European Union Constitutional Treaty

HL Deb 07 June 2004 vol 662 c5WA

Lord Monson

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Why the Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean said on 11 May that the draft European Union Constitutional Treaty "will for the first time give this Parliament a power at European Union level to enforce subsidiarity" (Official Report col. 242) when the draft treaty allows the European Commission to override the wishes of national parliaments in the matter of subsidiarity. [HL2841]

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean

The subsidiarity mechanism in the draft constitutional treaty forces the European Commission to reconsider any legislative proposal which one-third of national parliaments consider breaches the principle of subsidiarity. In practice this will make it very difficult for the European Commission to ignore the strongly held wishes of one-third of national parliaments—or indeed for the Council of Ministers to do so if it later came to consider the legislative proposal.