letter to the editor from Richard Corbett MEP

1 November 2007

Telegraph

Dear Editor,

I am astonished that you claim in your leader (22nd October) that the new European treaty shifts power from elected representatives in Westminster to unelected functionaries in Brussels". Even a cursory study of how the EU functions reveals that the "unelected functionaries" can only make proposals but it is the ministers from national governments meeting in the EU Council and directly elected MEPs who take the decisions.

Indeed, this will be reinforced under the Reform Treaty which provides for all legislative proposals to, first, be sent to national Parliaments for prior examination: second, to be approved in the Council by ministers accountable to those very same national Parliaments and third, approved by our directly elected MEPs in the European Parliament.

This is a level of Parliamentary scrutiny that exists in no other international structure.

Yours,

Richard Corbett

Labour MEP for Yorkshire & Humber
Blenheim Terrace, Leeds