European Union (Amendment) Bill

The Minister says that that is the French, but here come the Belgians. The then Belgian Foreign Minister put it honestly when he said:"““The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable: the aim of this Treaty is to be unreadable… The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this Treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.””" I give full marks to Giuliano Amato, the former Italian Interior Minister, who said last year that it was"““decided that the document should be unreadable. If it is unreadable, it is not constitutional, that was the sort of perception…Because if this is the kind of document that the IGC will produce, any Prime Minister—imagine the UK Prime Minister—can go to the Commons and say, ‘look…it’s absolutely unreadable, it’s the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum.’ Should you succeed in understanding it at first sight there might be some reason for a referendum, because it would mean that there is something new.””" At least that was a disarmingly honest admission of what was going on. Hardly anybody has been fooled—except, unfortunately, some of the party leaders in the House of Commons. In spite of the deliberate attempt to baffle the people of this and other countries, which should in itself redouble the determination of the people’s elected representatives to secure a referendum, it is not beyond the wit of interested human beings to come up with a comparative analysis of the constitution and the Lisbon treaty.