CAMERON ARGUMENTS FOR REFORMING THE EU REVISITED

Author: Former PM David Cameron (2013)

1. There is a gap between the EU and its citizens which has grown dramatically in recent years. And which represents a lack of democratic accountability and consent.
2. There is a growing frustration that the EU is seen as something that is done to people rather than acting on their behalf. And this is being intensified by the very solutions required to resolve the economic problems.
3. People are increasingly frustrated that decisions are taken further and further away from them .
4. The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy.
5. We need to create a leaner, less bureaucratic union, relentlessly focused on helping its member countries to compete. In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions? Can we justify a commission that gets ever larger? Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multibillion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven't worked? And I would ask: when the competitiveness of the single market is so important, why is there an environment council, a transport council, an education council but not a single market council?
6. We need a structure that can accommodate the diversity of its members – north, south, east, west, large, small, old and new. Some of whom are contemplating much closer economic and political integration. And many others, including Britain, who would never embrace that goal.
7. The EU must be able to act with the speed and flexibility of a network, not the cumbersome rigidity of a bloc.
8. We must not be weighed down by an insistence on a one size fits all approach which implies that all countries want the same level of integration. The fact is that they don't and we shouldn't assert that they do. Let's stop all this talk of two-speed Europe, of fast lanes and slow lanes, of countries missing trains and buses, and consign the whole weary caravan of metaphors to a permanent siding.
9. Power must be able to flow back to member states, not just away from them. We need to have a bigger and more significant role for national parliaments. It is national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU.
10. Today, public disillusionment with the EU is at an all-time high. There are several reasons for this. People feel that the EU is heading in a direction that they never signed up to. They resent the interference in our national life by what they see as unnecessary rules and regulation. And they wonder what the point of it all is. People also feel that the EU is now heading for a level of political integration that is far outside their comfort zone. They see treaty after treaty changing the balance between member states and the EU. And note they were never given a say.