by RAY FLEMING
IT does not say much for the political maturity of the British people that yesterday's publication of the first thoughts of Valery Giscard d'Estaing's Convention on the future of the European Union should have produced should an ill-informed furore in the media. The Convention's work is important and needs to be debated thoroughly; no organisation can almost double its membership, as the European Union is about to do, without considering carefully what changes are needed to keep it running smoothly. But let us keep in mind that what M. d'Estaign has so far proposed is a no more than a draft-of-a-draft whose first purpose is to assist further consideration within the Convention itself; his draft recommendations will be put formally to ministers at the EU summit in Greece in one month's time. They will then be under detailed review for a further six months and possibly a whole year.
Meanwhile, rational public discussion of the issues is almost impossible in the feverish atmosphere created by the Daily Mail and The Sun. The former's proposal to hold some kind of a referendum on this draft-of-a-draft on June 12 would be laughable if it were not so damaging to reasoned debate. The all-out hostility to M. d'Estaing's tentative ideas for reform shown by these newspapers, and some others, is odd considering the dissatisfaction they so frequently express about the way in which the EU works at the moment. One is left with the strong impression that their real objective is a complete British withdrawal from the European Union. If it is, they should say so.