National parliaments should be represented in a new second house of the European Parliament to safeguard the prerogatives of member-states, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has suggested.
Speaking in Poland, Mr Blair set out a radical new British blueprint for the future of the EU - "a superpower, but not a superstate" - in response to a debate launched in the spring by the German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer. And on enlargement he set a time-frame that is far more ambitious than many of his EU partners by declaring that "I want to see new member-states participating in the European Parliament elections in 2004 and having a seat at the next Inter-Governmental Conference."
Mr Blair counterpoised the inadequacies of the traditional models of integration - the free trade model, based on NAFTA, "beloved by the British Conservatives", and the classic federalist model in which the European Parliament becomes the true European legislative body.
The former fails, he argued, because it does not recognise the reality that a single market and a single currency need a common political voice. "And what people want from Europe is more than free trade. They want prosperity, security and strength."
The federal model, he said, failed to take account of the attachment of the citizens to their "primary sources of democratic accountability", national parliaments and governments.
Turning to the issue of a constitution for Europe, he proposed instead the drafting of a political "statement of the principles according to which we should decide what is best done at European level and what should be done at national level, a kind of charter of competences".
Alison O'Connor, Political Reporter, writes:
The Labour Party MEP, Mr Proinsias de Rossa, has accused the Government of completely failing to represent Ireland in the emerging debate on the future of Europe among EU leaders. He called on the Government to immediately clarify its policy following the speech on Europe by the British Prime Minister.
"In the absence of a clear and public signal from the Government, assumptions will be made by our European partners and decisions will be taken that may not be in Ireland's best interests," he said.
