Brussels, 03/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - Alarmed by the Bill currently going through the UK parliament (the “referendum lock”), which, if passed, would require the British government to put to a referendum any future amendment of the EU Treaty that would transfer sovereignty to the European Union, Andrew Duff (ALDE, UK) has launched an initiative which seeks to simplify the procedure for revising the Treaties. Duff wrote to European Parliament (EP) President Jerzy Buzek on Thursday 3 March suggesting that the EP seize the opportunity - on the basis of Article 48(2) of the Treaty - to review the Lisbon Treaty and make it easier for future amendments to come into force. In short, Duff is proposing that, in future, any amendment of the Treaty approved unanimously by an inter-governmental conference (IGC) should become effective as soon as it has been ratified by four fifths of member states. Currently, as was apparent with ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, it takes just the president or the parliament of a single member state to refuse to ratify an amendment to the Treaty (even though this amendment has already been endorsed by the government) for it not to come into force. According to Duff, no amendment to the Treaty that would bring deeper European integration has the slightest chance of being approved by the British people. This is, of course, an “intolerable” situation for those who want to continue along the path towards European integration, he said.
The effect of the UK law would be to “seriously delay and complicate all future Ttreaty revisions”, Duff says in his letter to Buzek, which EUROPE has seen. The time has come to lighten the ratification procedure and to bring it “into line with the normal practice for the entry into force on international treaties and, indeed, with the normal constitutional process within federal systems of government”. All that requires to be done is to amend paragraphs 4 and 5 of Article 48 of the Treaty, stating that the new amended Treaty will come into force once it has been ratified by four fifths of member states, he writes. This will not change the unanimity required within the IGC (on which the representatives of the governments sit) for any amendment of the Treaty to be adopted, he states. This is not a new idea: it appeared in Altiero Spinelli's draft treaty of 1984 and was also discussed in the Convention when the constitutional treaty was being drafted. Duff is, therefore, confident that his initiative will be supported by the majority of MEPs in the Parliament. Buzek may now call on the EP constitutional affairs committee to prepare a report which, if it receives large enough support, will be sent to the Council with a request that it convene an IGC. Duff hopes that even UK Prime Minister David Cameron could accept such a procedural change, in the knowledge that London will always have its right of veto on the amendment of the Treaty in the IGC. (H.B./transl.rt)