Downing Street Says » EU Treaty

Asked by the Sun if the Prime Minister was able to quell Angela Merkel’s efforts to revive the EU constitution during his visit yesterday, the PMOS replied that firstly, he wanted to correct some things that had been written today. There were no plans to in any way sign away the ability of this country to defend itself, no matter what the view of our EU partners. Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) had been part of the EU for a long time, but the QMV we agreed to was only when it was in this country’s interests, such as in pursuing the Single Market which was something that the Sun newspaper supported. What was necessary was to look at what actually helped an EU of 27 work in a way that was not necessary for an EU of 6 or 15. What was important was that we engaged with the EU President – Angela Merkel in this case – who was someone who was fully aware of the need to move Europe forward in a practical way, and in a way that did respond to the votes that we had had in Europe, for example in Holland and France. What did not work, however, was to stand on the sidelines and simply say no.

Asked if there was any clarification after the meeting with Chancellor Merkel as to what they were working towards for June, the PMOS replied that this was very much a preliminary discussion, with us putting forward our view which coincided with others, including the Dutch Prime Minister. It was for Chancellor Merkel as EU President to listen to the views around Europe before coming up with a consensus, and we were happy to engage in that process. However, we were very clear about the sort of things that we believed would and would not work, and the Prime Minister had set those out last week in his press conference with Prime Minister Balkenende.

Put that it was noticeable, even when she was putting UK journalists right, that Chancellor Merkel was still talking about a constitutional treaty, but we were not, the PMOS said that at this stage, these were preliminary discussions. What we had to do was to let the discussions take place before reaching a judgement. What was important was that the Prime Minister had set out the parameters that he believed, and that included not having the characteristics of a constitution.

Put that Chancellor Merkel had also said that she expected to have meetings with the Prime Minister before he left office, and were we anticipating a lot of shuttle diplomacy, the PMOS said that inevitably, this was an issue that was going to pick up. As the Prime Minister had said, he firmly believed that if it was possible to reach consensus before June, then it was better that the EU got rid of this issue and focused on the real practical issues that people wanted progress on. The way to make the EU effective on those real practical issues was to resolve the issues about organisation that a Europe of 27 had to address in a different way than it did previously.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Wednesday, April 25, 2007

EU Treaty

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries