OCTOBER 2007
What the Renamed EU
Constitutional Treaty would do
By Anthony Coughlan
The Renamed EU Constitutional
Treaty, the so-called "Reform Treaty", by
amending and renaming the two existing European Treaties,
the "Treaty on European Union" and the
"Treaty Establishing the European Community",
thereby turning these into an EU Constitution, would do
six important things:
Firstly, it would give the EU more power to make
laws binding on us:
The new treaty would add to the powers of the
Brussels institutions, which already make the majority of
our laws, in over 40 new policy areas - including civil
and criminal law, public services, energy, transport,
tourism, space, sport, civil protection, public health
and the EU budget. This would greatly increase the
personal power of the 27 politicians on the EU Council of
Ministers by enabling them to make further laws for 500
million Europeans, while taking power away from the
citizens and national Parliaments that elect those
politicians and that have made these laws for their own
countries up to now. It would also increase the
power of the non-elected Brussels Commission, which has
the monopoly of making proposals for European laws to the
Council of Ministers, by giving it many new policy areas
to propose laws for.
Secondly, it would give more voting power to the
Big EU States:
In making European laws the new treaty would
increase the voting weight of the bigger EU States, in
particular Germany, and reduce that of the
middle-sized and smaller EU States.
Thirdly, it would remove the right of each Member
State to have a permanent EU Commissioner:
The new treaty would deprive Member States of the
right to have a representative at all times on the
Brussels Commission, the body which proposes European
laws. Big States as well as small ones would lose a
permanent Commissioner, but the economic and political
weight of the former makes them inherently better able to
defend their interests without such representation.
Fourthly, it would permit a shift from unanimity to
majority voting without the need for new treaties and
referendums:
The new treaty would be a self-amending treaty in
that it would contain a mechanism to enable majority
voting for European law-making to be extended to new
policy areas by agreement among Member State governments,
without need for new treaties or treaty ratification.
Fifthly, it would give the EU the power to decide
our fundamental rights:
The new treaty would make the EU Charter of
Fundamental Rights legally binding on the EU Member
States and their citizens in all areas of European law,
which now makes up the majority of new laws we must obey
each year. This would give the 27 judges of
the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg the final
decision on the wide range of human rights issues covered
by the Charter, as against national Constitutions and
Supreme Courts or the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg. This would greatly extend the power of the Court of
Justice, which one of its own judges once characterised
as "a court with a mission" - that
mission being to extend the powers of the EU as widely as
possible by means of the case law of a court that is
notorious for "competency creep".
The Charter would apply in all areas of EU
decision-making, including Member States when
implementing European laws. It would open the possibility
of uniform standards being imposed over time across the
EU as regards sensitive human rights areas where there
are significant national differences at present: for
example, rules of evidence in court, trial by jury,
censorship law, the legalisation of hard drugs and
prostitution, rights attaching to State churches,
conscientious objection to military service, euthanasia,
succession, rights to property, family law, the rights of
children and the elderly etc. It could lead to
jurisdictional disputes between the EU Court of Justice
in Luxembourg and the Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg, for the former court would have supremacy in
any case of conflict between the two as to what their
respective powers are.
Some trade unions in some EU Member States have supported
the Fundamental Rights Charter in the belief that it
would strengthen their rights to collective bargaining
and strike action, thinking that European law would
override national law in such areas to their
advantage. This is an illusion. The new
treaty will provide that the Charter of
Fundamental Rights is to be interpreted in the light of
the Explanations set out in an accompanying
Declaration (No.12 in the 2004 Constitutional Treaty).
These Explanations state that "the
modalities and limits for the exercise of collective
action, including strike action, come under national law
and practices".
Moreover the new treaty would provide that the
exercise of the rights and freedoms recognised by the
Charter of Fundamental Rights may be limited "to
meet objectives of general interest recognised by the
Union". This means that the rights set out in
the Charter would not be so fundamental after all.
Giving the EU Court of Justice final competence to decide
our rights over the large area of public policy covered
by the EU is more about power than rights. Human
rights standards in the EU Member States are not so
defective that they require a supranational EU Court to
lay down a superior norm or impose a common standard
across the EU States and their Constitutions.
Sixthly, it would turn the EU into a supranational
European Federation, of which we would all be made real
citizens for the first time, duty bound to give that
Federation our prime allegiance:
Constitutionally and politically, the most
important thing which the new treaty would do would be to
give the legally new European Union which it would
establish the constitutional form of a supranational
European Federation for the first time, in effect a
State, and would make this new Union separate from
and superior to its 27 Member States, with
its own political President, Foreign Minister,
diplomatic corps, Public Prosecutor and right to sign
international treaties with other States.
The Renamed Constitutional Treaty, the so-called
"Reform Treaty", would make the new European
Union just like the United States of America in its
relation to its member states. It would be like
USA, which is separate from and constitutionally superior
to California, Texas etc.; or as Federal Germany is
separate from and superior to the various German Länder.
We would then all be made real citizens of this new EU
Federation rather than notional or honorary European
"citizens" as at present; for one can only be a
citizen of a State.
This would be the most important step to affect the
various EU States since they first came into being as
members of the international community, for it would be a
formal end to their national independence and democracy
and their character as sovereign States. It would
announce to the world that henceforth they would form
part of another State, a European Federation. They would
have become in effect part of a new country called
"Europe".
It
is
these provisions which
gives the so-called "Reform Treaty" the
character of a Constitutional Treaty which, by amending
and renaming the two existing European treaties, would
constitute or establish a legally new European Union and
give it a constitution. This constitutional revolution in
both the EU and its Member States would be
accomplished by (a) giving the EU legal personality and
its own corporate existence for the first time, so that
it would exist independently of its Member States; (b)
merging the supranational and intergovernmental areas to
give the new Union a unified constitutional
structure; and (c) transforming national citizens
into
real EU citizens for the first
time,with the duties and obligations of EU citizenship
predominating over those of national citizenship in any
case of conflict between the two.
LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE
It is no small thing to attempt to turn the citizens
of the 27 Member States of the EU into real and not just
notional citizens of a supranational "United States
of Europe" which is separate from and superior to
their own national States and constitutions. It can only
be done by deception and bullying - and above all by
avoiding referendums that would enable Europe's peoples
to say themselves whether they want such a fundamental
constitutional change.
The core strategic deception lies in the elaborate
charade of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on
European Union and the new Treaty of
European Union, which the Renamed EU Constitutional
Treaty would bring into being, although it is intended to
give the latter some such spin-doctor's title as
"Reform Treaty" to make it easier for the EU
elites to get it ratified in the Member States.
Those pushing the new treaty hope that we will thereby
have real citizens' obligations of obedience, solidarity
and loyalty to the new European Union imposed upon us
without our knowing or realising that this is happening.
By such sleight of hand - doubtless long concerted by the
international European Movement and its outriders - are
we to be made real citizens of a real supranational
European Federation that is superior to our own national
States. Simultaneously the latter would be
reduced to the status of provinces or regions of the new
Union, similar to the local states of the USA or Federal
Gemany's Länder. If the deception succeeds,
Europe's peoples will have had their national democracy
and national independence filched from them without their
scarcely noticing.
If the European and national elites who are pushing this
treaty should succeed, one can confidently predict that
the popular reaction will be all the more explosive, when
people across Europe realise what has been done.
But they must not succeed. The monstrous deception must
and can be exposed. The EU elites must not get away with
their plan to pretend that they are not giving the EU the
constitution of a State Federation because they no longer
call it that, when it patently is such. They must
not succeed in their plan to get around the rejection of
the constitution by the peoples of France and the
Netherlands by attempting to ratify a treaty which has
essentially the same effect, by calling it something else
and avoiding holding referendums on it.
Europe's peoples alone have the right to decide whether
they should be made citizens of an EU State or not Š Whether
they should effectively abandon their own national
democracy and national independence Š Whether
they should hand over extensive new powers to the
non-elected Brussels Commission and to the 27 politicians
on the EU Council of Ministers who now make most of our
laws. Democracy requires that there be a referendum
on this Renamed EU Constitutional Treaty in every member
country.
This
document has been prepared by The National Platform EU
Research and Information Centre, 24 Crawford Avenue,
Dublin 9, Ireland; Secretary: Anthony Coughlan; Tel.:
00-353-1-8305792. The Centre is affiliated to The
European Alliance of EU-critical Movements(TEAM). The
document may be used or adapted as people may see fit,
without any need of reference to or acknowledgement of
its source. (September 2007)
______________
"They
decided that the document should be unreadable. If
it is unreadable, it is not constitutional, that was the
sort of perception. Where they got this perception
from is a mystery to me. In order to make our citizens
happy, to produce a document that they will never
understand! But, there is some truth [in it].
Because if this is the kind of document that the IGC will
produce, any Prime Minister - imagine the UK Prime
Minister - can go to the Commons and say 'Look, you see,
it's absolutely unreadable, it's the typical Brussels
treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum.' Should
you succeed in understanding it at first sight there
might be some reason for a referendum, because it would
mean that there is something new." - Giuliano
Amato, former Italian Prime Minister and Vice-Chairman of
the Convention which drew up the EU Constitution,
recorded by Open Europe, London Centre for European
Reform, 12 July 2007
_________________
"Sometimes
I like to compare the EU as a creation to the
organisation of empires. We have the dimension of Empire
but there is a great difference. Empires were usually
made with force with a centre imposing diktat, a will on
the others. Now what we have is the first non-Imperial
empire."
- Commission President J-M Barroso, The Brussels
Journal, 11 July 2007
_____________
" The most striklng change ( between the EU
Constitution in its older and newer version ) is
perhaps that in order to enable some governments to
reassure their electorates that the changes will have no
constitutional implications, the idea of a new and
simpler treaty containing all the provisions governing
the Union has now been dropped in favour of a huge series
of individual amendments to two existing treaties.
Virtual incomprehensibilty has thus replaced simplicity
as the key approach to EU reform. As for the
changes now proposed to be made to the constitutional
treaty, most are presentational changes that have no
practical effect. They have simply been designed to
enable certain heads of government to sell to their
people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action
rather than by referendum." - Dr Garret
FitzGerald, former Irish Prime Minister(Taoiseach),
Irish Times, 30 June 2007
_________________
"The
substance of the constitution is preserved.That is a
fact." - German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, European Parliament, 27 June 2007
________________
"The substance
of what was agreed in 2004 has been retained. What is
gone is the term 'constitution'." - Irish Foreign Mnister
Dermot Ahern, Daily Mail Ireland, 25
June 2007
__________________
"90
per cent of it is still there...These changes haven't
made any dramatic change to the substance of what
was agreed back in 2004."
- Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern,
Irish Independent, 24 June 2007
_________________
"Those who are anti-EU are terrorists. It is
psychological terrorism to suggest the spectre of a
European superstate." - Giorgio Napolitano,
President of Italy, Sunday Express, 17 June 2007
___________
"The good thing about not calling it
a Constltution is that no one can ask for a
referendum on it." -
Giuliano Amato, speech at London School of Econmics, 21
February 2007
___________
"Referendums make the process of approval of
European treaties much more complicated and less
predictable. . . I was in favour of a referendum as a
prime minister, but it does make our lives with 27 member
states in the EU much more difficult. If a referendum had
to be held on the creation of the European Community or
the introduction of the euro, do you think these would
have passed?. . . If you have signed a treaty, you should
also ratify it. And if you can't, you should at least
contribute to a solution."
- Commission
President Jose M. Barroso, Irish Times, 8
Feb.2007; quoting remarks in Het Financieele Dag
and De Volkskrant, Holland; also quoted
in EUobserver, 6 February 2007 ___________
" It is true that we are experiencing an ever
greater, inappropriate centralisation of powers away from
the Member States and towards the EU. The German Ministry
of Justice has compared the legal acts adopted by the
Federal Republic of Germany between 1998 and 2004 with
those adopted by the European Union in the same period.
Results: 84 percent come from Brussels, with only 16
percent coming originally from Berlin ... Against the
fundamental principle of the separation of powers, the
essential European legislative functions lie with the
members of the executive ... The figures stated by the
German Ministry of Justice make it quite clear. By far
the large majority of legislation valid in Germany is
adopted by the German Government in the Council of
Ministers, and not by the German Parliament ... And so
the question arises whether Germany can still be referred
to unconditionally as a parliamentary democracy at all,
because the separation of powers as a fundamental
constituting principle of the constitutional order in
Germany has been cancelled out for large sections of the
legislation applying to this country ... The proposed
draft Constitution does not contain the possibility of
restoring individual competencies to the national level
as a centralisation brake. Instead, it counts on
the same one-way street as before, heading towards ever
greater centralisation ... Most people have a
fundamentally positive attitude to European integration.
But at the same time, they have an ever increasing
feeling that something is going wrong, that an
untransparent, complex, intricate, mammoth institution
has evolved, divorced from the factual problems and
national traditions, grabbing ever greater competencies
and areas of power; that the democratic control
mechanisms are failing: in brief, that it cannot go on
like this."
- Former German President Roman Herzog, article on the EU
Constitution, jointly written with Lüder Gerken,
Welt Am Sonntag, 14 January 2007
___________
" People say 'We cannot
vote again.' What is this joke? We have to vote again
until the French see what the stakes are." - V.Giscard d'Estaing, Agence Presse,
12 June 2006
__________ "We need a European defence, a
European army, not just on paper but a force genuinely
capable of operating in the field, including beyond the
European borders ... The philosophy behind all these
proposals - economic, political, military - is always the
same. I believe that the citiizens' doubts and
uncertainty, as for example reflected in the two
referendums, actually constitute a plea for more Europe,
a strong Europe, and not for less Europe. And I am
also quite clear that I am advocating a more powerful
Europe, also a more closely integrated Europe ... In
short I am advocating a United States of Europe."
- Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, speech at the
London School of Economics, 21 March 2006
______________
"A political union is the logical end-point of a
currency union. But if that political union fails to
materialise, then in the long term the euro area cannot
continue to exist. Now that nobody appears to want that
political union, you can begin to wonder whether monetary
union was such a good idea. I hardly dare predict that,
in the longer term, the monetary union will collapse. Not
next year, but on a time-frame of ten or twenty
years. There is not a single monetary union which
survived without political union. They have all
collapsed. You invariably get big shocks. A monetary
union becomes very fragile without a political framework.
With the exception of a Don Quixote like Guy Verhofstadt,
I see nobody who is pushing the case for a political
union ... A large free trade zone remains the only
feasible option for Europe. It's an illusion that we can
realise a political union in Europe in the near future.
Political unification has failed. But that is a big
problem for the currency union. That is in danger."
- Professor Paul de Grauwe, economic adviser to
Commission President J. M. Barroso, author of "The
Economics of Monetary Integration" and other books,
interview in De Morgen, Belgium, 18 March 2006
______________
"The rejection of the Constitution is a mistake
which will have to be corrected ? If the Irish and the
Danes can vote Yes in the end, so the French can do it
too."
- V.Giscard d'Estaing, speech at the London
School of Economics, 28 February 2006
__________
"After Nice the forces of political Europe joined
others in stoking the fire. The Commission, the
Parliament, the federalists, French proponents of
integration, the media, all found Nice too
'intergovernmental'. Together, they imposed the
idea that Nice was a disaster, that we urgently needed a
new treaty. Soon a 'new treaty' wasn't enough. It
had to be a 'Constitution', and little did it matter that
it was legally inappropriate. When the time came, the
result had to be ratified. What tiny national parliament,
what people, would then dare to stand in the way of this
new meaning of history? The results of the Convention, at
first deemed insufficient by maximalists, became the holy
word when it was realised that selfish governments might
water it down.
"At every stage of this craze, from 1996 until 2005,
a more reasonable choice could have been made, a calmer
rhythm could have been adopted, that would not have
deepened the gap between the elites and the population,
that would have better consolidated the real Europe and
spared us the present crisis. But in saying this, I
understimate the religious fervour that has seized the
European project. For all those who believed in the
various ideologies of the second half of the 20th
century, but survived their ruin, the rush into European
integration became a substitute ideology.
"They planned urgently to end the nation
state. Everything outside this objective was heresy
and had to be fought. This was in the spirit of Jean
Monnet, the rejection of self and of history, of all
common sense. 'European power' was a variation, the code
name for a counterweight to America that excited France
alone for years and towards which the 'Constitution' was
supposed to offer a magical shortcut. And let us not
forget the periodic French incantations for a
Franco-German union.
"As the train sped on, these two groups, instead of
braking the convoy, kept stoking the locomotive, some to
enlarge and others to integrate, deaf to the complaints
coming from the carriages. Since we had to ask for
confirmation from time to time, the recalcitrant peoples
were told they had no choice, that it was for their own
good, that all rejection or delay would be a sign of
egotism, sovereignty, turning inward, hatred of others,
xenophobia, even Le Penism or fascism. But it didn't
work. The passengers unhooked the carriages?"
- Hubert Vedrine, French Foreign Minister
1999-2005, Irish Times, 8 August 2005
____________
"If its a Yes, we will say 'On we go", and if
it's a No we will say 'We continue.'"
- Jean-Claude
Juncker, Luxembourg Prime Minister and holder of the EU
Presidency, Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2005
___________
"We
decide on something. We leave it lying around and wait
and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because
most poeple don't know what has been decided, we continue
step by step until there is no turning back."
- Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude
Juncker, The Economist, 24 September 2004
_________
"The Constitution is the capstone of a European
Federal State"
- Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, Financial
Times, 21 June 2004
___________
"The Convention (which drafted the EU
Constitution) brought together a self-selected
group of the European political elite, many of whom have
their eyes on a career at a European level, which is
dependent on more and more integration and who see
national governments and parliaments as an obstacle. Not
once in the sixteen months I spent on the Convention did
representatives question whether deeper integration is
what the people of Europe want, whether it serves their
best interests or whether it provides the best basis for
a sustainable structure for an expanding Union. The
debates focused solely on where we could do more at
European Union level. None of the existing policies were
questioned."
-
Gisela Stuart MP, The Making of Europe's Constitution,
Fabian Society, London, 2003.
__________
"Once the European Union acquires legal
personality under the new Constitutional Treaty,
this will dispel any remaining tendency to see it as just
another international organisation and will free it
from a constraint that has hitherto frustrated its
ability to act on the world stage. As a
fully-fledged political entity, the Union will be able to
establish a foreign policy that is consistent with
its specific values and principles, a policy
seeking a more stable, more equitable international
order, and it will be able to combine the internal
policies of the Member States in a common area of
freedom, security and justice ...The Constitution will be
the constituent act of the Europe of the future,
the new, enlarged Europe. Europe, and, a
fortiori, each individual Member State, can only
become influential if they are united, and not
divided."
- Carlo Ciampi, President of Italy, address to
Conference of European Parliament group presidents, 30
September 2003
__________
"When we build the euro - and with what a success -
when we advance on the European defence, with
difficulties but with considerable progress, when we
build a European arrest-warrant,when we move towards
creating a European prosecutor, we are building something
deeply federal, or a true union of states. . . The
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union must
become a charter of rights that is applicable and
effective... I wish this Constitution to be the
Constitution of a rebuilt Union, able to reflect its
social cohesion, deepen its political unity, express its
power externally."
-M.Pierre Moscovici, French Minister for Europe, Le
Monde,28 February 2002
_________
"European monetary union has to be complemented by a
political union - that was always the presumption of
Europeans including those who made active politics before
us. . .What we need to Europeanise is everything to do
with economic and financial policy. In this area we need
much more, let's call it co-ordination and
co-operation to suit British feelings, than we had
before. That hangs together with the success of the
euro."
-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, The Times, London,
22 February 2002
__________
"Defence is the hard core of sovereignty. Now we
have a single currency, then why should we not have a
common defence one day?"
- Spanish Defence Minister Federico Trillo, European
Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, 19 February 2002
________
"It
(the introduction of the euro) is not economic at all.It
is a completely political step . . .The historical
significance of the euro is to constuct a bipolar economy
in the world. The two poles are the dollar and the euro.
This is the political meaning of the single European
currency. It is a step beyond which there will be
others. The euro is just an antipasto." (i.e a
first course.)
- Commission
President Romano Prodi, interview on CNN, 1 January 2002
__________
"The currency union will fall apart if we don't
follow through with the consequences of such a union. I
am convinced we will need a common tax system."
- German Finance Minister Hans Eichel, The Sunday Times,
London, 23 December 2001
________
"We need a European Constitution. The European
Constitution is not the 'final touch' of the European
structure; it must become its foundation. The
European Constitution should prescribe that . . .we are
building a Federation of Nation-States. . .The first part
should be based on the Charter of Fundamental Rights
proclaimed at the European summit at Nice. . . If we
transform the EU into a Federation of Nation-States, we
will enhance the democratic legitimacy. . .We should not
prescribe what the EU should never be allowed to . . .
I believe that the Parliament and the Council of
Ministers should be developed into a genuine bicameral
parliament."
- Dr Johannes Rau, President of the Federal Republic of
Germany, European Parliament, 4 April 2001
__________
"Are we all clear that we want to build something
that can aspire to be a world power? In other words, not
just a trading bloc but a political entity. Do we realise
that our nation states, taken individually, would find it
far more difficult to assert their existence and their
identity on the world stage."
- Commission President Romano Prodi, European Parliament,
13 February 2001
___________
- "Thanks to the euro, our pockets will soon hold
solid evidence of a European identity. We need to build
on this, and make the euro more than a currency and
Europe more than a territory . . . In the next six
months, we will talk a lot about political union, and
rightly so. Political union is inseparable from economic
union. Stronger growth and Euorpean integration are
related issues. In both areas we will take concrete steps
forward."
- French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius, The Financial
Times, London, 24 July 2000
___________
"One must act 'as if' in Europe: as if one wanted
only very few things, in order to obtain a great deal. As
if nations were to remain sovereign, in order to convince
them to surrender their sovereignty. The Commission in
Brussels, for example, must act as if it were a technical
organism, in order to operate like a government ... and
so on, camouflaging and toning down. The sovereignty lost
at national level does not pass to any new subject. It is
entrusted to a faceless entity: NATO, the UN and
eventually the EU. the Union is the vanguard of this
changing world: it indicates a future of Princes without
sovereignty. The new entity is faceless and those who are
in command can neither be pinned down nor elected ...That
is the way Europe was made too: by creating communitarian
organisms without giving the organisms presided over by
national governments the impression that they they were
being subjected to a higher power. That is how the Court
of Justice as a supra-national organ was born. It was a
sort of unseen atom bomb, which Schuman and Monnet
slipped into the negotiations on the Coal and Steel
Community. That was what the 'CSC' itself was: a random,
mixture of national egotisms which became
communitarian. I don't think it is a good idea to
replace this slow and effective method - which keeps
national States free from anxiety while they are being
stripped of power - with great institutional
leaps...Therefore I prefer to go slowly, to crumble
pieces of sovereignty up little by little, avoiding
brusque transitions from national to federal power. That
is the way I think we will have to build Europe's common
policies..."
- Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, later
Vice-President of the EU Constitutional Convention,
interview with Barbara Spinelli, La Stampa, 13 July 2000
____________
"We already have a federation. The 11, soon to be
12, member States adopting the euro have already given up
part of their sovereignty, monetary sovereignty, and
formed a monetary union, and that is the first step
towards a federation."
- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Financial
Times, 7 July 2000,
___________
"We will have to create an avant-garde. . . We could
have a Union for the enlarged Europe, and a Federation
for the avant-garde."
- Former EU Commission President Jacques Delors,
Liberation, 17 June 2000
__________
"The last step will then be the completion of
integration in a European Federation. . . such a group of
States would conclude a new European framework treaty,
the nucleus of a constitution of the Federation. On the
basis of this treaty, the Federation would develop its
own institutions, establish a government which, within
the EU, should speak with one voice. . . a strong
parliament and a directly elected president. Such a
driving force would have to be the avant-garde, the
driving force for the completion of political
integration. . . This latest stage of European Union . .
. will depend decisively on France and Germany."
- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, speech at
Humboldt University Berlin, 12 May 2000
___________
______________
Dear Tony have you any comments on all this?They carefully avoid mentioning Ireland. Malta was granted language rights before Ireland though only recently joined. Malta is a UK preserve as is Cyprus where they still have 30odd bases, regards, Jocelyn
Four member states to get more MEPs
06.09.2007 - 09:18 CET | By Honor MahonyEUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The four EU member states of Sweden, Austria, Slovenia and Malta will have a stronger representation in the EU assembly than they do now, under preliminary proposals on seat distribution by the European Parliament from 2009.
Each of the four would get one more MEP bringing their numbers up to 20, 19, 8 and 6 respectively.
In total, 17 member states are to get less MEPs with Italy (less six) and the UK (less five) losing the most eurodeputies.
The remaining six countries - Spain, Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus and Luxembourg -will maintain the same number of MEPs as they have now during the next five-year legislature beginning in 2009.
The proposals - by French centre-right MEP Alain Lamassoure and Romanian socialist MEP Adrian Severin - cap the total number of MEPs at 750, down from the current 785.
The arrangements are based on the principle that the bigger the population of a member state, the higher the number of citizens each MEP represents.
The provisions do not take into account future enlargement of the EU, with Croatia already waiting in the wings and pushing to join in 2009.
But they suggest that the 750-seat ceiling can be "provisionally passed" in the case of EU expansion.
The exact division of MEPs seats between member states is set to be the subject of intense political wrangling as governments go into the final stages of drawing up the bloc's new treaty.
Some member states have indicated they only want to make commitments on the treaty once the seat distribution has been fixed.
In June, EU leaders asked parliament to come with a recommendation by October on the issue.
Any decision reached by EU leaders on seats must be approved by the European Parliament itself.
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