LONDON -- British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on Tuesday said that Brussels has got too much power, and some of those powers need to be "brought back" to national capitals.
Speaking in the Parliament, he said that the EU "has changed almost beyond recognition" in the decades since a clear majority of the British people voted to join in the 1970s.
"Treaty after treaty, the Single European Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon, individually and collectively, have added hugely to the European Union's powers, often in areas that would have been unthinkable in 1975," he said in an opening speech before a legislative debate over an EU referendum.
That change of the EU "has eroded the democratic mandate for our membership to the point where it is wafer-thin and demands to be renewed," Hammond added.
The foreign secretary noted that "the fragility of the European Union's democratic legitimacy is felt particularly acutely by the British people."
"An entire generation of British voters has been denied the chance to have a say on our relationship with the European Union," he said.
Stressing that Britain's relationship with the European Union needs to change, he said: "We believe that Brussels has got too much power. And we believe that some of those powers need to be brought back to national capitals."
The EU needs to become "far less bureaucratic and far more competitive," with the European electorate more disenchanted with the EU than ever before and with anti-EU parties on the rise across the continent.
"It's time to bring Europe back to the people, ensuring decisions are made as close to them as possible, and giving national parliaments a greater role in overseeing the European Union," he urged.
British Prime Minister David Cameronhas pledged to hold an "in or out" referendum on whether Britain should withdraw from the EU by 2017.
British lawmakers are working on a EU Referendum Bill as part of the legal preparations for the proposed referendum.
