Remedying the EU's weakness

I could not agree more with Roderick Pace (The Sunday Times, June 29) about the desirability of the European Union playing a stronger role in world affairs, and that is surely hardly surprising since I am the co-founder of the institution where Prof. Pace teaches. But I am not convinced at all that the Lisbon Treaty (any more than the Constitution in the drafting of which I participated) provides the needed remedy for the EU's weakness.

The convention was called not to draft a Constitution, which we were bulldozed into doing by the Presidium, but in part to propose some institutional adjustments to cater for enlargement, and mainly to address the problem that is, in fact, the real cause of weakness of the EU - the yawning gap between the peoples of Europe and its institutional leaders, most especially the European Parliament.

This problem will be very greatly aggravated if the leaders of the European institutions repeat with regard to the Irish popular vote the same mistake that was committed with regard to the negative French and Dutch popular votes. The institutional leaders tried to foist on the peoples of Europe the same legal content that had been rejected in referendums.

Hardly anything could worsen the weakness of the European Union in world affairs, i.e. the gap between the people and their representatives, more than disguising the real significance of the Irish Vote by some similar merely cosmetic device as calling substantially the same document a treaty instead of a constitution.

I was relieved, however, to note that Prof. Pace did not commit the gross error of other Maltese who argued that because of the smallness of the Irish population in relation to the magnitude of the union's population, the Irish negative vote should not be allowed to block the will of the majority.

This argument amounts to a flat denial of the principle of the equality of member states within the union, at least in some respects, such as Constitutional matters.

This principle constitutes a hallmark of the Union. If it were to be disregarded I, for one, and I believe most of the citizens of the small states of Europe too, would not wish to belong to the EU.

'Network Europe' is, I believe, the surest means by which the European peoples and institutions can be brought together at all levels. If that belief is just 'wishful thinking', then I feel that the future is, alas, on the side of the Eurosceptics.