Breaking treaty

WHEN parliament approved the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, it was on the clear understanding that economic and monetary union would never lead to European Union member states bailing each other out.

Indeed, advocates of the euro made much of the safeguards built into the treaty, now carried over as Articles 123-125 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Although the UK is not a part of the eurozone it is, nonetheless, a party to those treaty articles.

UK government ministers rely on parliamentary approval of the EU treaties to authorise whatever actions they may take under them, and as parliament approved a treaty which included those articles, Prime Minister Gordon Brown does not have the legal authority to agree that they should be arbitrarily set aside so that Greece can benefit from a bailout (your report, 13 February).

On the contrary, he has a duty to prevent that happening, both to uphold the rule of law within the EU and to keep faith with parliament.

If EU treaty articles can simply be disregarded when they are found to be inconvenient, our parliamentarians will have even less idea what they are accepting when they approve a treaty.

DR D R COOPER

Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead, Berkshire