Jim Murphy, the newly appointed Minister for Europe, will tell MPs in the House of Commons today that the European Union must deliver in a way that is relevant to the people on "the streets of Glasgow, Warsaw and Paris".
Barely hiding his frustration with the European politics and politicians who seem obsessed with structures and appeared ambivalent about delivery, Mr Murphy will argue that the European Union will have to change to make itself relevant.
Speaking exclusively to The Herald yesterday from his East Renfrewshire constituency, he said: "My vision for Europe would be 27 countries working together to deliver on things that really matter to people on the streets of Glasgow, Warsaw and Paris. That is moving away from the endless fascination with European structures and instead concentrating on full employment, a clean environment and cross border action on drugs and terrorism."
The new European Minister, who describes himself as a euro-realist rather than eurosceptic or europhile, questioned why the EU had been more concerned in the past with a European anthem than helping get many of the 92 million "inactive" people in Europe into work.
He pointed out that those out of work throughout Europe was equivalent to the population of the whole of Scandinavia or all of the 10 member states who had joined in 2004.
He accepted that domestic governments had to do more but he claimed part of the solution lay with the EU.
Mr Murphy emphatically ruled out a referendum on the treaty agreed last month by Tony Blair in Brussels. He said the "red lines" promised by Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, then the Chancellor, now the Prime Minister, were intact and he pledged that they would remain so.
Disclosing that he had met the ambassador of every EU country in London last week, he said he told them the British government, while thinking the treaty was a good deal for the UK, was determined to ensure every detail would be legally binding in the treaty. He will tell MPs the reason the UK is not having a referendum on the treaty is it is much less significant than the previous three, signed in Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice.
Mr Murphy believes the problem within the European Union is that "the conversation has been trapped in discussion about structures".
He said: "When some European leaders found the EU's popularity dipping they believed it was a democratic deficit. It was not a democratic deficit they should have been addressing but a delivery deficit.
"There is no shortage of vision but there is a shortage of visibility. It needs to deliver visibility for the citizen."
Mr Murphy pointed to the successes: it already generated three million UK jobs and EU legislation had improved the quality of air, water and the environment. However, he added that while it had achieved much there was still a lot more to do.
The Prime Minister has already pledged to push for lower taxes on environmentally friendly products across the EU. After his first meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, in Paris, Mr Brown said the UK and France would seek to persuade other nations of the need for an EU-wide cut on VAT levied on less polluting goods.
The European Commission welcomed the initiative but said it would require agreement from all 27 member states.
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