Mid and South West Norfolk Liberal Democrats

Cameron in fairyland

The Lisbon treaty will come into force, at long last, on December 1 after the Czech constitutional court this week abruptly dismissed the third appeal against the treaty by a group of recalcitrant senators. At the same time, Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, signed the ratification instrument and pronounced the end of Czech sovereignty. He was, as he had hoped to be, the last nationalist standing.

What bought off Mr Klaus was the decision of the European Council the week before to allow the Czech Republic to sign up to Protocol 30 to the Treaty of Lisbon. This is usually misrepresented as being a British opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights. In fact it is nothing of the kind.

Protocol 30 does not absolve the UK and its other curious signatory, Poland, from having to treat the Charter as binding. Instead, it seeks to clarify that the mandatory Charter neither extends the rights of the courts to find British and Polish law in breach of the Charter nor creates new or additional justiciable rights. Protocol 30 does not deprive the domestic courts of the right to deploy the Charter in litigation; it cannot prevent the case-law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) from affecting British and Polish law.

That Mr Klaus was satisfied with joining the Brits and Poles is odd. He had been demanding an opt-out from the Charter's article on property rights, apparently fearing a flood of ex-Sudetenland Germans claiming back their grandparents' homes. By contrast, Protocol 30 concerns, in particular, social policy.

The new Czech protocol is meant to be appended to the EU treaties when the Croatian accession treaty is passed in a couple of years' time. Here the Czechs follow the precedent of Ireland's "legal guarantees", also incorporated in a protocol, conceded by a previous European Council to encourage an Irish Yes vote to Lisbon.

However, whether or not Mr Klaus's protocol will ever see the light of day is another matter altogether: the Czech parliament, which would have to ratify the new protocol along with its 26 counterparts, may well decide not to endorse something which they and their government had not sought in the first place and which, in any case, is a barely credible fig-leaf.

Thus the Lisbon saga continues. The capitulation of Mr Klaus has brutally exposed the anti-European position of the British Tory party leader (and putative prime minister) David Cameron, who had been hiding behind the Czech president. In an astonishing speech this week, Mr Cameron spelled out how he intends to deal with the Lisbon EU.

Mr Cameron proposes to entrench in UK law an obligation to hold a referendum whenever further competences are transferred to the EU and on Britain's joining the euro. He wants a "UK Sovereignty Act" to render the British supreme court above the ECJ on matters of ultra vires. He cites in aid the recent controversial decision of the German federal constitutional court - but neglects to add that German basic law includes specific provisions recognising the primacy of EU law and committing the country to further integration.

A Conservative government in Britain would insist on an act of parliament every time the passerelle clauses, which do not transfer competence but which amend decision-making procedures, are deployed. Mr Cameron pretends to believe that these pragmatic bridging clauses are part of a plot to "ratchet" up the federal cause. Although no passerelle can be crossed without the unanimous consent of all EU states, Mr Cameron describes them misleadingly as "self-amending".

Not to be outdone by his erstwhile comrade-in-arms Mr Klaus, Mr Cameron will not be satisfied with anything less than a fully fledged British opt-out from the Charter.

Likewise, he discards Tony Blair's carefully negotiated opt-ins to EU justice and home affairs policies in favour of casual opt-outs, denying the ECJ the power to supervise EU law in the UK in these matters.

He wants more than Britain's current opt-out from the Working Time Directive in order, presumably, to force the British people to work unconscionably long hours. Adding insult to injury, Mr Cameron proposes to add all these British exceptions into the Croatian accession treaty.

These proposals add up to the fundamental renegotiation of the terms of British membership of the EU. Mr Cameron must have been advised that the chances of success in this venture are nil. Even to open the process of renegotiation he needs a majority of the 27 states to back him: to close it he needs all 27. (So much for "self-amending"!)

Moreover, the European Parliament has the power to demand a constitutional Convention on such a renegotiation, and will surely do so. MEPs also have the power to veto any UK attempt to recast laws in the social and employment field or to give the UK more derogations in justice policy and home affairs. Tory MEPs have no friends left in the parliament: even their official allies are from political parties led by Messrs Kaczynski and Klaus, both of whom have now signed the treaty.

If his EU partners will not agree to these treaty revisions, Mr Cameron, in five years' time after a general election, promises to hold a referendum on "a wider package of guarantees to protect our democratic decision making, while remaining a member of the EU". Here the Tory leader strays into fairyland. If Britain's partners won't accept Mr Cameron's first proposals they are unlikely to accept his threatened "wider package".

The fact is that Mr Cameron and his shadow foreign minister, William Hague, have set the UK on track to leave the Union.

What are we to make of all this? Clearly, Mr Cameron is deeply antagonistic to European federalism. He therefore resorts to cheap populism that will further diminish the already tarnished legitimacy of the Westminster parliament. He is mendacious in claiming Lisbon says what it does not. He respects neither the rule of law nor his country's treaty obligations. He is prepared to trifle with Croatian EU membership. He is distracted from the big economic problems facing Britain and Europe. He suffers from the absurd conceit that British ways are best.

This is all very bad news indeed. The good news, however, is that the Lisbon treaty will come into force, at long last, on December 1.

Andrew Duff MEP is President of the Union of European Federalists. His latest book is "Saving the European Union: the Logic of the Lisbon Treaty" (Shoehorn)