RECENTLY, my wife and I spent a weekend visiting friends in Spain. We flew with a cheap airline from Manchester and the plane was full. How very different from 10 years ago, when the big airlines had a monopoly and only the rich could afford the sky-high prices.

It was the EU that opened up Europe's skies and have birth to the budget airlines. Similarly, it was the European single market that enabled our friends to buy property in Spain, get medical treatment and enjoy their full British pension entitlements.

That trip underlined for me the practical benefits of Britain's EU membership and the value of the work we do in the European Parliament. The new one that the people of Blackburn have just helped elect is an exciting place.

We face a tough agenda - speeding up economic reform, improving the environment, streamlining EU laws and much more besides.

Our task, though, is made doubly difficult by an outdated decision-making structure. Designed almost 50 years ago for six founder members, it can't cope now with 25 countries on board. That's why we need to approve the new European Constitution. If we don't, the EU will be left paralysed and increasingly marginalised.

That would jeopardise everything Britain gains from the EU -- and so often takes for granted. Like many in Blackburn, I want to be able to enjoy more of those cheap weekends away in the sun.

GARY TITLEY, Labour MEP for the North West, Spring Lane, Radcliffe.

BARGAIN BREAKS: cheap weekends away in the sun are one of the benefits of EU membership says Euro MP Gary Titley