The EU, poverty and the environment

Europe has always played a pivotal role in my political career and my political consciousness. But it is interesting to note how much has changed since I was first elected as an MEP in 1984.

Britain is more connected to Europe, and Europe to Britain, than ever before - and I am not just referring to the Eurotunnel and low-cost airlines.

Legislation is harmonised across the world's largest single market of over 460 million people. Our citizens can live, work, study and vote across Europe. We have EU-wide regulations on food quality, equal opportunities at work, road safety, secure online travel booking - to name but a few aspects out of a very many.

Yet, despite these obvious improvements in living standards and opportunities that the EU has delivered, our citizens are not convinced about why it is a good thing to be in the EU. Public support for Europe has fallen. Only 49 per cent of Europeans believe that EU membership is a good thing. Only 39 per cent think the EU is going in the right direction.

Certainly, this stems in part from the fall-out of last year's referendums. But we will only reconnect the EU's institutions to our citizens by delivering practical benefits across areas as diverse as employment, EU competitiveness and the environment.

Which is why I welcome José Manuel Barroso's call to get Europe working on a practical agenda rather than dwell on the aftermath of last year's No votes.

There is a more deep-rooted problem though - a worrying trend of declining electoral participation across the board.

As Leader of the House of Commons, I spent a large amount of time considering how to improve engagement in our political system. I worried that members of the public saw no connection between voting and what happened in their everyday lives. That they did not believe that politicians were adequately addressing the big issues that they really cared about: like climate change and global poverty.

This certainly applies domestically - and even more so at the European level.

We can, and must reverse this trend.

I remain confident that we can, because there is a huge appetite across Europe to be involved in political issues. We only have to look at the membership of campaigning groups to see this.

Take Friends of the Earth, the world's largest grassroots environmental federation, with around 1.5 million members and active supporters, uniting 71 diverse national member groups and some 5,000 local activist groups on every continent. And the half a million who turned out to march during the G8 Summit in Edinburgh as part of Oxfam's "make poverty history" campaign.

The G8 march showed that people are increasingly realising that if we are seriously to tackle the problems that cause poverty in the world - particularly climate change and conflict - it has to be done at a multi-national level: Through the UN, the WTO and the G8. But also through the European Union.

And this is the essence of what I believe our new agenda must be about.

The same people who are prepared to protest about the big issues say they should be at the top of the EU agenda. In the most recent Eurobarometer poll on the "Future of Europe", people named their top priorities for where the EU should act more coherently across the Union as tackling terrorism and organised crime, promoting democracy worldwide and protecting the environment, including through technical innovations and research.

Yet, despite this, they still do not believe it is worth their while voting in an EU election. So I see a two-fold challenge for this agenda.

The first part is for the EU to demonstrate that it is part of the global solution in tackling these big issues. For example, one of immediate concern is the WTO Trade Round, on which we need significant progress in the coming weeks.

And the second is that, by making the connection between the main challenges of the day and what the EU can do about them, we give our citizens a reason to engage in what the EU does.

One key area in which we can make this link is climate change.

The debate is no longer about whether there is a problem but it is about the scale of global action required to tackle it.

The potential impacts of climate change on sea levels as well as water resources and agriculture increase the likelihood of future conflict over natural resources - in particular fresh water- and of even greater poverty in frontline developing countries.

Solving these problems will require bold leadership. And the EU is leading the way in driving collective action on climate change. It was the first multi-lateral institution to develop an Emissions Trading System to meet its shared Kyoto targets.

The EU ETS is by no means perfect. But the EU is already the hub of a developing global carbon market that is driving emissions reductions. I believe the EU can lead the way to a low-carbon economy, benefiting both our citizens' lives and increasing our businesses' ability to compete. It is only with this kind of agenda - with the EU demonstrating how it is a global leader in finding solutions to the major global challenges - that we will get our citizens to re-engage.

And only then will the figures show that our citizens believe that the EU is once again, moving in the right direction.

Mr Hoon is Britain's Minister for Europe.