Untitled Document

Covering the Shire Counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, including Luton, Peterborough, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock.

ANDuff

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Andrew

ANSWERING THE FEDERAL QUESTION

The Convention is a break with the past. It signals the end of the closed and increasingly squalid negotiations between governments that brought the Union into disrepute. The Convention is not a political fix but a constituent process. In such an open and pluralistic forum there has to be less dissembling about the scope of European integration, and more honesty about the federal question: who should do what in Europe, and how?

The main purpose of the Convention is to increase the capability of the Union to act effectively at home and abroad. Already there is large agreement that the competence of the Union in foreign, security and defence policy has to grow. The scaffolding is up on the strange contrivance of the 'third pillar', covering justice and home affairs, and demolition has begun. We are also likely to enhance the powers of the Union over macro-economic policy.

The Convention will have succeeded when it has drafted a constitution for a more federal Union, with the Charter of Fundamental Rights at its heart. The new treaty will be clearer, shorter, more rational and more durable than the present set up. We are aiming for nothing less than a system of post-national parliamentary government.

Andrew Duff (East of England) is spokesman for the European Liberal Democrats (ELDR) on constitutional affairs, and chairs the Liberal caucus in the Convention.