Walker's World: Brown's EU threat

PERIGUEUX, France, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- After a successful trip to Washington to reaffirm the "special relationship" with the United States and a prolonged honeymoon with the opinion polls, there has been speculation in Britain that new Prime Minister Gordon Brown might call an early general election to exploit his popularity.

But Brown, a deeply serious Scotsman who is not prone to impulsive decisions, is likely to be cautious, because his first real political crisis seems to be gathering speed. As so often in recent British politics, it is about relations with the European Union.

In one of his last acts as premier, Tony Blair agreed at a European summit in June to a new organizing Treaty for the EU. The Treaty, whose final text has yet to be completed, has now become the latest chapter in the bizarre saga of the EU's new draft Constitution that was rejected by Dutch and French voters in a referendum two years ago.

Their rejection spared Blair and Britain from what would have been a bruising referendum battle, since Blair had been persuaded to promise a free vote by the British people on a change of such obvious constitutional significance. But Blair and now Brown are claiming that the new Treaty is far less momentous than the draft Constitution, that British objections to sweeping transfers of sovereignty to Europe had been achieved, and so the earlier promise for a British referendum are null and void.

The Conservative and Liberal-Democrat opposition parties, the bulk of the British media, large majorities in the opinion polls and at least 40 Labor members of Parliament all agree, however, that the pledge to hold a referendum must be kept.

Gisela Stuart, a senior MP who was one of Britain's representatives on the team that produced the EU Constitution, has been forthright, arguing: "One of Tony Blair's last acts was to renege on a promise, and it is almost unbelievable that one of Gordon Brown's first has been to do the same. All Labor MPs were elected in 2005 on that manifesto commitment."

David Cameron, the Tory leader of the opposition, gave Brown a rough ride in Parliament last week, dismissing the Blair and Brown argument that the Treaty had been so watered down that it was no longer of sufficient constitutional importance to deserve a referendum.

"The Irish prime minister says 90 percent of the Constitution remains in the Treaty. The Spanish foreign minister says it's 98 percent. What figure would the prime minister put on it?" Cameron demanded. "He says he wants to involve people in the decisions affecting their lives. Yet on the key test of whether to honor the commitment he personally gave to hold the referendum he has failed. Why is he afraid to trust the people and hold that referendum?"

Senior Labor figures agree. Frank Field, a former minister, argues that the Treaty is virtually the same as the Constitution.

"Sovereignty is to be transferred in the most fundamental way. It will be the EU -- and not member states -- that will sign international agreements on foreign policy, defense, crime and judicial matters. The EU will begin to take on the appearance of a separate country in all but name," Field claims.

It will not be easy for Brown to win this argument because so many EU federalists have been openly crowing at their cunning in sneaking the key powers of the failed Constitution into the new Treaty. Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who chaired the process that drafted the Constitution, has taken open delight in claiming the new Treaty has outflanked the French 'No' vote in the referendum by securing for the EU the key constitutional powers "that we could not have secured openly."

In his personal blog last week, d'Estaing published a letter sent to him by the German president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, which says the new Treaty will "allow us to keep the advances that we would not have dared present directly." Pottering's letter lists seven key features of the Treaty, including: "The Charter of Fundamental Rights will be legally binding"; "the collapse of the pillar structure"; the fact that "The 'High Representative' will take up the competences granted to the Union Foreign Affairs Minister"; and that "the majority of the measures taken in the field of common foreign and security policy remain unchanged."

In an editorial, the Times of London argued that "in terms of the sovereign powers transferred to Brussels, of expanded roles for the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament, of the potentially intrusive and legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights, and of expanded majority voting in the EU Council, the 'reform treaty' is indeed the old constitution revisited."

European constitutional scholars agree. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Professor Roland Vaubel of the University of Mannheim concluded last week, "The Reform Treaty is nothing but the old draft in a new guise to avoid another round of referendums. And as a result, the EU's democratic deficit is not narrowing but widening."

In such a context, it will not be easy for Britain's new prime minister to avoid a referendum, and the row looks likely to overshadow British political life and the climate in which Brown hopes to secure his own mandate with a new general election.

If there is one ray of light for Brown in this grim picture, it comes from France, where new President Nicolas Sarkozy is also keen to avoid another referendum and have the Treaty ratified by a vote in Parliament. But under French law, France will first have to amend its own national Constitution to do so, and that requires a majority vote of both the National Assembly, where Sarkozy holds a comfortable majority, and the Senate, where he does not. The Socialist opposition, with support from other parties, can block such a constitutional change almost indefinitely, and given their antipathy to Sarkozy, that looks very likely indeed.