Britannia Radio

It's salutary that this is published in the FT,  'the lions den', as 
it were!   The man talks sense as he did in the interview with 
Spiegel I sent out

Conservative Home , meanwhile shows unmitigated joy that the party 
will no longer have two of its europhile MEPs queering the pitch and 
hanging like an albatross round their necks!  - - -
In less than a month we will no longer have to listen to Christopher 
Beazley and Caroline Jackson
In what appears like a coordinated attempt to derail the Tories' 
European Elections Campaign, retiring Tory MEP Christopher Beazley 
has accused David Cameron of being "anti-European" and seeking "to 
rip up 30 years of work by British Tory pro-Europeans".  Mr Beazley's 
attack follows Tuesday's intervention by Caroline Jackson MEP.  Mrs 
Jackson, wife of defector  [to Labour !-cs] Robert Jackson, said Mr 
Cameron's pledge to leave the EPP was a "stupid, stupid policy".  In 
a month's time both will no longer be MEPs and we can only hope their 
repetitive eruptions will be ignored by Fleet Street

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FINANCIAL TIMES 8.5.09
Conservatives will be energetic and active in the EU

 From Mark Francois MP.

Sir, It will be no surprise that I think your editorial's view on the 
Conservative party's European policy to be somewhat mistaken 
("Cameron seeks splenetic isolation", May 6).

It is a strange argument that the Lisbon Treaty represents an ebbing 
of the integrationist tide when it significantly increases the 
European Union's competences at member states' expense in foreign 
policy, criminal justice and immigration, to name but three. The 
contention that the treaty signifies a retreat from federalism is not 
supported by the president of the Commission's declaration that it 
endows the EU with "the dimension of empire".

Neither is it the case that the Lisbon Treaty increases the council's 
role at the European parliament's expense; rather the reverse: it 
substantially increases the parliament's powers of co-decision. Nor 
is it true that the council is struggling to cope. A study by Prof 
Helen Wallace of the London School of Economics found that "the EU's 
institutional processes and practice have stood up rather robustly to 
the impact of enlargement".

The Conservative's voice in the European parliament will be 
strengthened by the establishment of a new group dedicated to an 
open, flexible, non-federalist Europe, a view of Europe that has no 
champion under the current political groupings.

While European People's party leaders may disagree with the change of 
groups in the parliament, the fact is that the Conservatives' ties 
with our counterparts in, for example, Germany, France and Sweden 
have seldom been stronger.

A Conservative government would be active, energetic and engaged in 
the EU. We are enthusiastic about the EU's role in the single market, 
energy liberalisation and [oh dear! -cs]  climate change.

The EU's problems are not the result of too little political 
centralisation but of an excessive focus on internal navel-gazing 
rather than practical delivery and a lack of political will. We need 
the EU to act where it can add value, but institutional self-
aggrandisement for its own sake will only exacerbate the democratic 
deficit. The Lisbon Treaty would do exactly that.

Perhaps more importantly, lasting political institutions can only be 
built with democratic consent. The British people's consent has been 
neither sought nor given for the Lisbon Treaty, which few dispute is 
anything other than a rebranding of the EU Constitution, on which 
every big British political party promised a referendum. That is why 
true friends of the EU ought to support our campaign to give British 
voters the referendum they were promised.

Mark Francois,
Shadow minister for Europe,
House of Commons