European Union (Amendment) Bill

The amendments bear on the common foreign and security policy, which I have always supported as an aspect of the European Union; it is very much in British interests that it should develop further. So I look at the amendments and ask whether they will enable us to make better progress than we have made already in developing a common foreign and security policy on issues for which it is in British interests to do so. Those are issues on which our interests coincide with those of other member states and on which we can reach unanimous positions on matters of great importance to us all. In the earlier debate, Members referred to our relationships with the Russian Federation. I can think of no more important area where the European Union should make faster progress towards having a coherent common foreign policy that enables us to establish good, but proper, relationships with the very important superpower that is almost a near neighbour of ours to the east. The structure on which the amendments bear is fairly long-standing. There is no great substantial change in this treaty from the Maastricht treaty, which we debated at considerable length in the past. Unfortunately, I was divided then from some of the colleagues who are present now, who still do not agree with me. A lot of these arguments are extremely familiar. At that time, we debated amendments claiming that the proposals would be the end of British foreign policy, that we would be handing over to a new European superpower, that we would lose all our power to represent ourselves abroad, and so on. None of that ever happened. Unfortunately, since the Thatcher Government led on the whole idea of a common foreign and security policy and the Major Government supported that, we have not gone far enough in the direction towards what we need—a union of nation states collectively being able effectively to put into practice representations on their mutual behalf in the areas that matter to them. I agree with, and will not repeat at length, the arguments in favour of a single presidency for a period and an end to the rotating presidency. I am surprised that my party has tabled amendments challenging the idea of the new presidency. The Conservative party was always unanimous on the question of enlarging the Union—apart from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood); I am sorry that I have attributed to him a moment of deviation from his very firm position on these matters. Certainly, the official policy was all in favour of enlargement. Indeed, most of us view it as a triumph that the Union has succeeded in enlarging and taking democratic and liberal values across into central and eastern Europe. I always gained the impression that it was assumed that once we had enlargement, certain treaty amendments would be required, including getting rid of the rotating presidency. I will not labour the argument, but the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) was entirely correct in what he said. There are two arguments about the presidency that must be refuted: first, that it is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) suggested, a tremendously powerful position that could eventually, over time, rival the presidency of the United States as a position in world affairs. I have to tell my hon. Friend that I do not see how that can be seriously argued while keeping a straight face. One thing that is retained in this treaty is the idea of unanimity in forming foreign policy—unanimity, that is, of Ministers in the Council of Ministers, each of whom comes from their democratically elected Government in each member state and is individually answerable to his Parliament and the electorate to whom his Government answer. The president will represent the Union once a common policy has been arrived at, and only then. The president of the European Council of Ministers—that is the best way of describing him, rather than the president of Europe—will not be the commander-in-chief of the forces of Europe. When we discuss later amendments, we will no doubt hear the old Maastricht stuff about European armies and so on, which have always been phantoms. The president will not have any policy-making power—that will reside with the Ministers drawn from the member states, and his duty is to represent a common position when they have arrived at it. Secondly, it is argued that the presidency will somehow threaten our position in the United Nations. Again, I will not labour the arguments that have already been made, other than to say that we are continuing a practice that has already become well established, and that has not yet happened. The fact that the president of the Council can sometimes go to address the United Nations does not mean that the United Kingdom will lose its place on the UN Security Council, any more than the French will. I strongly believe that the British should retain their position on the Security Council for as long as possible. We are a very valuable influence there, and it is obviously in our interest that we stay there. We have had difficulty in maintaining that presence in modern times because the permanent members of the present Security Council were the victorious allies in the second world war. As the world steadily changes, that situation is getting quite difficult to defend. It is not the best defence of the British position to say that we will rely on that historical case, or even to bar the quite harmless practice, which has become quite well established, of the president of the European Council addressing the Security Council when there is a common position. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham, with his usual sensitivity to the political world of Europe, says that the other 25 countries should put up with being represented by either the British or the French. He asks why there is a need for the European president to be able to turn up and put their views. Quite apart from the generally undiplomatic nature of that suggestion, such an approach is not the best way of defending the United Kingdom's seat on the UN Security Council in the longer term. With the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend, such near xenophobia about the desire of other powerful countries to be able to put forward a collective European view in the UN will simply arouse more pressure for reform, and most proposals for reform suggest that there should not be so many European countries individually represented on the Security Council. I resist that view, but we have to be sensible and flexible, and we should not raise such extraordinary fears about what has been a successful practice since Maastricht. I know that others want to go on to the subject of the European army, so I shall conclude by relating something to my hon. Friends in a way that is in order. These debates, which I have attended quite regularly, largely seem to involve an extraordinary series of exchanges about what the treaty means. In my opinion, although I respect the views of my colleagues, there has been an attempt to extract from the wording of the treaty extraordinary meanings that I simply cannot see there. It is exactly like Maastricht. Everybody said that similar things would happen after Maastricht. We debated it at interminable length then because we were not confined by such a dreadful timetable as we are now—despite our best efforts to get one. [Laughter.] All those fears were raised, none of them were realised, and now everyone is coming back to say exactly the same thing.