Press Release: For Immediate Release
Bruges Group calls upon EU to obey its own rules

Calls upon the UK Prime Minister to agree to a referendum

Robert Oulds

The main British eurosceptic think-tank has welcomed the Irish 'No' vote to the Lisbon Treaty, which is nothing more than the Constitutional Treaty Mark II. The Constitutional Treaty had been rejected by the people of France and Netherlands. Now the people of Ireland, the only country that had a referendum on Lisbon, have also rejected the re-heated EU Constitution. The peoples of other member states were refused a say on the Lisbon Treaty.

The European Union has lost whatever legitimacy it may have possessed in the distant past.

The EU treaties say that each new treaty has to be ratified by all signatories, that is all member states. The Bruges Group calls upon the EU to obey its own rules and abandon this misguided attempt to impose an unwanted European constitution on the member states and their people.

The Bruges Group calls upon the Prime Minister to do the honourable thing (if he knows what that is) and call a referendum on the Treaty in the United Kingdom, as it was promised in the manifesto on which this government was elected in 2005.

Robert Oulds, Director of the Bruges Group said:
“It is not true that this decision should be left to Parliament. MPs were not elected to give away even more powers to the European Union. They were elected on a promise to ask the people about the treaty. They must honour that promise.

It is already true that eighty per cent of our new laws come from the European Union. Even when it goes through Parliament, which is not always the case, it has no right to reject any EU legislation. What, then, is the purpose of that institution and what do MPs get paid for? To sign away more legislative powers?”