No cherry-picking of failed EU constitution warns Nicholson
UUP MEP Jim Nicholson has taken the EU Commissioner for transport and Commission Vice – President, Jacques Barrot to task over his suggestion yesterday that the EU constitution could be cherry picked in order to save the failed charter.
In a statement Mr Nicholson said,
“Last year the people of France and Holland sent a resounding message to the political elite in Brussels that the proposed EU constitution is fundamentally flawed and should be consigned to the political dustbin.
“We do not want the Constitution in its entirety and we certainly don’t want it cherry-picked either. We want none of it. No part of the Constitution must be introduced by stealth through the back door.
“In any case it is neither the European Parliament nor the European Commission, which has the power to determine its outcome but the Member States and France and Holland have already rejected it.
“The proposed constitution was a bridge too far and would have given the EU all the trappings of statehood and reduced the ability of the UK to use its veto. It reinforced and then entrenched the worst features of the EU status quo: lack of democracy, excessive centralisation and economic dysfunction.”