Mr President, I too thank all those who have represented this House on the Convention. It is said that ‘success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan’. The draft Constitution agreed by the Convention last Friday is blessed with many proud parents. Of these, the European Parliament can claim more than its fair share of paternity, since we led the calls for the Convention method to be used to avoid a repeat of the failures of Nice. We owe much to the Belgian Presidency of the European Union, which gave us the visionary Laeken Declaration. While the birth was difficult and the baby is not as pretty as we hoped, the European Constitution born on Friday 13 June 2003 deserves a long and fruitful life. Liberals everywhere will rejoice that fundamental rights now lie at the heart of the Union's basic law. We welcome the establishment of a single legal personality for the Union, the unification of the pillars and the extension of democratic control by the European Parliament. Crucially, this shorter and simpler treaty should also be more accessible to Europe's citizens since it sets out more clearly who does what. Of course we would have liked to go further in some respects. We hope that the post of Chairman of the European Council will in time be merged with that of Commission President in an integrated Presidency. We want to see the legitimacy of the Commission strengthened by a real election of its President by the European Parliament. We seek a greater role for regions with constitutional powers. And we would like greater recourse to majority voting, even in a sensitive area like foreign policy, so that the Union can act more decisively abroad. There is still work to be done. The extension of qualified majority voting needs to be given concrete expression in the policies in part 3 of the constitution. We also urge the Convention to be ambitious in creating a lighter procedure for amending part 3, through voting by super-qualified majority and without recourse to national ratification. At Thessaloniki, the Heads of State and Government will be granted custody of the new-born constitution and will bring it to maturity in the Intergovernmental Conference. Having been so central to its conception, our governments will not be able to disown the constitution lightly. The European Council will have to decide the composition and the duration of the IGC. The parliamentary component of the Convention must be fairly represented at the talks – as you, Mr President, have said. Since members of the Liberal caucus under my colleague Andrew Duff have made such a great contribution to the work of the Convention, we insist that Parliament's representation should reflect this. On the length of the IGC, if Member States seek to unpick one part of the deal, others will pull at it too and the whole fabric risks unravelling. For that reason, we urge that the IGC be kept short and stick to the essentials of the text agreed by the Convention. This brings me to my final point. The most open and democratic institutional reform in our Union's history deserves to be brought to a fitting conclusion. It is no use making the EU simpler and more accountable if politicians do not then explain it and argue the case for active engagement in Europe Speaking personally, I hope that my own government will at last shake off its reticence and take the case for Britain's membership of this refounded European Union to the people in a referendum. Whether they ratify by way of referendum or parliamentary debate, I hope that other countries too will seize the opportunity to have a great debate with their voters. That way, our people can again feel ownership of the European project. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR