Brussels, 21/01/2008 (Agence Europe) - Pressure is growing on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. With discussions in the House of Commons on a Parliamentary ratification of the treaty by the United Kingdom starting on Monday 21 January, a group of 18 MPs from Mr Brown's New Labour Party announced that they would campaign for a referendum, with the clear support of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who have always called for the treaty to be put to the people. This weekend, those in favour of a referendum also received the support of the foreign affairs select committee of the lower house, which concluded in a report published on Sunday 20 January that various key points of the Treaty of Lisbon (signed on 13 December 2007 by the 27 heads of state and government) are no different from provisions of the draft European Constitution, which was rejected in 2005.
The members of this parliamentary committee believe, amongst other things, that the foreign policy structures of the EU as proposed by the Lisbon Treaty are identical to those contained in the draft Constitution. They also accuse the government of playing down the significance of certain institutional novelties brought in by the Lisbon Treaty, such as the new post of “High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy” (London had rejected the initially proposed title of “European Foreign Minister”), who will also be a vice-president of the European Commission. “We conclude that there is no material difference between the provisions on foreign affairs in the Constitutional Treaty, which the government made subject to approval in a referendum, and those in the Lisbon Treaty, on which a referendum is being denied”, their report states. The committee goes on to state: “we further conclude that (…) the government is underestimating, and certainly downplaying in public, the significance of” the major innovations created by the Lisbon Treaty. Lastly, “we recommend that the government should publicly acknowledge the significance of the foreign policy aspects of the Lisbon Treaty”.
In the view of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, the Parliamentary report will not change the position of the government, which will continue to defend the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by means of simple parliamentary ratification. There is nothing constitutional about the new treaty; it is just a “revision treaty” which will entail no loss of sovereignty for the United Kingdom and which can and should, therefore, be ratified by the Parliament, he told the BBC. (H.B.)