We have to confront a serious problem. There should be greater democracy and accountability in the European Union; we are blue in the face hearing it and articulating it in recent months. When one pursues what people mean by these ideas, however, one quickly runs into a series of contradictions. It appears that when the Government says the EU should be more accountable or democratic, it means that we should emphasise the intergovernmental aspects of the EU. In other words, the Government, through the Council of Ministers, should basically be able to say "Yea" or "Nay" and the other elements of the EU, such as the Commission, the Parliament and the European Court of Justice, should retain the competences they already have, or indeed lose them. I do not share that view of how to make the Union more democratic as such ideas do not help to make the institutions of the Union more democratic.