EU treaty '96 per cent identical' to dropped constitution

The Daily Mail
Jul. 24, 2007

The Tories renewed calls for a new EU treaty to be put to a referendum today as critics claimed it was 96 per cent identical to the dropped Constitution.

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said the similarities made it a "flagrant breach" of Labour manifesto promises to refuse voters a direct say.

A draft treaty was published yesterday and a three-month "intergovernmental conference" launched to come up with a replacement for the constitution thrown out by French and Dutch voters.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband insisted last night that the concept of a constitution "has been abandoned", making a referendum unnecessary.

But the Open Europe think-tank said only 10 out of 250 proposals had been changed and Mr Hague said there was "near unanimity" across Europe that it remained the constitution "in all but name".

He told the Policy Exchange think-tank: "It is our belief that this Treaty should not be ratified without the British people's agreement in a referendum for two reasons: first, because the referendum question goes to the heart of the issue of trust in politics; and, secondly, because such a fundamental change to powers and role of nation states such as ours vis-a-vis the European Union should require the British people's explicit consent in a national vote.

"Let me remind you what the Labour Party's election manifesto said: 'We will put it - the EU Constitution - to the British people in a referendum and campaign wholeheartedly for a 'Yes' vote'.

"For the avoidance of any doubt, the last Prime Minister said: 'What you can't do is have a situation where you get a rejection of the treaty and then you just bring it back with a few amendments and say we will have another go'.

"There can be no question, then, that if this new Treaty is, in fact, effectively the EU Constitution by another name that a failure to put it to a referendum would be a fundamental breach of trust between the Government and voters."

He went on: "The heart of the Government's argument is a near meaningless fig leaf. It is clear, then, that this is the Constitution by another name. Its effects on the EU and our relationship to it are wide-ranging and profound."

There would be a "massive boost" to the powers of the European Court of Justice, asylum, immigration and criminal justice policy increasingly determined at an EU level, the beginnings of an EU FBI and Britain's role in foreign policy gradually shrinking," he said.

"The British Government is left trying to rush through a Treaty they know is profoundly objectionable to the British people, as all polls show, as quickly and quietly as they can, desperately hoping that voters will not mind that they are in flagrant breach of their election promises.

"The 2005 Labour Party manifesto did not say that the Government would bring in 90% of the EU Constitution under another guise if another country rejected it before the British people had had the chance to have their say. Yet, in an act of extraordinary cynicism, Gordon Brown's Government is proposing to do exactly that.

"What does Gordon Brown think people will make of his talk of consultation if he won't consult them on a question of fundamental importance to this country's future, on which the overwhelming majority of the British people want to have their promised say?

"The answer is simple: trust the people and let them decide."

Open Europe director Neil O'Brien said: "We never expected that they would simply bring back all the text from the old constitution. All they seem to have done is renumber the articles.

"From this point forward it's going to become absolutely impossible for Gordon Brown to resist a referendum, because this is exactly the same text that he promised a referendum on before.

"If Brown now tries to carry on pretending that this is somehow a different document, it will be one of the most audacious political lies in the last couple of decades.

"It would be simply ludicrous.

"Despite the fact that it has not been made available in English, we have been able to translate the text from the French quite quickly because we could mostly just cut and paste the English text from the old Constitution.

"The con they are trying to carry out here is just stunning; this is the cut-and-paste Constitution."