Dear Editor,
I SEE the Eurosceptic "Democracy Movement" and their helper Charles Brickdale are again attempting to spread fear and paranoia about the EU ("Demand vote over Euro treaty", Your say, August 6). The letter read as if they were trying to cram as many "Euromyths" into it as possible!
First, the aim of the EU has never been to establish a Euro-pean "superstate". France, Ireland, Sweden and Britain, to name just a few, do not want to disappear into a single state!
The EU only has limited powers, determined by its members, which remain sovereign states, but I doubt that will stop the Eurosceptics repeating their myth in the future.
Mr Brickdale regurgitates another classic Euromyth when he talks about "unaccountable political elites", or "Brussels bureaucrats", as the Eurosceptics usually like to call them.
But the EU's Council of Ministers is made up of the elected national governments from each member country, the European Parliament is made up of directly elected MEPs, like myself, and the Commission is nominated by elected national governments and confirmed by the Parliament, which also has the power to suspend them.
So I'm not sure where Mr Brickdale gets his ideas of "unaccountable political elites" from?
As for the reform treaty being identical to the abandoned constitution, it is true that the proposed reform treaty may, indeed, salvage 90 per cent of the pragmatic changes to the EU institutions that had been in the constitutional treaty.
But recent scientific research shows that human beings and mice are genetically 90 per cent identical. However, the 10 per cent difference is crucial – and the same goes for the reform treaty, which has dropped the controversial aspects of the constitution which gave rise to calls for a referendum.
Mr Brickdale failed to quote the Eurosceptic Czech prime minister, who is refusing to hold a referendum in his own country because the treaty does not create any new powers for the EU.
Oh, and the Irish constitution requires a referendum on any updates to the European treaties, not because the reform treaty is a constitution, as Mr Brickdale is deviously trying to suggest.
Yours,
Richard Corbett
Labour MEP for Yorkshire & Humber
Blenheim Terrace, Leeds |