My friends,

As I travelled to London on the Eurostar, I remembered a similar journey that I made some ten years ago to meet Margaret Thatcher – and, indeed, your co-chairman,
Michael Spicer. I was then just starting out on my political career, and that meeting made a powerful impression on me. Mrs Thatcher encouraged me to carry on the struggle that I had just launched for a referendum on Maastricht. She urged me on in the name of national democracy, something threatened by an out-of-control European bureaucracy.

Those words struck a chord deep inside me, for they recalled the language of General de Gaulle, who also strove to check the drift towards federalism during his presidency, but whose work was soon forgotten by his successors.

After this first meeting, I remained closely in touch with the Conservative Party. My friend Bill Cash, your Shadow Attorney General – who has just published a remarkable pamphlet, The European Constitution: a Political Timebomb – came to lend us his support at one of my party’s first meetings, at Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre in 1996. And in the years following my first election to the European Parliament in 1994, I and my colleagues enjoyed the warmest of links with the British souverainistes alongside whom we found ourselves ranged in fighting moves toward supra-nationalism. I cannot name them all, but I should like to single out Daniel Hannan, whose intellectual agility we greatly value, and whose warm words at our party conference in Seignosse two years ago we much appreciated.

Finally, I should like to mention Gerald Howarth, your Shadow Defence Spokesman, who spoke at our annual conference at Lamoura in September. His speech was a tonic: it buoyed up our party activists and showed them just how close our views are on the eve of this new battle for Europe.

For two decades, the European superstate has been advancing in disguise. Today, it is casting aside its mask. The current draft treaty, heavily influenced by the EU institutions which framed the Convention, is entitled – with admirable frankness – "The Constitution". And in this constitution, we can pick out the shape – with, for the first time, reasonable clarity – of a superstate. A state with a single jurisdiction, a single institutional framework, a single legal personality. A state whose laws over-ride our national constitutions, and before which our national statutes must bend.

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once asked the Convention: "But is this entity we are creating a state or an international organisation?" He never came up with an answer; neither did the Convention. But reading the text of the Constitution, we can discern the truth. Even if the new state is not completed yet, the important lines have already been sketched out. We are dealing with a European superstate.

And that is why every good democrat in France wants the idea put to referendum. That was my own message to our President, Jacques Chirac, when I met him last week.

Yet French federalists seem to be doing all they can to stop the people from having their say. They are terrified. It is true that, according to the polls, most French people favour the idea of a constitution, at least in the abstract (it’s a fine word, "constitution": we must concede that). But that is because they don’t know what is actually in it. Once they understand that what is being proposed is a superstate, they will surely turn against it.

And consider something else. Let us assume that such a referendum might realistically be held in the latter half of 2004. This would mean that it came just as the European Council was deciding whether or not to open accession talks with Turkey. Now an overwhelming majority of French people oppose Turkey’s admission. If these two questions – the superstate and Turkish membership – become conflated in the minds of my countrymen, it would be explosive for the federalists. All the more so when you consider that the new constitution, which accords voting weights by size of population, would thus necessarily give Turkey a place in the first rank of decision making.

Needless to say, the fear of mixing up the Turkish question with that of the superstate, however much it dominates private conversations in federalist circles, is never publicly acknowledged. Officially, they use other arguments, which I shall run through now, and answer in turn. They fall into five categories:

1. There is no need for a referendum, because the proposal doesn’t amount to a real constitution for a real state.

 

No doubt, even if the Constitution were adopted in its present form, the European superstate would not have been wholly achieved. Certain decisions would still have to be taken unanimously. But the text contains a major innovation: it provides for unanimity to be abandoned by a simple decision of the European Council, without revising the constitution – in other words, without a new mandate from the peoples. My party had pushed for Article One of the new text to read: "The Union shall respect the national sovereignty of its Member States". Obviously, we didn’t get our way. All we got was Article Five, which says that "The Union shall respect the national identity of its Member States" – not the same thing at all.

2. It is a real constitution, but it doesn’t contain anything new.

It is true that this text does what European Treaties usually do – that is, it confirms existing tendencies. But at the same time it goes much further. Look at Article Ten, which provides for the superiority of European over national law. Now the doctrine of the supremacy of EU law was developed by the European Court of Justice in the years 1963 and 1964. But Article Ten of the Constitution breaks new ground in two ways.

For one thing, the jurisprudential principle of the primacy of EU law has never previously been presented to, or ratified by, the peoples. It was never written into the Treaties. It was, rather, the result of a decision by the European judges of the day (then numbering six). This creates a persistent misunderstanding between Europe and its peoples. The EU lives by principles which it holds sacrosanct, but which the peoples have never been asked to ratify.

Secondly, in 1963, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice was concerned narrowly with the limited and technical fields of law necessary for the maintenance of the internal market. Within these strict confines, the supremacy of European law was arguably defensible. But as the years have passed, the EU has steadily enlarged its own areas of competence – even including competences which are the core of a sovereign state – without reconsidering the principle of its legal supremacy. We cannot now hand over to Brussels yet more fields of jurisdiction without tackling this question.

3. It is a real constitution, but it has already been exhaustively debated during the Convention.

Federalists would have us believe, by this argument, that there is no need for a referendum, because the relevant deliberations all took place during the drafting process. This is wholly and utterly untrue. Discussions among selected representatives of governments and parliaments – who in any case had no mandate to draw up a constitution – are no substitute for popular approval. If our governments really think it is a good substitute for referendum, then they should say clearly that we have changed our regime, that we are not any more in democracy. In any case, I must tell you that the debates on the Convention were not honest: they were remote-controlled by the EU institutions.

4. It really is a constitution, but a referendum would be dangerous, because people would drag in a whole lot of other questions

This, of course, is a strong argument against holding elections at all. If people cannot be allowed to vote on issues as they please, why not do away with democracy altogether? Obviously, in any set of elections, extraneous questions will to some extent enter the debate. But this happens far less in a referendum, where you are able to pose a single question clearly and precisely.

5. The European elections can serve as a referendum

This argument first reared its head in Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s declaration in Rome on 18 July. It holds that national parliaments should be free to ratify the constitution without direct reference to their electorates, taking into consideration instead the result of next year’s European election.

Such a procedure would be completely illegal. For in this instance, it really would be the case that, instead of a single question being put, a whole series of questions would become intermingled. What’s more, from a strictly juridical point of view, MEPs have no authority over constitutional questions. Their election cannot be held to legitimise a constitutional revolution.

What Giscard proposed on 18 July would therefore hijack due process – and would do so on the gravest of subjects, one concerned with the subordination of national democracy.

Before I finish, I should like to underline what it is we are asking for. We do not want a single pan-European referendum, but straightforward and honest national consultations, carried out by each nation in accordance with its own traditions.

To call for a single European referendum, to be decided by a majority in Europe as a whole, would be to assume that the nations no longer exist. That would be to act as though the constitution and its consequences were already in force when, of course, it is the very adoption of the constitution which is in question. This would be quite monstrous from a legal perspective, and I hope it will never happen.

What we should be pushing for is for each nation to consult its people according to its own norms. For us in France, this means by referendum. And, as I understand it, you in Britain are using similar arguments to ours.

Nevertheless, we must not remain separate during the campaign ahead. That would be greatly to the advantage of the European Commission which, like a spider at the centre of its web, has succeeded for decades in playing one nation off against another. This time, we all share a great common interest: the preservation of our national democracies.

This common interest should unite us despite our diversity. In 1955, Jean Monnet set up an Action Committee for the United States of Europe, bringing together figures from different countries, with the aim of putting pressure on the authorities then drawing up the Treaty of Rome. Today, we should create our own movement – the Action Committee for a Europe of Nations – to work together in the endeavour ahead. To develop our vision of a European concert, founded in respect for its nations. A Europe which is prosperous, democratic and free.

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