Brussels, 23/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - British Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff, Member of the European Parliament (and former Federal Trust Director), reacted to the ideas outlined by Joschka Fischer at Humboldt University in a "Memorandum" expressing an alarmed tone, while noting that the German Foreign Minister, "in many ways", possesses "classical federalist views on the future of Europe" and that he is "particularly forceful, for example, on the need for a constitution". "The first cause for alarm", adds Mr Duff, however, is that "Fischer implies that the current IGC will fail to prepare the Union sufficiently for enlargement". This is "particularly depressing when one remembers that the IGC has still got seven months to go", notes the MEP. His "second worry" is that Mr Fischer "proposes a wholly new Parliament of two chambers". In Mr Duff's view, since the Minister "is not proposing to abolish the Council, he ends up with, in effect, a tricameral legislature". Concerning Mr Fischer's statement that the presence of a chamber made up of national deputies "would eliminate conflict between national and European political elites", Mr Duff points out that "clearly Fischer is not an admirer of the present European Parliament" and that his proposals would bring the "effort to develop parliamentary democracy at a European level … to a halt". Andrew Duff deems alarming what he calls Fishcher's "apparent total destruction of the conventional Community system", and notes that his "drastic proposal will accentuate fears that the French and Germans are really in favour of the emergence of a directory of larger Member States and the aggrandisement of the European Council, at the expense of the Treaty-based inter-institutional system".
"We may welcome the fact that the German Foreign Minister has sought to stimulate a political debate about the future of Europe", concludes Mr Duff, adding that "his performance gives rise to many serious, legitimate questions". And he wonders: "Is there a Franco-German plot to destabilise the Union? Why is Fischer (...) neglecting his duty towards the current IGC? What does this presage for enlargement?"