de Gaulle (NI). – (FR) Mr President, the draft treaty presented by Mr Giscard d'Estaing is only one draft constitution among many. It is also, to a large extent, the personal draft of Mr Giscard d'Estaing, because the other members of this Convention, after purely formal debates, have been left in total ignorance of a text essentially cooked up in secret by the Praesidium.

Claims that this is not so are mere propaganda, though this would be nothing unusual in Brussels circles. This text, which is unreadable to the uninitiated, is nothing more than a new attempt to create a centralised and unified European state, a sort of super-Maastricht. In fact, it employs various legal devices to increase the powers of Brussels, and it organises, amongst other things under the disguise of so-called shared competences, the sidelining of elected national governments.

No, Mr Badinter, the Eurosceptics have not had their final say yet! Consequently it will be for the next Intergovernmental Conference to show its opposition to these reveries and these ponderous statements, in particular by deleting from the draft treaty – if there is one – the words or expressions ‘constitution’, ‘constitutive’, ‘federal’ – perhaps the worst one of all – ‘law’ or ‘framework law’, ‘shared competences’, ‘subsidiarity’ – a synonym for ‘integration’ – ‘legal personality’, ‘reinforced cooperation’, ‘citizenship’ and, generally speaking, anything that falls within the scope of Article 308 of the current Treaties.

I hope that some of the governments concerned – and not just the Government of the United Kingdom – will strongly oppose this attempt to overthrow the democracies for which they are responsible, and will do so without recourse to the illusory and temporary easy way out provided by ‘opt-outs’ or by some anodyne legal formula that will serve for all subsequent interpretations.