Andrew Duff MEP

Union Enlargement

The great challenge now facing the European Union is to project its own prosperity, stability and security eastward and southward towards new member states.

The enlargement of the Union is for European Liberal Democrats the top priority, for which we have a moral imperative as well as a political mandate.

To prepare the Union for enlargement - as well as to clear up some tricky unfinished business of Amsterdam and Maastricht - a new treaty is due to be signed at Nice in December.

Its purpose, just like its predecessors, is to make the Union more efficient, effective and democratic.

These are objectives we support, of course, and we wish the intergovernmental conference well.

So far, however, very little progress has been made by the IGC.

The tricky questions which exposed the divisions between larger and smaller states and between progressives and conservatives are still there - indeed, there and rather more exposed these days as integration begins to affect policy areas such as cooperation in the field of criminal justice, immigration and asylum, security and defence, and fiscal matters that have been traditionally the reserve of national sovereignty.

Too often the IGC is reduced to searching for the lowest common denominator, the minimum possible consensus.

Quarrelling rampages over such weighty questions as the extension of qualified majority voting to the appointment to the Economic and Social Committee, and whether the political parties in Luxembourg can live with four or five or six seats in the European Parliament.

May God and Chirac bless the IGC - because nobody else will.

The real prize at Nice lies in the prospect of a decision in principle to install at the heart of the European Union a fundamental rights regime.

That's why a Convention has been set up, of which I am privileged to be a member, to draft the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Within a fortnight we should finish our work.

We have drawn on the existing European Convention on Human Rights in classic human rights areas.

But we have also drafted rights in the economic field that properly reflect the social dimension of the single market as set out in the EU Treaties.

We address rights and principles in the fields of ecology and technology.

We have rights to good public administration, data collection and freedom of information, to ensure protection of minorities and to outlaw discrimination.

The present draft, the 47th, is in my view an admirable and well-balanced attempt to reflect and safeguard the aspirations of our complex, pluralistic, contemporary European society.

By establishing rules for fundamental rights at the EU level, the Charter moves beyond the current system of human rights protection, which is simply in the hands of the courts, and offers Union citizens legal and political certainty.

The Union now has a clear statement of the fundamental rights it must respect in forming its policies at home and abroad.

At face value, the draft Charter will be very difficult for even the most hostile of prime ministers to reject.

But the Charter is more than a public relations exercise.

It lies firmly in the long European and American tradition of radical constitutionalism.

It shifts the paradigm of European unification in favour of the citizen.

The Charter in one form or another will become part of the case-law of the European Court of Justice.

It will serve to protect the individual from an abuse of the great power that is now concentrated at the level of the European Union.

The Charter sets out six values that inform the work of the European Union - dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity, citizenship and justice.

By making these values more visible, the Charter will facilitate the accession of those candidate countries who are ready and willing to build with us post-national democracy and the rule of law.

Britain should be in the forefront of those who fight for European fundamental rights.

Nowhere more than Britain is an entrenchment of modern citizens' rights required.

Instead, this government has been fearful, conservative, sceptical.

The prime minister is now in danger of being isolated if he refuses in principle to allow this great Charter to be binding on the Union.

Mr Blair should not try to exaggerate the potential of conflict with the ECHR or with national constitutions. Nor does the Charter give new powers to the Union - that can only be done by the IGC.

Because of this Britain's partners are certain to sign up to, respect and gradually deploy the EU Charter.

So will the European Commission and Parliament.

This motion shows the way forward for our party, for our country, for our people.