|
'Seven days to save Britain'
15/06/2007 18:42 - (SA)
London - A British tabloid launched a campaign under the slogan "Seven Days to Save Britain" on Friday, objecting to EU plans to revive a treaty, which it warned was a "sell-out".
The notoriously Eurosceptic Sun daily said Prime Minister Tony Blair should not "go along with (the) fraud" of a treaty which EU leaders hope to hammer out at a crunch summit in Brussels next week.
"Tony Blair would dearly love to sign off his premiership with a deal on Europe," it said in an editorial, referring to the fact that the British leader is due to stand down on June 27, days after the June 21-22 EU gathering.
But it warned that the new treaty would create a "draconian new superstate" including a new EU president and foreign minister, as well as ceding sovereignty over key policy areas including crime and employment.
"Who do they think they are kidding?" asked the paper's political editor, George Pascoe-Watson.
"The treaty is a celebration of the vanity of Europe's political elite. They are utterly out of touch," added Pascoe-Watson.
'Completely out of touch'
Blair was among EU leaders who signed the EU constitution in 2004, only to see it torpedoed by French and Dutch referendums in 2005, plunging the bloc into an unprecedented institutional limbo.
The British leader is now backing a scaled-down "amending treaty" rather than a full-blown constitution, although many more federalist EU states who have already ratified the original document want to keep its main elements.
A government spokesperson meanwhile welcomed the latest proposals by the EU's German presidency, distributed to EU capitals on Thursday, which confirmed plans to drop the term "constitution".
"We welcome their proposal to return to the classical method of treaty change whereby the existing treaties would be amended," said a government spokesperson.
The constitution was designed to streamline EU decision-making and prevent institutional gridlock in the expanding bloc, which grew to 27 members in January.
- AFP
|
News
