IRELAND/EU: The EU is facing "an increasing level of cynicism and hostility" from voters because they cannot understand its operations, the Government has warned.
In one of the starkest assessments yet, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dick Roche, said the EU's future would be in doubt if political support does not exist.
Ireland's EU presidency will bring the issue centre-stage on Thursday and Friday when it gathers EU ministers in Druids Glen, Co Wicklow.
The President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, and European Justice and European Commissioner, Mr Antonio Vitorino, will attend.
Under the Irish proposals, EU documents would be put into "plain English" for ordinary citizens in the soon-to-be union of 25 member-states, said Mr Roche.
"This is the first time that a presidency has taken the initiative in this area. Everybody that I have talked to have come to the same conclusion as we have.
"The work should have started a long time ago. It has more urgency now because an EU of 25 states will be radically different from an EU of 15.
"It will have to be confronted sooner rather than later," said Mr Roche, who said that he had spoken with the Dutch government who will succeed Ireland in the presidency.
He rejected charges that the EU could not be made comprehensible to voters because it was simply too complex.
"I don't accept that at all. Some members have extremely complex systems. Look at the one in Austria that has grown up over the last 50 years. People don't have any difficulty working their way around it even though it is a complex of local, regional and national administration," he told The Irish Times.
The EU's law book, known as the acquis communitaire, now runs to over 80,000 pages.
"Surely, we could do it a bit cleaner than that. Some cuts could be made. It would be in everybody's interests to do that. What I am suggesting is the beginning of a process, not the end of one."
The EU should follow the example in France where special auditors were hired to revamp the forms used by all levels of public administration.
"The French managed to get rid of 40,000 forms when they did that. That is a good example of public administration acting in the interests of the public."
Despite spending "tens of millions" on information campaigns annually and producing "some really good material", the EU was not getting its message across to voters,
"If the growing gulf is allowed to grow any further it will clearly be dangerous for the European Union and its future.
"We are already at a stage where the European Parliament elections will attract a 30 per cent turnout in some countries. That is not acceptable for a union based on democratic principles.
"Decisions taken by all of the member-states together as the EU have life or death effects on people, but the people feel that it is remote. That must change."