European Union (Accessions) Bill

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, with whom I had my first disagreement on Europe well over 50 years ago. It is fitting that a historian like myself should be among those who rejoice—to use the word of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, in another connection—at the prospect of welcoming Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union. The noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, may be remembered as having said in a neglected passage in her speech at Bruges in 1988 that it was essential for us in western Europe to keep a candle burning to light the way of such countries as these we are talking about towards liberty. I think we can say that, after 1988, that candle burned very well. These two countries have much in common. As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, said, the territories of both were in the Roman Empire in the days of Trajan. It is fair to say that the recovery of those Roman borders has some relevance to what we are trying to do in Europe today. Both countries were, from the middle of the Middle Ages to about the middle of the nineteenth century, dependent on or subject to the Ottoman Empire in one way or another, while the Muslim armies of the Sultan swept on—not just once, but several times—towards Vienna, in a threat to Europe which must have seemed more alarming than Muslim fundamentalism does today. Both countries emerged from the night of Ottoman control in the late nineteenth century after the Congress of Berlin in 1878, in which two Members of this House, Lord Salisbury and Lord Beaconsfield, played a major part. That congress led to the formation of two small states, initially directed by German monarchs; one, a minor member of the Hohenzollern family; the other a Saxe-Coburg, a member of that extraordinary family which gave kings to Portugal, Belgium, even Britain, as well as Bulgaria. Both these states found it hard to survive from the time of their creation through the whirlwind of war and diplomatic struggles of the First and Second World Wars. Poor Romania was caused to fight against both Germany and Russia in the Second World War. Both states, it is important for those in this House to recall, were let down badly in 1945 by the western Allies, despite the Yalta conference’s declaration on liberated Europe. One friend of mine, a member of the British military mission to Bulgaria in 1945, found that his first duty was to attend the execution of 68 parliamentarians. That assignment helped to make Malcolm Macintosh an especially acute observer of the Soviet military machine in subsequent years. No doubt because of Soviet brutality later on, both Bulgaria and Romania have shown astonishing lack of bitterness at the western failure of the immediate post-war years, a failure which resulted in the imprisonment or death of hundreds of admirable people who expected support from us. I mention only the name of the ex-Romanian Prime Minister Maniu. Though they have much in common, these two states also have many differences. For example, Romania maintained her contacts with the West—particularly France—through her Latin-based language. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, mentioned that point. Bulgaria’s position should not be neglected. In the Middle Ages she constituted a major empire, a threat for a long time to Byzantium, and also preserved her orthodox Christianity during the long era of Ottoman control. Both Bulgaria and Romania have had close relations with Russia from the 16th century onwards for obvious geographical reasons, though Romania’s were basically destructive. Bulgaria’s—at least until the communist era—were usually benign. Modern Romania has constituted four territories: Moldavia and Wallachia which constituted the heart of the country after 1878; Bessarabia which after several improbable changes is now the independent state of Moldova; and Transylvania which was wrested from Hungary in 1919 under the Treaty of St Germain. Bulgaria has experienced fewer territorial changes, though she did lose a priceless outlet to the Aegean in 1919. Romania had oil, hence the German occupation of the 1940s. She also had both a fascist movement and a substantial Jewish minority which was later largely massacred. The cleverness of King Boris of Bulgaria should not be forgotten since he did much to save the admittedly smaller Jewish population of that country. However, Bulgaria did have the dubious honour of enduring the longest reign of any communist satrap, that of Zhivkov who was in power for 35 years in Sofia—just before the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, went there for the first time. In rejoicing at the likely entry of these two tragic but resilient countries into the European Union, there is one further thing that I should say. Throughout their history, both have been affected by their associations with larger enterprises, whether the Hapsburg, the Ottoman or even the Soviet empires. Thus they are not like the great nation states of western Europe such as ourselves, France, Spain, perhaps the Netherlands and Sweden which have enjoyed five centuries of untrammelled sovereignty and naturally find it more difficult to forget or neglect the attitudes so formed. Thus though both Romania or Bulgaria could throw up European statesmen of importance—ex-King Simeon might turn out to be one—it is unlikely that they will aspire to lead Europe as France has or as Britain could have done. That brings me to comment—this may seem irrelevant but it is, all the same, important—that, like others, I have pondered on the reasons for the astonishing transformation of British politics over the past 20 years which has caused the party of Europe—which the Conservative Party was from about 1960 until 1988—to change places with the Labour Party, which until 1988 seemed, to say the least, unenthusiastic about associations with the European Union. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, touched on why he personally had moved from an old enthusiasm to a modern scepticism. But I think this change occurred for a different reason. I think that about 1988 Conservative leaders realised that Britain had lost the chance to lead Europe—a chance which could have been theirs. Those who led this country into Europe—Lord Stockton, Sir Edward Heath, Lord Duncan-Sandys, for example—