Eurosceptics attack Schröder vision of a federal Europe
Special report: European integration
John Hooper in Berlin and Patrick Wintour in London Monday April 30, 2001 The Guardian
A blueprint drawn up by Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, putting forward a radical vision of a federal Europe, last night elicited an appalled response from Eurosceptics. It envisages a superstate with its own unelected ministers, its own indirectly elected president and a two-chamber parliament with full control over public spending.
The plan creates a huge headache for Tony Blair and Robin Cook as the prime minister and his foreign secretary gear up for a general election. It will allow the Conservatives to claim that the government's friends in Europe are working on ideas which would make a mockery of national sovereignty.
By a coincidence that elicited groans from Labour MPs, the German chancellor's proposals are to be discussed by his party colleagues in Berlin next month on the day Mr Blair is due to visit the city for a meeting of the Party of European Socialists.
Francis Maude, the shadow foreign secretary, said: "We strongly disagree with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, but at least he has the courage of his convictions.
"Tony Blair doesn't want to talk about his vision of the EU because he knows how out of touch Labour is on Europe with the mainstream majority of the British people." A report in today's edition of the news magazine, Der Spiegel, says that the draft envisages turning the unelected European commission into a government with wide-ranging powers.
It would be headed by a president chosen by one or both of the chambers in a remodelled European parliament. The existing legislature would become the lower house. The council of ministers, the existing forum for national governments, would become an upper house.
National governments would choose representatives to speak for them in the upper house so that national leaders like the British prime minister and the French president would, in effect, become Euro-senators. The European parliament as a whole would have "full control" over the central government's spending.
There was no immediate response from Downing Street, but proposals to make the council of ministers a second chamber clash with Mr Blair's idea that national parliamentarians should form a second chamber and act as a brake on centralisation. Mr Blair has, however, supported the idea of developing the council of ministers and strengthening financial controls over the EU. France and Spain have both expressed deep reluctance to follow Germany down the road to a federal Europe. But the plan is likely to be given a warm reception at the commission. And it holds out to Mr Schröder the tantalising prospect of a place in history as the spiritual father of a united continent.
Mr Schröder's plan for a superstate is contained in one of five policy papers being prepared for the conference in November of his Social Democratic party (SPD). The chancellor took personal responsibility for the preparation of the paper that deals with Europe.