Extract from Alain Lamassoure’s letter to the President of France on the conclusions of his mission to investigate ‘Citizens and Community law’:
‘Recent referendums and opinion polls confirm that many ordinary people are dissatisfied with the way that Europe works.
One reason for this is obvious: the votes that they cast in European elections do not carry enough weight. The real decision makers in Brussels are the national leaders, who are elected solely on the basis of national domestic politics. As for the European Commission, originator of all Community policies, it comes across as a caucus of learned top-flight civil servants who are a law unto themselves. The Lisbon Treaty will radically transform this system by putting power in the hands of the people: they will elect the real law-makers for Europe (the Members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, which will acquire full legislative authority) and the head of the EU executive (the future President of the Commission).
But that in itself will not be enough. It is time – high time – that the Union put its citizens at the heart of its policy making, for they seem thus far to be merely a secondary consideration, of less importance than the completion of the single market.
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