European Union (Amendment) Bill

I have short-changed my hon. Friend—it was 50 minutes. He discussed the amendment knowledgeably. It specifically relates to the operation of orders made under subsection (4). As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells and others explained, the clause puts into United Kingdom law the terminological changes necessary to reflect the fact that the Lisbon treaty merges the existing EU entities, save the atomic energy body, into one legal entity, just as the original constitution attempted to do. The EU’s three-pillar structure is largely abolished. Justice and home affairs are totally absorbed into what has hitherto been called the European Community, which is a fundamental change. The distinction in name and legal personality between the intergovernmental second pillar on foreign and security policy and the European Community is also done away with. Those technical changes actually signify profound changes in the EU’s structure, purpose and powers, belying the ridiculous claim that Lisbon is merely an amending treaty of little real importance, as the Government would have the House and the country believe. In the place of three distinct agreements, if the Bill is passed, we will have one new all-encompassing legal personality, swallowing up the distinct activities that come under the EU mantle. If the treaty is ratified, the European Union, which until now has existed only as an umbrella term encompassing the various European agreements, will become less of a temple and more of a monolith, with a unified legal identity in its own right. The Minister is fond of saying that the constitutional concept has been abandoned, but whatever the Government’s sophistry about the treaty, its outcome will be almost exactly the same as that of the old constitution: the collapse of the pillar structure, which until now has safeguarded sensitive parts of our sovereignty as intergovernmental, and the merging of the EU into one legal entity.