Fellow Liberal Democrats,

The debate we've just had about our platform for the European elections shows three things: that we’ve a first class team of Liberal Democrat MEPs from the UK and good new candidates in place; that we are the party of pro-European reform in this country; and that on rare occasions it is possible for we Brits to have a sensible debate on Europe!

From the venomous headlines in some of our newspapers you might think such debate impossible. Headlines like the Daily Mail’s "We obey the rules while others cheat". Last Saturday the Today programme told us that Brussels is bullying Britain into VAT on children's clothes. Talk about sexing up their stories! If the factual flaws were not bad enough, persistently the press panders to prejudice. Liberal Democrats seek to root it out.

The history of the Liberal enlightenment is a succession of battles against prejudice - ethnic, religious, racial and other - and the European Union is a weapon in these battles.

It's a powerful weapon too. It brought together France and Germany after the war. From six countries at the start it grew to nine in the 1970s, to twelve in the 80s and fifteen in the 1990s. Next year we take in ten new members, closing the chapter on communism and the Cold War.

With each enlargement the new Europe grows stronger, and the weight of the big countries less decisive. We're all minorities now, even if some countries don’t like to admit it. We have to think in terms of co-existence and co-operation, rather than might is right.

Europe will go on to take in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. The carrot of Union membership is so tempting that Turkey has seen rapid change from autocracy to democracy. And in due course the countries of the western Balkans will join us, and Switzerland, Norway and Iceland too.

On Saturday, supposedly sceptical Latvia voted Yes. Why? Because for Latvia’s 2 million people, the difference between the European Union to their West and their experience with the East is like the difference between a jacket and a strait-jacket!

Ten new countries set to join the EU next year, with more to come. The European ideal still has the capacity to inspire. Which is just as well, because we need the EU if we're to take on the big challenges confronting humankind.

Challenges such as a rapidly growing world population, where more and more leave their home countries to escape war or hunger or sheer hopelessness.

Challenges like coping with the consequences of climate change on air and water and soil.

Or tackling internationally organised crime, where some criminal gangs are more powerful than some national governments, funded by the trafficking of drugs and weapons and art treasures - to say nothing of the trafficking of people - and increasingly in touch with terrorists.

None of these are problems that one country can tackle alone. Indeed, none of them can be tackled except by democracies with good governance, market economies and respect for the rule of law.

This is what the EU offers. The vision of its founding fathers was maybe more modest. They wanted peace and secure food supplies. Their success has spurred our generation of Europeans to rise to the new challenges of globalisation.

We lock our economies together to provide prosperity. We strive for freedom of movement to open opportunities. Increasingly, we work side by side in search of security. That’s why Blair was in Berlin.

Of course, it doesn't always work. Sweden said No to the euro. Why? Partly because recession is causing pain in the euro zone. But largely because the social democrats failed to convince their compatriots that a common currency is just part of a wider patchwork of peace and progress. The euro does what the gold standard, Bretton Woods and the EMS tried to do : it gives us a stable framework for trade. And trade generates wealth.

The Swedes should have heeded Lloyd George’s dictum : ‘The hardest way to cross a chasm is in two leaps.’ Because if losing investment at home and influence abroad does not make them think again, the next torrent of turmoil on the money markets will.

It's the same for sterling. Which word do people associate most often with sterling? "Crisis"!

Europe was also at sixes and sevens over Iraq. But the embarrassment of disarray has hastened the day when we speak with one voice in foreign affairs.

Of course the EU will help Britain and America to extricate themselves. As least as bad as the butcher of Baghdad would be the Tikrit Taliban. But if we want to ease the pressure, where the tectonic plates of Christianity, Judaism and Islam grate perilously against each other, we need the world with us.

And this is the fundamental challenge. Our planet provides just one bed to harbour different dreams. If one rolls over, another falls out.

That's why George Bush is wrong to go it alone. Not just in Iraq, or even Kyoto. Wherever you look, the US is in isolation. From the International Criminal Court to the Ottawa Land Mines Convention, from the chemical weapons talks to the UN Convention on the rights of the child. (Do you know why they won't sign the children's convention? Because it disallows the death penalty for under eighteens. One state sentences at sixteen : George Bush’s torrid Texas.)

In contrast, the European Union is so opposed to the death penalty that doing away with it is one of the pre-conditions for membership.

While Britain has hacked away at its Human Rights Act in the fight against terrorism, the EU anchors human rights at the centre of its new constitution. And we will persist in pressing our partners in America about the plight of the Palestinians and the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. These wrongs wreak the rainfall of revenge which fills the tributaries of terror.

A new international approach must be based on respect and understanding, on the force of argument, not on the argument of force. We must not let the threats we see blind us to the apparent menace we pose. Peace can only prosper in a climate in which the hurts of nations can heal.

The EU has done just that for the aggressors and the victims of two European wars. Now we have to do it beyond our borders.

But reconciliation starts with justice. One billion of our fellow citizens worldwide live on less than a euro a day. Yet every cow in Europe gets a subsidy of two euros a day. Where's the justice in that?

Europe must reform a farm policy with obscene effects.

Compassion apart, Liberal Democrats see that unless we open our markets to developing countries' products, we will take their people .

Sadly, the world trade talks failed in Cancún. Trade is the most powerful potion against poverty. An agreement would have made trade fairer and we must try again. But we will continue to back the WTO because the trade talks of today are better than the trade wars of yesterday.

On the euro, on Iraq, on trade the EU's weaknesses are exposed. Yet they do not call into question the importance of European government.

Liberals understand this, which is why we are on the up across Europe. In the Union and its candidate states we have five Liberal Prime Ministers. Liberals are in government in 11 countries. We have a Liberal President of the Commission. And of the European Parliament, where my 53 MEPs hold the balance of power. Liberal Democrat votes are making the difference the length and breadth of Europe.

Nobody pretends the EU's perfect. Government at EU level is often no better than government at national or local level. But it is normally no worse either.

Just like at home, Liberal Democrats in Europe are at the forefront of reform. We want to bring government closer to the people. We want to cut red tape, open up government to public scrutiny, to fight fraud. That’s why I insist that the EU's Economics Commissioner resigns if suspicions of fraud in his department are confirmed.

And because we believe in Europe, our criticisms carry more weight. This country’s conservatives, constantly carping, are held in contempt. So reform of Europe needs more Liberal Democrat MEPs.

The new EU constitution shows how Liberals are respected. Our members of the drafting Convention insisted it contain a bill of rights. We succeeded. We secured a secession clause, paving a legal path for a country to withdraw from the EU if it chooses. We put more policy-making under the purview of Parliament. Its a credible Constitution and deserves debate. The British government refuses us a referendum. I suppose after last Thursday they’ll want to refuse us by-elections.

But to escape from disappointment, Britain need not court disaster. Tories tell us this Treaty would betray our birthright. But if it is a blueprint for tyranny, why did the Conservative MP on the Convention sign up to it?

Its the oldest Tory trick. Protest in public, sign on the dotted line in private.

Why do they always sign up? Because, like the slogan on the free condoms I helped hand out in Estonia two weeks ago for their referendum: "it's better to be inside".

It is better to be inside.

But not just for business.

It's better to be inside for the junior doctors and the shift workers deprived of decent rest times in the UK.

It's better to be inside for the children at risk of asthma craving clean air to breathe.

Its better to be inside if you’re waiting for an operation in Bedford and there’s a bed free in Bordeaux.

And it's better to be in the EU, fighting for British interests in Europe, than clamouring that the continentals should be more like us.

Remember that line sung by Flanders and Swann: ‘The English are moral, the English are good, and clever, and honest - and misunderstood.’

Of course we love our stereotypes. And after 50 years of Europe the French are no less French, the Italians no less Italian and the British no less British. But together we make up more than the sum of our parts.

What's more, we're winning that old battle against prejudice. Not because the world's favourite rapper is white; our most famous golfer is black; the England manager is a Swede and Switzerland holds the America’s Cup.

But because the European Union deals daily with prejudice. EU troops police ethnic conflict in Macedonia. We’ve abolished the upper age limit for applying for jobs in the Commission. EU rules protect the Roma and other minorities from persecution.

Turning the page of history from the blood-spattered chapter of the past needs a strong EU. Building a stable, just and peaceful future calls for common commitment now. Peace, prosperity, opportunity. At home, those are Europe's achievements. Abroad, those must be our goals.