European Union (Amendment) Bill

It is a lovely distinction and I respect it, but when it comes to bottom-up democracy and the demand for humble institutions to call people to account, whether they are being more efficient or effective becomes a fine distinction. Is it more effective, for instance, that the European Union should ram through its energy policy on biofuels? The answer, we all know now, is no. What a pity it is that the people concerned were so effective or efficient that they put the policy together, because it is turning out to be a disaster—although that is not yet fully recognised by the Commission. We can think of many other cases where effectiveness and efficiency have combined to produce a policy at the centre which has been damaging and could have been stopped by more democratic argument and wrangling, with more doubts and difficulties put in the way before it was rushed into. I do not want walk right into the cry of comparing apples and onions, but the approach of the most democratic country in Europe, which everyone recognises to be little Switzerland, which is not a member of the European Union, is to have a president changed once a year and for that person not to be placed on a particularly high pedestal. It used to be the principle in this country, underneath our own monarchy but within our elected sphere of government, that the president should be primus inter pares, although some recent incumbents have slightly ignored it. That is the healthy democratic instinct which I would expect a Parliament such as ours to support and urge before we endow some more deeply entrenched president with a longer term of office and considerable powers—although they have yet to be decided. I am obviously vulnerable to the cry that one cannot compare a gigantic Union with little Switzerland, but one can compare democratic principles wherever they flourish.