European Union (Amendment) Bill

I must first take issue with the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) about the European Defence Agency. He is correct that no member state can be thrown out of the agency, but there is no need to throw out a single member state, because the agency will operate on the basis of qualified majority voting. If there are dissenting voices that represent less than a qualified minority, their views can be disregarded and overridden. That creates a very large thick end of a thickening wedge in European defence. The hon. Gentleman says that the European Defence Agency is not a new institution, but it is now enshrined in the new treaty as an institution of the European Community. The high representative for foreign affairs has a leading role in the agency, according to the statute. Of course, the high representative for foreign affairs is also a member of the European Commission, thus attacking the agency’s intergovernmental nature once again. The European Commission has long had an ambition to create a single market in defence goods, and fundamental to clause 3 is the elimination of the obvious distinction between those matters that exist under the treaty of European Union and those that exist under the treaty establishing the European Communities. The idea that that is a technical change, as the Minister put it, is likely to be misleading—although perhaps not deliberately misleading—to those who wonder how the treaties will affect the lives of citizens in the member states. I remind the House of what paragraph 2(b) of article 1 of the new treaty says:"““The Union shall be founded on the present Treaty and on the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union””—" that is the new name of the treaty establishing the European Community—"““(hereinafter referred to as "the Treaties"). Those two Treaties shall have the same legal value.””" That was simply not the case under the previous arrangements. We will now rely on the provisions of the treaty in order to separate matters that were traditionally covered by the treaty establishing the European Community—including the single market, the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy—from matters such as the common foreign, security and defence policy. Hon. Members will be surprised to hear that the provisions of the treaty are subject only to the interpretation of the European Court of Justice.