The EU is made of democracies

My letter to the Telegraph was published over the weekend:

SIR – European countries have not covered themselves in glory when it comes to addressing the migrant crisis. But it is wrong to suggest that the proposal to suspend Greece from the Schengen area is characteristic of a dictatorship. These proposals will be put to elected national governments, which must then debate them and decide how to act. They may disagree. But this is a disagreement among neighbouring democracies, not some kind of centralised coup.

Indeed, this is why the EU exists: to give us a democratic way to resolve differences. None of the challenges we face would go away if the EU ceased to exist. We would simply lose one of our best tools for dealing with them.

Incidentally, whenever they publish a letter from me (or any other pro-European MEP), the Telegraph always change my address to an incorrect one. My home is in Shipley, near Leeds, but they always replace this with “Brussels, Belgium”. It’s a minor issue, but an annoying one, and quite deliberate.