Skip to main content

EDM 318 - The future of the European Union

That this House notes that the peoples of Europe oppose the concept of an ever closer union and calls for the UK Presidency to be used to develop proposals for a lighter touch European Union with fewer competencies, a smaller budget, and a lesser ability to make impositions on member states.

EDM 318 has achieved limited amount of notoriety in the 2 short days since it was tabled.

Quoting from Ming Cambell later, however: "I want a European Union that is decentralised, transparent and accountable and that protects human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. There is no other economic association that requires those who wish to join it to satisfy a set of criteria on good governance and human rights. The Copenhagen criteria are unique. No other economic organisation or association requires its members to satisfy such standards of governance. That is often forgotten and not given sufficient emphasis."

There is, of course, no conflict between this and EDM 318.

*EDM - Early Day Motion

Comments

John Hemming said…
I have always thought there was a substantial majority for a "light touch" European Union.

Theoretically that is Lib Dem Party policy, but we tend to get tangled up in a debate of "in or out" rather than the sort of Europe we wish to see.

Popular posts from this blog

Why are babies born young?

Why are babies born young? This sounds like an odd question. People would say "of course babies are born young". However, this goes to the core of the question of human (or animal) development. Why is it that as time passes people develop initially through puberty and then for women through menopause and more generally getting diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, but most of the time babies start showing no signs of this. Lots of research into this has happened over the years and now I think it is clear why this is. It raises some interesting questions. Biological youth is about how well a cell functions. Cells that are old in a biological sense don't work that well. One of the ways in which cells stop working is they fail to produce the full range of proteins. Generally the proteins that are produced from longer genes stop being produced. The reason for this relates to how the Genes work (the Genome). Because the genome is not gettin...