of Turkish entry to the EU; lack of influence in the EU, post-enlargement; and persistent low growth and high unemployment."

The problem is, only one of these four elements is even vaguely related to the constitution, namely its supposed "free market elements" - and, of course, these elements, such as they are, are identical to the existing treaties. So the conclusion demonstrated by Mr van Heck's own research is that the French did not oppose the constitution itself so much as aspects of their own domestic politics and EU policies.

Within the same week, France and the Netherlands, two founding Member States, rejected the European Constitution with 54.87% and 63% against respectively. These results are seen by some as the death of the constitution. But are they?

So far, 10 member states have ratified the Constitution, nine via their national parliaments (including Latvia just today) and one by referendum. Those states represent about half of the EU population. Twelve other countries have indicated that they will continue with their ratification procedures despite the French and Dutch results.

We are therefore likely to arrive at a situation where the constitution is approved by a large majority of states and people - but not the grand slam of 25 victories formally required for ratification.

What to do in such circumstances? The views of the majority surely deserve at least as much consideration as those of the minority. Above all, the reasons that led all 25 EU governments and the elected Parliament to conclude that the EU needs reform remain on the table. We cannot simply say “too bad: it was a nice idea to make the EU more effective and democratically accountable, but now we can forget it”. Even a large number of no-voters in France said they want to go further with European integration.

There will obviously need to be some accommodation negotiated with the countries which said 'No'. Interpretations of the treaty, footnotes, opt-outs or even a re-negotiation of parts of the text will, no doubt, all be contemplated. But the momentum towards the reforms encompassed in the constitutional treaty must not be allowed to fizzle out.

Common wisdom has it that France has always been the motor of European integration. If this is the case, then it has always been a rather stuttering and unreliable engine – and rarely able to rise above first gear.

We wrongly have the image in Britain of France as an enthusiastic leader in the vanguard of the European project. Granted, some major European initiatives, not least the original Coal and Steel Community, were initiated by French statesmen such as Schuman. But this has never been a matter of all-party consensus in France: rather each step in the history of the European Union has been a matter of profound national controversy.

In other words, we should not be surprised by the result of France’s referendum on the new European Constitution. It is in line with a long history of deep-rooted euroscepticism in France.

This history of Euroscepticism goes back as far as the original treaties. These which were ratified by the French Parliament, but by rather small majorities. Then France rejected the European Defence Community Treaty in 1954, plunging the still nascent European Community into its first major crisis. Later, it ratified the Maastricht treaty only by the narrowest of margins.

For ten years, France held up the first enlargement of the original EC to include Britain, Ireland and Denmark. It also blocked direct elections to the European Parliament for almost twenty years.

For six months, Charles De Gaulle boycotted all ministerial meetings in the European Union, trying to bully the other member states into concessions to France on the CAP and on allowing it to exercise a veto even where the treaty provided for majority voting. This led to the notorious ‘Luxembourg compromise’, whereby member states, at France’s insistence, should not vote whenever a matter was defined as an important national interest – and France defined virtually everything to be an important matter for its own national interest!

It is at France’s behest that the European Parliament is legally obliged to move its entire operation from Brussels to Strasbourg for four days a month, at considerable expense to Europe’s taxpayers. Not even Parliament itself supports this ridiculous arrangement – though it usually takes the rap.

France has one of the worst records in doing what it agrees to do at European level. It has been taken to the European Court more times than most other countries for failing to transpose EU agreements into national law.

Looking deeper into France’s internal politics, it is striking that every European Treaty until the 1980s has been opposed by both the far right and the far left, both of which are larger in France than in any other major European country, and by the centre-right Gaullist party. Together, these elements have always constituted over 40% of the French electorate. Every European treaty has therefore required rock-solid support from the remaining centrist parties and the Socialists in order to be adopted. In the early 1990s, the Maastricht treaty was only ratified when Chirac – who then had some wider credibility than he has now – switched to a pro-European position bringing most (but not all) of the Gaullists behind him.

This is not to say that France is universally awkward when it comes to Europe. The country has strongly supported those aspects of the European project from which it benefits – from Parliamentary sessions in Strasbourg to the high level of funding under the Common Agricultural Policy. All that seems to be missing in France’s European outlook is a sense of solidarity with other countries on matters which are not of direct interest to the French!

If the supposed motor of Europe is stuttering, perhaps now is the time for Britain to take the driving seat?

So the French have voted no:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4594693.stm

Where now? Well, we must respect the decision of the French people not to support the constitution at this time and we must find a solution that respects this.

But we must also bear in mind some other important factors. So far, ten countries have said yes and one has said no. We must take account of the democratic will of the majority of EU nations as well as the minority in finding a solution.

Every EU country has the right to have a say. France cannot alone decide for the whole of Europe.

I'm in France to join in the referendum debate on the constitution.

First I visit a group of 30 journalists, then an association of mayors, and finally I go to the picturesque half-timbered village of Scheibenhardt (link in German) on the Franco-German frontier at the northern end of Alsace.

Few villages could better illustrate the benefits of the EU. The village was split into two in 1815 when the Congress of Vienna drew the frontier straight through the middle of it. Suddenly, neighbours, siblings, cousins and friends found themselves belonging to different states - and, when war came, fighting each other in different armies.

Not surprisingly, the mayor described the development of the European Union as a liberation - in fact, a series of liberations. First, it eliminated the threat of war and made it easier to develop commerce accross the whole village. Then the Schengen agreement (which abolished frontier controls between EU countries) made it possible for the inhabitants to walk through their village without having to show their passports. Indeed, our event was held at the spot where the customs post used to be, now an attractive little park (and the customs house has now been sold and is now a private house). Finally, the euro has meant that they can now go to both cafés in the village and use the same currency instead of having to walk around with two wallets!

Not surprisingly, the locals are enthusiastic supporters of the European Union!

Interesting report in the Sunday Times: France's no campaign thinks that Britain gains too much influence in the new constitution!

"As debate intensified in France's referendum campaign on the European Union constitution last week, the voters were invited to consider an unusual question: should they try to be more like the British?

"Strange as it may seem, the complex exercise of trying to imagine Europe's future has led to Britain becoming the focus of the May 29 referendum....

"The change is rooted in French perceptions that they have lost influence to the British in an enlarged EU, and the belief, encouraged by the French left, that the proposed EU constitution will result in France being swamped by what one commentator described as the 'free-market mania of the Anglo-Saxon world'."

My office today put out this press release:

The current system of basing EU institutions jointly in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg has sometimes been called “schizophrenic”. But European decision-makers have been unable to agree on a single location for Parliament, Council and the Commission – until now.

Richard Corbett, a Labour MEP and EU constitutional expert, explained:

“The search for a single location for the ‘capital' of the EU, secretly codenamed ‘Europa', has been going on for decades.

“We had to find a central location which embodied the ideal of European unity without giving preference to any member state. That was our main stumbling block.”

Read the full press release here.