24TH JUNE 2010: Contribution  from Andrew Brons to a debate in LIBE (Civil Liberties, Home Affairs and Justice) on the Conclusion of the Spanish Rotating Council Presidency in the area of Home Affairs. It followed a presentation by the Spanish Home Affairs Minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba.

 "Mr. Perez raised the issue of the alleged need for Common European Values. This was only a small part of his speech but it could be said that it underpinned the whole of his speech and indeed the whole of EU thinking and much of the debate this morning. I believe that we must make a clear distinction between procedural values on the one hand (freedom of expression, association and assembly) and substantive values on the other - political values that are not essential to the operation of a democratic political system. In the context of the EU's Common European Values, these might be summed up as Social Liberalism. These values are sincerely held but are not self-evidently right and opposition to some of them is not self-evidently wrong.

To suggest that  our deliberations should start with the acceptance of a consensus of substantive values is a recipe for turning democratic assemblies into soviets governed by democratic centralism - however unintended that process might be.

We must regard the procedural values - the democratic values - to be self evidently right. They are axiomatic.

However, we must not stifle free debate and thought by imposing a straight jacket of compulsory substantive values - a network of undiscussed and therefore not properly thought out assumptions (Social Liberalism) on every debate that we hold.

Indeed the enforcement of the Social Liberal agenda can constrain the democratic procedural values of freedom of expression and freedom of association.

I am not accusing any member of this Parliament or of this Committee or the Spanish Presidency of bad faith. Indeed my starting presumption is that everybody approaches questions in good faith.

However, there does appear to be a prevailing view in these institutions that you can think and say what you like, as long as you accept our Social Liberal agenda, as premises for any argument that might follow."