By Bruno Waterfield - 13th June 2004
EU election results are a clear warning to national governments planning to hold votes on Europe’s future constitution, Pat Cox has said.
Speaking in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the European Parliament’s outgoing president cautioned EU leaders.
A new European constitution is expected to emerge at a Brussels summit on June 18 and is set for a referendum test in the UK where anti-EU parties made large gains.
“I believe, as a pro-European, that there is a message from the results… and the message is to our political leaders across the EU, that if they believe in the union, they have a special responsibility to give leadership and to go out and sell what they believe in,” Cox said.
“I think this especially important as a wake-up call for those leaders in those states who propose to hold referenda on the constitutional treaty.”
Cox argues that British results pushing an anti-EU party into third place are the “greatest challenge and opportunity ever presented” for pro-Europeans - if they raise their game.
And for Britain’s centre-left pro-European government to triumph. Cox claimed, British leader Tony Blair must stop being “slightly pregnant” over the benefits of EU membership.
“They offer a vigorous and clear choice: they say ‘get out’. Those who want to stay in can not act as if staying in is being slightly pregnant, they better go for the whole thing on the next occasion,” he said.
Defeats at polls ratifying an EU treaty – with pressure growing for votes in France and Poland – could stall an enlarged Europe’s integration.
The Irish Liberal MEP – who did not stand in this election – lamented the “absence” of European politics from elections dominated by national disillusionment with sitting governments.
“We understood of course that elections are used as mid-term tests of administrations, part way through the life of government, that elections are times when different personalities come to the fore and are part of the chemistry of an election,” he said.
“But we also pleaded to put Europe into the election. And, in too many instances, as I had observed… Europe was too absent.”
Cox insisted that a “new diversity” of far-right and anti-EU MEPs must be “put in context” of an overall pro-European parliament.
“As regards the messages from this election, it is very clear that the great majority in this new parliament, somewhere between 80 and 90 per cent, constitute a pro-European majority,” he told journalists.
“Although [a] minority… will reflect new elements both of a eurosceptic nature, on a scale which was not there before, and possibly… a larger presence of groups or parties representing the extreme right, let me emphasise that the sum of all these parts will probably not be more than ten to 15 per cent of the total and, though significant, though a new dimension in its scale, must be put in context.”
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