Airstrip One

Is this a defining moment? - 19th December 2002, 22.52

The current government has attempted to portray the European Convention as a 'consolidation' of existing treaties that does not require popular consent and does not represent a further move towards integration. As the Convention has been seized upon by integrationists for their objective of deepening the Union, this stance looks increasingly unreal.

Many view the Convention as a body whose objectives will prove incompatible with British parliamentary sovereignty and that it will lead to a parting of the ways. Considering the EU's long history of muddle and compromise, plus this government's readiness to accept a far greater level of European interference in British affairs (as Blair's speech in Cardiff indicated), this outcome seems very optimistic.

Lord Howells, nevertheless, argues that John Bull's tankard is half-full.


So the British offering is a "thus far and no further" document, an attempt to halt the slide toward the centralization of powers in Europe and defend nation-states against further encroachments. Somehow a skeptical British public has to be persuaded that this sort of compromise is the best that can be done.

There are two snags to this approach. The first is that most of it will be rejected anyway by other European leaders, especially the attempt to keep defense and foreign policy out of central hands. The overwhelming continental wish is to make the EU a military power in its own right with a single foreign policy and a single foreign-policy spokesman who can project Europe's power on the world stage, thus checking -- although this is unspoken -- the perceived American impulse toward hegemony.

The second snag is that most British people will hate the whole idea of a written constitution. They will accept that the EU must have clearer club rules about who does what, but that is as far as they will go. If given the chance to vote on a new European constitutional treaty in a referendum -- and the Conservative opposition is already pressing for one when the new proposals come next year -- the majority would probably oppose it.

At that point, the union would be in turmoil. With one of its largest members, Britain, in effect vetoing the constitutional project and the rest determined to go ahead, the threat of a real parting of the ways would be greater than it has ever been since the original European Community was founded 45 years ago.