Sir Graham Watson a été élu le 25 novembre à la tête de l'ELDR, la famille politique qui rassemble 55 partis nationaux libéraux et libéraux démocrates. En 1994, il a été le premier libéral démocrate britannique à se faire élire au Parlement européen. Il a également dirigé l'ALDE, un groupe politique libéral au Parlement européen. Il s'est confié à Georgi Gotev, rédacteur senior chez EurActiv.
You have just been elected ELDR president, but let me ask you a question regarding your country's politics. If there is an EU treaty change, probably David Cameron is going to try to repatriate some powers from the EU community approach. Do you think he will seize this occasion?
Fortunately for Europe and fortunately also for the United Kingdom, David Cameron is not the head of a majority government. And in order to repatriate treaty powers you would need the agreement of the Liberal Democrats. [LibDem leader] Mr Clegg has already make clear that he will not agree on this. We don’t see this a way forward.
The LibDems are pro-European. But aren't you vocal about this in Brussels and shy back home?
I think there is not a single voter in the UK that does not know that the Liberal Democrats are for Europe. Increasingly there are voters who support us because they recognise we are the only party that is being honest with them about what this membership on of the European Union is all about.
Coming back to the possible treaty change, do you think it would bring a solution of the eurozone problems?
It takes a terribly long time to get any kind of treaty change. The recent treaty change has involved a constitutional convention. So we may need to set up a constitutional convention to work on treaty change. And once that convention has reported and the countries agree, you then you have to get it ratified in 27 member states. And if the Irish need a referendum, if the Slovaks need the referendum, and if the Danes, and if perhaps the British need a referendum, then you are not talking about achieving treaty change in anything less than 2-3 years. I don’t think we have 2-3 years. I think what we need to do under the existing treaties, perhaps supplemented by an intergovernmental agreement between the 17 countries of the eurozone.
Indeed, you don’t do a treaty change in the middle of the crisis. You first find a solution to the crisis, then you draw lessons for the crisis, then you identify what kind of treaty change you need ...
Absolutely. And of course some people would say why not use the accession of Croatia to take some limited steps forward that can help us in our current situation. Steps that obviously not everyone would need to agree on, and that’s fine as long as the major countries of the EU agree. The problem at the moment is that the French have one view on how we need to get out of the crisis and the Germans have another view. And this Franco-German motor which has always helped Europe in the past is frankly kaput.
You just gave me a title here [laughter]. Can you elaborate?
Yes I can. What is called the “Merkozy” is hardly Merkozy at all. Because Angela Merkel refuses either to develop Eurobonds or to allow the ECB to be a lender of last resort and the French government says we have to go with one of those options if we are to emerge from our current difficulties. You can understand why we are in this situation, it's because one of the biding fears in German psychology is the fear of inflation. And one of the fears in French psychology is the fear of an economic distress, of long recession. And that’s not helping us. We need a way forward and that way forward will only be found if countries are prepared to show solidarity with each other.
Remembering history is often useful. I can imagine some Germans remember that hyper-inflation brought Hitler to power, but today I think both Sarkozy and Merkel are thinking about their own elections, that’s their first concern. How about that?
That shows the missing piece in the European jigsaw. We have already the European economy, we have the common European trade policy both externally and internally, we have the common European money, but we have no common European demos. We have no real democracy at the European level because when we have elections for the EP parliament, instead of having one European election we have 27 different national elections. As long as the national leaders are concentrated entirely on domestic politics at the expense of European politics, then we will never make progress.
You have been elected ELDR president in a context where your predecessor, Annemie Neyts-Uytterbroeck, is Belgian and the leader of the political group in the European parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, is Belgian. At the same time the LibDems came to power in the UK in the coalition government. It has helped in the decision-making, has it?
Belgium produces many highly skilled politicians and many prominent European careers like my predecessor and like Guy Verhosfstadt, who is also my successor as well [Watson was the leader of the liberal ALDE group in the European Parliament before Verhofstadt]. I believe that the political structures that we have at European level have to represent all 27 states. Perhaps we could do with a few more Brits in senior positions.
But Catherine Ashton is not very popular…
Catherine Ashton is doing is an extremely difficult job with relatively little support from major member states. She is having not only to construct the foreign policy which the Lisbon Treaty insisted that we adopt. She also has to construct a bureaucracy to support that. At the same time I don’t think anybody doing that job would be popular just two years in, but I think after five years we will have a much better basis on which to judge her record.
It was reported that ELDR wants to have lively and exciting European elections. What can you suggest as novelties in this respect?
I wish I could think of lots of gimmicks to liven up the European elections. But I’m not sure gimmicks are what we need. But there are one or two things we could do to increase participation in European elections and to give Europe’s people more of a sense of ownership of the European Union. I think we should have trans-national lists for the election of MEPs. Not necessarily on all MEPs but certainly of some. So when people vote they are not voting for a national political party. They’re voting for a European level political party. And I think we should accompany that with the link to the choice of the next president of the European Commission. In other words , I think the next president should be determined not only by 27 heads of states and government, but also by the votes expressed in the European election.
Your compatriot and party fellow Andrew Duff is quite advanced in pushing forward the transnational lists, this but I think this also requires a treaty change. Can you imagine a situation where you have to have a trade and push for your priorities and accept other priorities?
Certainly Andrew Duff's proposals that have been put forward in the constitutional affairs committee would have required treaty change. But I'm not sure the idea of electing a small number of MEPs would necessarily require treaty change. We would need to put the minds of our best lawyers into how to do it.
I notice you have been elected also simultaneously with the interim PES President Sergei Stanishev? It looks like you will have a lot of work together.
One of the first things I did was to send Sergei a congratulatory message. He has a lot to contribute.
