UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Amendment) Bill

I judge treaties and constitutions by their substance and effect. It is now indisputable that the substance of the treaty of Lisbon is in almost all cases the same as that of the constitutional treaty. That was the conclusion of the European Scrutiny Committee and that of the Foreign Affairs Committee, in so far as it looked into the foreign policy implications of the treaty. That is good enough for me. It may be a coincidence that I serve on both of those Committees, but I did support their conclusions; both, of course, have Labour Chairmen and majorities. Therefore, it is beyond dispute that they are the same document in legal effect. It follows from that that the many amendments that the Government tabled to the constitutional treaty during the Convention on the Future of Europe also apply to the treaty of Lisbon. As most of their amendments failed, it also follows that many unamended parts of the treaty are not to the Government’s liking, and also that any changes that the Government might seek to make to existing United Kingdom laws by using this part of the Bill are not to their liking either as they were the subject of failed British Government amendments. That is an additional reason for them to be closely scrutinised by the Committee on a case-by-case basis according to the affirmative procedure. My next theme is that this treaty is not a reform treaty, despite its earlier name. The Laeken declaration of December 2001 set in train a reform process. It recognised that decision making in the EU was remote, that the whole procedure had lost the confidence of the public, that the treaties were too complex and not democratic enough, and that the EU was interfering too minutely in the lives of ordinary citizens. Instead of following that reform instruction, the Convention on the Future of Europe consolidated more powers in the very institutions that were the cause of the disillusionment in the first place, and where reforming amendments were tabled, such as to the EU budget, they were ignored. It follows from that that the UK Bills to be amended in accordance with this clause will not reflect the reform process that the British Government supported. It is also worth noting that much of the UK legislation to be amended was passed some years ago when genuine reform of the EU was in prospect. Therefore, when the House passed provisions in those Bills referring to the European Union, it might have confidently expected that the relevant sections of the treaty concerned would be reformed, instead of which reform has been ignored and powers have been consolidated at the EU. My next theme is, therefore, the failure of subsidiarity. Not only has the reform process taken more powers upwards, but the subsidiarity principle is not working. That principle dictates that the EU can act only if the objective or policy cannot be achieved adequately at national level. That has been in treaty law since 1993, but it has not been an effective check on the EU’s activities. Examples have been given in previous debates of how even the exchange of best practice at EU level has been thought sufficient to justify EU action. Nor has the European Court of Justice been an effective check on subsidiarity. How could it be, as it is itself an EU institution? It is part of the project, and under the treaty of Lisbon matters will get worse as it will be required by treaty law to practice ““mutual sincere co-operation”” with the other institutions of the EU. Therefore, the subsidiarity check for national Parliaments, which is supposedly a new feature of the treaty of Lisbon, is something of a sham.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
472 c1475-6 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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