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		Speech to American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Washington DC - December 1 2004 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, As always, it's a huge pleasure for me, and my colleagues Chris Heaton-Harris and Martin Callanan, to be here with you at another ALEC Conference. I'd like especially to thank Duane Parde, and his fellow officers at ALEC, for the invitation, and I'd also like to thank ALEC staffer Sally McNamara for organising our programme. Sally previously spent five years working for Chris Heaton-Harris and me in the UK and Brussels, before coming to Washington. In a world where globalisation is accelerating, and where we all face the common threat of terrorism, I believe that the transatlantic relationship, which has underpinned our security for all of my life-time, is becoming more, not less, important. I very much regret the apparent lack of commitment to this relationship from Brussels, with its constant sniping and posturing on transatlantic trade and security issues. In these circumstances, it is crucial to maintain and strengthen links between conservative politicians and thinkers on both sides of the water. I believe that ALEC has a vital role to play in this dialogue, and this is why it is such a great pleasure, and privilege, for me and my colleagues to be here with you today. Across in Brussels, I and my colleagues are part of a beleaguered minority. The great majority of MEPs in the EU parliament, far from embracing Jeffersonian principles, have never even heard of them. They subscribe to a new gospel of European integration, based on powerful and unaccountable supra-national institutions, high taxes, unaffordable social and welfare spending, and massive over-regulation of every area of life. The EU is the most over-regulated, over-governed, over-taxed, over-borrowed economic bloc in the world. Like so many ruling orthodoxies, from the Spanish Inquisition to Stalin's NKVD, the EU is intolerant of dissent. I used the word "gospel" advisedly. It seems that some enthusiasts for the European project are starting to invest it with quasi-religious properties. A judge in the European Court of Justice recently expressed the opinion that any criticism of the European project was -- and I quote -- "akin to blasphemy", and was therefore not protected by the usual laws of free speech. In Belgium recently, a euro-critical party, the Vlaams Blok, was outlawed by the courts on trumped-up charges of prejudice and xenophobia, despite at the last election having the highest share-of-vote in the country. As my friend and fellow-MEP Dan Hannan has remarked, in the old Soviet Union, they never banned elections. They merely banned political parties that disagreed with the state. The parallels are too close for comfort. In Strasbourg in November, at the hearings for the new EU Commission, a British MEP drew attention to the earlier conviction of the French candidate, M. Barrot, for embezzlement of political funds. The conviction was little-known, since M. Barrot had received a presidential amnesty, and under a curious quirk of French law, any offence subject to amnesty is wiped from the record and may not be mentioned again. The MEP was then threatened with legal consequences not only by political group leaders, but by the President of the Parliament as well. The idea that a parliamentarian could be threatened with legal consequences merely for stating a plain fact, in the chamber of the parliament itself, augurs badly for liberty and the rule of law in the EU. This is why, for me and my colleagues, a visit to Washington recharges our political batteries. It is a joy and a privilege to be, for a few days at least, amongst those who share our political outlook, and who hold liberty and the rule of law in high regard. While we enjoy coming to Washington, we also do our best to maintain transatlantic relations in Brussels, and we always look forward to events organised by the American Chamber, which has a high reputation over there. Indeed I sometimes think they know more about what's going on in the EU institutions than we do! On Nov 17th we were guests at the American Chamber dinner in Strasbourg, where David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, was the keynote speaker. I met a charming, tall, elderly Polish MEP, whom I had better not name. In any case his name was one of those Polish jaw-breakers that I probably couldn't pronounce to start with. He is a member of the right-wing, euro-sceptic League of Polish Families. And we talked about global warming and the Kyoto protocol. He told me he was a scientist, and he had studied this issue. He was not at all convinced that global warming was a reality. The evidence, he said, was mixed. But if it was happening, he doubted that it was anthropogenic, or that it was necessarily, always and everywhere, a bad thing. There would be winners and losers. But he was convinced of one thing -- that the Kyoto programme would have little or no effect, and that it would waste trillions of euros. So far so good. He's right. I agreed with him. Earlier that week, we had voted on the Florenz report on Global Warming. You will not be at all surprised to hear that this report was pro-Kyoto -- not so much politically correct as ideologically purified. But -- get this -- our Polish MEP was going to vote for it! Naturally, I asked him why, and he replied with disarming candour. Under Kyoto's emissions trading régime, Poland stood to make truck-loads of money. With many old-fashioned, dirty production processes, they would start with a huge bank of emissions permits, which they could sell to the West as they cleaned up their act. Unconcerned at the massive, mindless, futile waste of Kyoto, he saw it simply as a way for his country to ramp up its subsidy entitlements. This little story tells you much of what you need to know, both about the EU and about Kyoto. Mind you, I'm not criticising Poland. Given the policies we have created, this MEP's determination to deliver value for his country and his constituents is understandable, even commendable. But what a spectacular example of the unintended consequences, and the perverse incentives, that riddle the EU and the environmental movement. Ladies and gentlemen: The great development on the table in Europe today is the new European Constitution. It is a document which is easy to ridicule, especially when we compare it to the US Constitution. It contains 750 pages of turgid prose, and instead of focussing on the great issues of liberty, democracy and governance, it delves into the minutiae of life, of social security rights and the protection of Malta's abortion laws. (Malta has a population of around 300,000). In fact it is not so much a Constitution as a political manifesto, and a leftish manifesto at that. It is easy to ridicule, but dangerous to ignore the threat. There is a world of difference between the EU we have today, and the EU of the Constitution. Today, at least in theory, the EU is a Treaty-based organisation linking independent, democratic sovereign nations. Under the Constitution, it becomes for all practical purposes a country in its own right, with its own legal personality. What do you call an organisation that has, or is putting in place, a Constitution, a currency, a central bank, a supreme court, a President, a Foreign Minister, an elected parliament, common external borders and tariffs, border guards, an army -- not to mention a passport, a flag and an anthem? Ladies and gentlemen, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck ..... ! And in that new country called Europe, the ancient nations of our continent will be little more than provinces. Does this matter to America? You bet it does! Too many of the Chancelleries of Europe are animated by an endemic Anti-Americanism, heightened recently by the Iraq war. They speak of a euro currency, and EU armed forces, to "counter-balance US dominance". They are developing their own Global Positioning System, Galileo, not because they need it -- you make your own system available free of charge -- but to assert their growing confidence as a global power. In doing so, they threaten the strategic balance, and the vital transatlantic flow of military and security intelligence. My advice, which I have offered whenever I have been this side of the water, is that the US should know its friends in Europe, and work with them country-by-country, rather than seeking to deal with the EU as a single entity. I am delighted to see that this view is catching on in Washington, and I particularly commend the Heritage Foundation briefing paper of October 2004 by John C. Hulsman and Nile Gardiner, entitled "A Conservative Vision for US Policy Toward Europe", which takes exactly this position. I and my colleagues are convinced that the EU Constitution is a profound threat to the prosperity, the democracy and increasingly to the security of our country. But we also to believe that an assertive, unified, Constitution-based EU is not in America's best interest either. Our great task for the next couple of years is to campaign in the UK against ratification of the EU Constitution. We think we can win this battle, and we would be hugely encouraged to have your moral support in our campaign. Thank you.