European Union (Accessions) Bill

I sense that, as far as my hon. Friend is concerned, that debate is not restricted to the Romanian or Bulgarian economy. We have had the opportunity and privilege of debating similar matters in respect of the UK, never mind the potential accession countries to the EU in the past. It is a commonsense point that the EU is a union of liberal democracies that operate on the basis of market economies, so I make no apology for the fact that transition was necessary in Romania and Bulgaria from the state-controlled industries of the communist era—under the leadership of Ceausescu and others—to the position today, whereby impressive levels of economic growth have been achieved year on year. In the light of the domestic policies followed by Bulgaria and Romania, it might be challenging for my hon. Friend to examine his own prescription for securing economic growth and compare it with that taken forward by the Governments of those two countries. Subsection (2) approves for the purposes of section 12 of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 the provisions of the accession treaty in so far as they relate to the powers of the European Parliament. It is important to note that the accession treaty does not create new powers for the Parliament; rather, it increases the geographical scope of the existing powers by making provision for the future participation of MEPs from Bulgaria and Romania. It consequently applies those existing powers to nationals of states to whom they could not otherwise have been applied before the treaty’s entering into force.