European Union (Accessions) Bill

I should also like to join in this festival of cross-party consensus, which I trust will be a rare, if valuable occasion. It underlines the importance of this positive step not only for Romania and Bulgaria but for the European Union as a whole. I join others in reminding the House that the vision of an ever-wider and more diverse EU has for a long time been a particularly British vision of the European Union and before it the European Community, which has united political opinion across parties for a long time. It is good to see that that fundamental view has held true here today. It is not a view that is shared in other parts of the EU. I doubt that in Paris one would find quite the same amount of cross-party consensus on this latest step in the journey of EU enlargement. It remains an expression of great strategic vision on the part of Britain as a whole that we have prosecuted this process as successfully as we have. Some important points have been made during the consideration of the Bill about the final steps of the accession of Romania and Bulgaria into the EU and the absolute need for real rigour in ensuring that the outstanding measures that need to be taken in those two countries are taken and that the safeguard measures are used in all seriousness and not merely as a fig leaf for enlargement and accession at all costs. That concern about the final stages of accession should not be viewed as some last-minute series of obstacles to their rightful claim to join the EU. It is borne of a serious belief that if further enlargements are to occur in a politically, economically and socially sustainable way in the decades ahead, we must set the right precedent today.