Where does European law come from and what is it for? This is something that is regularly debated and argued over in the abstract, as a theoretical notion. Here is an opportunity to take a specific and detailed example.

Since Monday 18 September, it has been a legal requirement for small children to sit on booster seats in cars rather than just on the same seats that adults use. This is a road safety measure arising from an EU directive (2003/20/EC). It caught the news after an article of outrage by our friend Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph (read it here).

His complaints are twofold. First, he thinks that this is an unnecessary law, an uninvited intrusion into how parents look after their own children. Secondly, he objects to the fact that it originated in the EU and was not discussed properly by Westminster. How wrong, how wrong.

First, unnecessary. That’s not what the experts on road safety say. The seatbelts fitted in cars are designed for adults. Children are smaller and lighter and still growing: they need a different kind of protection. The booster seat law is an improvement on the seatbelt law and will save lives and prevent injuries. There is a libertarian argument against laws of this kind, in that adults should be free to take their own decisions about the risks they want to take, but can that argument really be extended to how adults treat children? In any case, the consensus of the nation is in favour of this kind of law.

That is shown by the second complaint, that Westminster did not discuss it properly. Come with me to the meeting of the Fourth Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation held on Wednesday 5 July 2006. We find that it was discussing the Draft Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) (Amendment) Regulations 2006. The minister explained that this proposal arose from the EU directive, all was quite clear. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen welcomed the new regulations, Owen Paterson for the Conservatives expressing some reservations about some of the practical aspects of the implementation.

Boris Johnson complains that the measure was not discussed by a European Standing Committee. Surely it is better discussed by a committee that specialises in transport. Tory and Lib Dem spokesmen Owen Paterson and Alistair Carmichael are shadow ministers on the issue. The European Standing Committees are composed of generalists, not specialists. The content of the regulation matters more than its origin. This is the right way to deal with European legislation, not the wrong way.

Lastly, I have to comment on Boris Johnson’s freelance policy-making. He wants Westminster to have the power “to refuse to accept directives even if they are decided at a majority vote.” That would mean leaving the single market: there is no chance that all the other member states would agree to grant the UK this right any other way.

And, on the subject of the booster seats themselves, he writes that “it should surely be a matter for individual choice and not international coercion.” His front-bench colleague Owen Paterson, actually in charge on this issue, said to the contrary, “the aim of the directive is wholly admirable: to reduce injuries and deaths among children travelling on our roads.” I think that shows what to make of Boris Johnson's contribution to the development of Tory policy.

Just back from a weekend seminar in Switzerland, to mark the 60th anniversaries of Winston’s Churchill’s famous speech in Zurich (which you can read here) and of the adoption of the Hertenstein programme (which you can read here).

During the weekend, it was seemed as though the Swiss have solved a number of the problems facing other industrial societies. Of course, the trains ran with their customary timekeeping, as did the boats that ply the Vierwaldstättersee, and everywhere was very clean. In the city of Luzern, there is a pedalo hire station amid all the steamers and floating restaurants, and there were kayakers on the fast water that flows through the city centre. In many cities, leisure and business have to be kept sharply separated: the Swiss manage to keep all the different need in a city together without sacrificing any of them. Very civilised, one might say.

Civilisation was a theme of the seminar as a whole. A fine introductory talk was given by Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford University, on the theme of Churchill’s vision of Europe. The speech in Zurich was one among many when he argued for European unification, or, as he put it, reunification.

Central to understanding Winston Churchill, said Vernon Bogdanor, was his early experience in Victorian and Edwardian England. He was born in 1874, and shared many of the assumptions of that era. His belief in the enduring greatness of the British empire, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, was an example of this. His notion of the togetherness of Europe was another.

Prior to the first world war, there had been a European system of sorts. Economic integration was proceeding apace, international crises were resolved through the concert of Europe when great powers gathered together to right wrongs and smooth over difficulties. What held the system together was the notion that European countries all had enough in common to enable them to reach amicable solutions. Of course, every federalist knows that the institutional framework proved inadequate in July 1914, but the notion that European countries have something in common remains.

The speech in Zurich must have been rather a shock. Barely a year after the end of the most destructive war between France and Germany ever, Churchill was calling for them to unite on the basis of a new and equal relationship. Every previous war had been settled by the victors imposing terms on the losers: not this time.

Churchill’s speech did not address the new institutions that might be needed to make the new Franco-German relationship work: this was not really his object. What motivated him, though, was the notion of a European model of civilisation. This had existed, and should be rebuilt. While the details of the rebuilding remained – and indeed remain – to be settled, the starting point is the conviction that rebuilding is both necessary and possible. I guess you would not be reading this blog entry if you did not share that idea, too.

Thinking in terms of a Churchillian notion of European civilisation also helps explain his vigorous anti-Communism. Among members of the British government during the Russian civil war in 1919, he was the most vociferous advocate of intervention in support of the Whites. He feared the Bolsheviks greatly: they openly rejected the rules of European civilisation.

And Churchill was among the first to be so hostile to Hitler, too, predicting that the latter’s rise to power would inevitably lead to war. The settlement of what appeared to be legitimate grievances towards the Versailles treaty would not, in his view, meet German demands: they would only fuel more. Furthermore, Churchill was an early and persistent critic of Nazi racial policies; again, further evidence that the European model of civilisation was under threat.

A number of early federalists, among them Lord Lothian and C E M Joad, were sympathetic to the appeasers’ case. They thought in terms of a rational and ordered solution to the lingering injustices of the Versaiiles settlement, and did not pay enough attention to the political will that was needed to make such a solution work. Federalism is a rule-based system and there was – and is still – a tendency to think that the rules themselves are enough. That isn’t true, as history shows, and there is a need for the notion of a European identity, too.

An interesting discussion yesterday between Andrew Duff and Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat spokespeople on constitutional affairs in the European Parliament and foreign affairs in the House of Commons, respectively. (It was at a fringe meeting at the Lib Dem conference.) The subject was what to do with the constitutional treaty, a question that has been rather quiet lately but which is starting to come back very loudly.

Andrew Duff is one of the leading thinkers on federalism in Europe, so there was naturally a lot of good sense in what he said. The military deployment to Lebanon showed, he said, the important role that Europe found itself playing in the world, and showed how profound was the need for political integration.

In reviving the constitutional issue now, it was ironic, he said, that federalists were advocating a narrow agenda for the forthcoming debate, whereas it was the nationalists who were trying to open everything up again. The constitutional text embodied a careful and delicate balance among the member states and among the institutions; great care was needed not to upset it now.

Andrew Duff’s preferred plan for the future will be published next month, after careful checking of the translated versions (he was very keen on the correct nuances), and I would not want to get his proposals wrong. In brief, he has some ideas to restructure the text to make it clear the distinction between the constitutional parts and the policy parts, and suggests five areas in which alterations to the text might deal with public criticisms and uncertainty.

Michael Moore, on the other hand, took a different tack. (By the way, this is a different Michael Moore from the bearded American film-maker, in case you were wondering.) The Scottish Michael Moore paid tribute to Andrew Duff’s work on the substance of the European constitutional treaty, but allowed himself to ask whether this substance was really the major issue right now.

The bigger problem was not a technical one – how to finesse the current text – but a political one. The very case for Europe is getting harder to sell, and the level of integration as represented in the treaties should not be allowed to out-run public support.

In his own constituency in the Scottish borders, he said that there were some very good examples of how we are better off in the EU. For example, knitwear manufacturers found themselves caught up in a trade war with the United States over bananas, and it took collective action by the EU to bring the dispute to a satisfactory conclusion. The day-to-day relevance of the EU needed to be clearer before a renewed constitutional effort could be successful.

This is, of course, a British argument. In many European countries, that day-to-day relevance is much clearer already, and it is not obvious that they are necessarily willing to wait for a British moment of clarity. The onus is on British supporters of the constitutional process to ensure that their fellow citizens are clear on what the EU is doing and what it is for, and they have to start doing it now.

During the summer break, I had the privilege of sitting in on a weekend discussion about the future of Europe conducted on a deliberately neutral basis. I was there to listen and present facts, not to debate or express views.

The participants represented a cross-section of British opinion on Europe – they were deliberately chosen accordingly – and, during the weekend, had some factual briefings from independent experts and some presentations from advocates of specific partisan viewpoints before settling down to reach their own conclusions. The course of the discussion and its conclusions were fascinating.

I don’t think anyone’s view of the issue changed fundamentally during the weekend, but lots of new avenues of thought opened up. I think it was a pretty common feeling among the participants that the information they were getting from the media on Europe (and from the EU itself) was not adequate – although I guess that people satisfied with the state of Europe would not have applied to attend the event themselves – and the new material presented was most welcome.

One thing that struck me was the way in which the eurosceptic participants started to notice positive things about the European Union and what it does. Not enough to change their minds, as I remarked earlier, but enough to be interesting.

To paraphrase one of the comments, it is hard being a eurosceptic because if you leave you have to leave the whole thing and can’t pick and choose the bits of the EU you might like to keep. A comment like that reveals that the debate is about how to share sovereignty, rather than whether to share sovereignty, which is in itself a bit of progress.