Unfortunately, there seems to be no opportunity for a clear pro European Union position to make the case against the treaty on the grounds that both the existing SGP and the proposed 'enhancements' are actually undermining those elements of the EU and EMU which were the basis for joining the process.

James Wickham argued that the Treaty debate needed to be understood in the context of a much broader debate about the future of Europe and that there was huge popular unease that the Treaty was part of a process whereby the European ideals which people had bought into were being systematically undermined. He characterised those ideals as consisting of:

• Relatively egalitarian income distributions and attitudes which approved of more equality rather than less
  
• The concept of social citizenship which entitled people to high standards of public education, health care, and income support, and which was not dependent on the goodwill of philanthropists
  
• The concept of economic citizenship  which entitled people to a host of rights (and obligations) in the workplace, and
  
• A concept of the state as the backbone of society which guarantees a public space and not as an intrinsically evil imposition as it is characterised by Reaganite neo-conservatives in the USA.

He noted that, historically, the EU had had a role in both demolishing such state guaranteed rights by breaking down national barriers and in creating new rights and obligations to protect people from the effects of the single market.  However, increasingly, the EU was seen as exposing people to the full rigours of globalisation without providing corresponding social protections as the member nation states had previously done. Effectively, the Treaty was part of a process by which the EU was undermining its own existence by devouring the social compact on which it was based. The European welfare state is not a luxury item we can no longer afford, but the whole basis of our social solidarity built up at a time of great adversity and austerity.