UK Parliament / Open data

Treaty of Lisbon (No. 2)

Proceeding contribution from Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat) in the House of Commons on Wednesday, 30 January 2008. It occurred during Debates on treaty on Treaty of Lisbon (No. 2).
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her intervention. My instincts, in all matters European, are to look for subsidiarity. I seek reassurance that the national interest is being protected, and in this case that is made unusually explicit in the article. It states, as she points out, that the measures included"““shall not affect a Member State's right to determine the conditions for exploiting its energy resources, its choice between different energy sources and the general structure of its energy supply””." Those are precisely the assurances that someone concerned about possible erosion of national sovereignty would want—and here they are. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton got extraordinarily worked up over something that appears to say everything that we would want it to say, because of his generally vitriolic attitude to the European Union rather than because of the specifics of what we are discussing.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
471 c365 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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