Convention on the Future of Europe

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 2:35 pm on 9 July 2003.

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Photo of Jack Straw Jack Straw Foreign Secretary 2:35, 9 July 2003

I did not say that it was simply another treaty. [Interruption.] It is an important treaty that has been made under international law. For the first time, there are provisions for a member state to leave the European Union, which is important. Just as people should be able to decide freely whether to join the European Union, they should have freedom to decide to leave. Such provisions should be clear and on the face of the constitution, and they are.

European Union leaders have long recognised that the current constitutional texts are a recipe for incoherence in a Union of 15. Post-enlargement, that ramshackle framework would not be up to the task of forging consensus among 25 member states. Hon. Members of all parties supported enlargement—we recognise what that means for Britain's national security and prosperity. We all want the countries of the former Soviet bloc as well as Cyprus and Malta to become part of the European family. However, in practice, agreement ends there. The Opposition fail to recognise that if we want enlargement to succeed and the former Soviet satellites to prosper, we must overhaul the Union's institutional make-up in their interests.

At Nice, European Union leaders agreed technical changes to allow for enlargement. However, even as they agreed that treaty, they recognised that further reforms would be necessary. They followed their declaration at Nice with another, 18 months later at the Laeken summit in December 2001. They concluded that European

"citizens want . . . the EU's institutions to be more efficient and open."

They also set out a detailed mandate for the Convention on the Future of Europe. They agreed that it should examine whether the

"simplification and reorganisation of the treaties should not lead . . . to the adoption of a constitutional text in the Union" and

"what the basic features of such a constitution might be."

As the Convention unfolded, a consensus developed, supported by the Government, on the need for such a text.

The decision to follow a two-stage process of Convention and IGC rather than IGC alone had its origins in the IGC at Nice. Intractable issues were discussed at a technical level for six months, but at a political level only in the final stages of the summit. So a summit that was planned for a relatively short time—two working days—lasted four days and nights. At the end of that exhausting and not especially happy process, Heads of Government called for a wider and more open debate to prepare the ground for the next IGC, involving "all interested parties."