Top Tory minister spurns demands for British EU veto
William Hague - Photo EU Council
(LONDON) - British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday rejected demands from restive fellow Conservative lawmakers for parliament to be given a veto over all European Union laws.
Some 95 backbench Conservative MPs have written to Tory Prime Minister David Cameron saying parliament should have the authority to block new EU legislation and repeal measures that threaten the "national interest".
But Hague insisted such a pick-and-choose approach would undermine the 28-country bloc's single market.
"What you can't have in any system that relies on some common rules -- even in a free trade area that relies on common rules -- is each of the parliaments being able regularly and unilaterally to say we are not applying this or that," he told BBC radio.
Cameron has promised to take back powers from Brussels as part of a renegotiation of Britain's membership of the EU ahead of a promised in-out referendum by 2017.
The pledge has helped calm the restive eurosceptic flank of his Conservative Party, but this weekend's letter to The Sunday Telegraph newspaper threatens to reignite internal party tensions.
The signatories, who represent more than half the Conservative backbenchers, urged Cameron to "make the idea of a national veto over current and future EU laws a reality".
The letter said such a veto would "enable parliament to disapply EU legislation, where it is in our vital national interests to do so".
"This would transform the UK's negotiating position in the EU," it added.
Many Conservatives are fearful their voter base is being encroached on by the anti-EU populist United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which could even top the polls at the European Parliament elections in May.
Cameron's referendum pledge was viewed as an attempt to head off this threat, but the Tory leadership have drawn the line at the eurosceptics' latest demand.
"Clearly a single market or a free trade area would not work on that basis. Even the Swiss or Norwegian arrangement with the European Union couldn't work on that basis," Hague said.
"But the direction of greater power for national parliaments and reducing, relatively speaking, the power of the European Union vis-a-vis national parliaments is something I very strongly support."
Cameron's Downing Street office said it was pushing for a "red card" power so groups of national parliaments together could block unwanted EU "interference".
"We will of course study this idea closely," a spokesman said of the letter. "But we need to look at what it would mean in practice.
"If individual national parliaments regularly and unilaterally overturned EU laws the single market wouldn't work.
"It is important to negotiate a new deal for Britain in the EU and then put the choice to the British people: stay in the EU on new terms or leave altogether."