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Telegraph
The Euro-constitution is sneaking in by the back door
By Daniel Hannan The Conservative MEP for the SE.
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 20/02/2007

I've just worked out how the federalists are going to do it. Ever since the French
and Dutch "No" votes, the craftiest legal minds in Brussels have been looking
for a way to resurrect the European Constitution. Now, they have found one: a
way so devilishly beautiful that even those who support national sovereignty
must tip our caps to them.

The problem they faced is simply stated. On May 29, 2005, 15 million Frenchmen
voted "No". Two weeks later, five million Dutchmen followed suit. The
constitution cannot come into force unless all 27 EU members agree, and neither
the stubborn Frenchies nor the swag-bellied Hollanders show the least sign of
changing their minds.

Europe's elites, however, immediately made clear that the project remained on
course. "The French and Dutch did not really vote 'No' to the European
constitution, " insisted Luxembourg's Prime Minister, Jean Claude Juncker.

"The constitution is still necessary," announced Germany's Chancellor, Angela
Merkel.

Other countries have since pushed ahead with ratification: 18 of the 27 members
have now adopted the text.

And herein lies the lawyers' dilemma. The French and Dutch governments don't
dare put the same draft before their electorates. But, if the text is amended,
parliamentary approval will have to begin all over again in the 18 ratifying
states, and some of their voters might well start demanding referendums of their
own. How, then, can Euro-enthusiasts present an apparently new document in
France and Holland without reopening the debate elsewhere?

"We have the answer," says Alain Lamassoure, a former Europe minister who is now
Nicolas Sarkozy's vicar on earth. "We shall go through the text with a rubber
instead of a pencil. Many of the clauses are unnecessary, because they reiterate
what is already in the treaties. But these are generally the articles that
people object to. So, if we take out what we don't need, we can avoid any new
referendums. "

It is a horribly plausible plan. For the fact is that, as Peter Hain, then
Europe minister, kept trying to tell us, three quarters of the EU constitution
is a rehash of the existing treaties. This shouldn't make it any more
acceptable, of course: the whole point of the constitution was that it was an
opportunity to draw up a settlement in accordance with people's wishes. If we
objected to something that Brussels was already doing - the Common Fisheries
Policy, say - this was our opportunity to remove it.

Still, excising these articles will allow supporters of the constitution to
claim that the document has been medicinally purged - especially if they also
cut the clauses that offer a legal basis for something the EU is already doing
unofficially: the diplomatic service, the space programme, the defence
procurement office, the human rights agency, the charter of fundamental rights,
the external borders agency, and so on.

The 27 heads of government will be asked to approve this plan at a dinner in
Berlin next month. Shorn of its otiose paragraphs, the constitution will be less
than half its present length. It will still specify the changes in national
voting weights, the creation of an EU presidency and foreign minister, and a
slight extension in majority voting. But the French and Dutch governments will
claim that the new version is too trivial to warrant new referendums, as will
the other governments that fear their Euro-sceptic publics: Sweden, Poland and
Britain. Geoff Hoon, the Europe minister, has confirmed that the Government's
promise of a referendum on the constitution would not apply to a "mini-treaty" .

And - here's the clever bit - the 18 states that have already ratified will be
able to tell their national assemblies that, since the curtailed version
contains nothing new, there is no need to start the implementation process all
over again. The outcome will be identical to approving the full constitution in
its present form.

Which brings us to something that neither side of the debate likes to
acknowledge. The bits of the constitution to which people object are, in
general, the bits that restate the status quo. Voters are complaining, not about
what Brussels proposes to do next, but about what it is doing now.

Believe me. I have spent the better part of four years criss-crossing my Home
Counties constituency and reading out passages of the constitution to WIs and
Rotary Clubs, farmers and sixth formers. I have crossed the Channel to repeat
the exercise in front of European audiences - in their own languages when I can.
Whomever I am talking to, they reserve their angriest contempt for the
paragraphs that repeat the existing treaties. Article I-6, for example, never
fails to prompt a mutinous growl: "This constitution shall have primacy over the
laws of the member states." But this clause simply makes explicit a doctrine
that has been evolved by the European Court of Justice since 1964.

"Our mistake was to spell everything out," says a senior German official.

"For 50 years, the people of Europe were happy to eat sausages. Then we came
along and asked them whether they wanted to eat tubes stuffed with chopped-up
sow's udders."

Indeed. Until now, the EU has proceeded by stealth. First, Eurocrats would
extend their jurisdiction to a new area and then, often years later, they would
formalise that extension in a treaty. The Single European Act recognised the
unofficial Brussels role in environmental policy, Maastricht the effective
harmonisation of foreign policy, Amsterdam and Nice the informal standardisation
of immigration and criminal procedures.

Instead of being presented with revolutionary changes, voters were informed
after the event.

This, of course, is how Britain joined in the first place. Had we had a
referendum in 1972, we would almost certainly have voted "No", but, by 1975, the
"Keep Britain in Europe" campaign (as it was careful to title itself) was able
to appeal to our conservatism: we were committed now, we had burnt our bridges
with the Commonwealth, we couldn't let our new partners down. It is a delicious
paradox that, at that very moment, Parliament was passing an Act to outlaw
inertia selling.

The constitution was a one-off. Instead of occupying territory inch by inch,
under cover of night, the integrationists drew up their cataphracts in ranks and
offered us a pitched battle. It is not a mistake they will repeat again.

The democratic experiment is over. We are back to the Monnet method of
behind-the-scenes integration. Eurocrats have calculated that, as long as we are
presented with a fait accompli, we will shrug our shoulders and accept it. And,
God forgive us, they are probably right.

# The author is a Conservative MEP for south-east England