UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. I much appreciated his committee’s report when I had an opportunity to read it over the weekend, and I am sure that we will come back to a number of the points that he covered and which were also covered in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, on parliamentary control of the opt-ins in the areas of freedom, justice and home affairs. Like my noble friends on these Benches who have already spoken, I believe that the Lisbon treaty contains useful improvements to the machinery of government of the European Union, and I will therefore support the Bill. Having been opposed to the use of referenda on European matters since 1972, I shall not change my mind on this occasion. As the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, mentioned in his very useful introduction to the report and to our debate, I serve as chairman of Sub-Committee C of your Lordships’ European Union Committee. Two members of the sub-committee, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, have already dealt with a certain number of the things that came out of our committee and which appear as chapter 7 of the European Union Committee’s report. Indeed, I much appreciated the remarks by the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Brittan, on this. The treaty does not change the basis on which the Union carries out its external actions, but maintains the intergovernmental nature of the development of foreign and defence policy. It does however, as we have heard, introduce a number of institutional innovations designed to improve the effectiveness and coherence of the external actions of the European Union. The present treaties do not provide arrangements for co-ordination, because the external policies developed and implemented by the Commission—including international trade policy, development and other economic assistance and the policy of enlargement on the one hand, and the foreign and defence policies developed by member states and High Representative Javier Solana under the CFSP arrangements of the present Second Pillar on the other—are quite separate. One manifestation of this division is the external representation of the European Union. The Commission has 128 missions, with about 4,000 staff, dealing with trade and development matters, but the CFSP matters—the Second Pillar matters—are formally dealt with by the embassies of the member state holding the rotating presidency of the Council, together, where they are, with the special representatives of the high representatives. This, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, leads to a dysfunctional arrangement, which means that the various instruments that the Union has to deal with foreign countries cannot be used as effectively as they should be. We have reached this situation because, until the end of the Cold War, the European Union did not have a significant foreign policy, let alone a defence policy. It did, of course, from its outset as the European Economic Community have trade and development policies. Indeed, the Community’s successes in GATT and the World Trade Organisation have often been cited as examples of the effectiveness of operating as part of a larger group. From 1970, there was a very slow development of European political co-operation, but it was only lightly organised by the member state holding the presidency. The Community’s relative lack of success in the Balkans in the early 1990s led to the formalisation of a Second Pillar in the Maastricht treaty of 1992, with the so-called common foreign and security policy. I find the title misleading. At first sight, the use of the word ““common”” gives the impression that it is a replacement for the foreign policies of the member states as ““common”” is used in the case of the common commercial policy and the common agriculture policy. It is not a total policy. It is a series of policies on specific items which are reached by member states when they feel that they can usefully do something together within the European Union. The Amsterdam Treaty 1997 made the important institutional change of making the Secretary-General of the European Council the high representative for the common foreign and security policy. The Nice treaty created a committee of senior diplomats, known as the political and security community. Although the appointment of Javier Solana as high representative in 1999 has somewhat helped the development of the CFSP, the fact is that too often in foreign policy matters, such as meetings of the Middle East quartet, the Union is represented by three people and not one; that is, the country holding the rotating presidency, the high representative and the Commission. That shows why the provisions in the Lisbon treaty to bring these three together make a great deal of sense. The most important innovation is to separate the post of high representative from that of Secretary-General, to allow him to take over the six-monthly rotating presidency of the Foreign Affairs Council, and, importantly, to represent the Union on foreign and security policy, including speaking on behalf of the Union in international organisations, to which I shall return. In addition, the same person will be appointed a vice-president of the Commission with responsibility for external relations to ensure the consistency of the Union’s external action. This unprecedented link between the two players was widely welcomed by those who came to give us evidence. The second innovation is the creation of a European external action service to support the high representative in his expanded role and to represent the EU in the rest of the world. Bringing together the bureaucracies of the Commission and the Council in Brussels, and having a single representation in dealing with other countries and international organisations, will increase the coherence of the Union’s external actions. While these innovations have the potential to deal with some of the problems faced by the Union, another development, to which the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, has already referred, may cause some problems; that is, the role of the semi-permanent President of the European Council who will have a responsibility for common foreign and security policy at his own level. Some of our witnesses told us of potential problems of co-ordination. For instance, when the European Union has a summit with a partner country, there are likely to be three people present—the President of the European Council, the President of the Commission and the high representative. The treaty probably inevitably does not spell out the relationship between the three. If possible, after ratification and before the appointment, it would be useful to draw up job descriptions, but that would be difficult. This is an important institutional innovation, but the new high representative will be accountable in various directions and it will be a challenging job to get right. The noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, referred to the obligation on member states serving on the Security Council to request that, when the European Union has defined a position which is on the agenda of the UN Security Council, the high representative should be invited to present the European Union’s position. We were told in the sub-committee—it appears in our report—that that is true for the presentation before the full Security Council. But, of course, a great deal of the negotiation in the Security Council takes place before that among the permanent members, of which the European Union is not part. Therefore, it is merely to ensure that the Union has an opportunity, as it does from time to time, to present its position that there is this innovation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, rightly said, this does not displace in any way the UK’s right to speak and vote. On a final point, the Lisbon treaty contains a mutual assistance clause. Some people have suggested that this turns the European Union into a form of collective defence organisation. That is not the case because it does not provide for collective defence, but is an obligation comparable to that in Article 51 of the United Nations treaty on individual member states. The article recognises that NATO remains the foundation of the collective defence of those member states which are members of it and the forum for its implementation. It makes clear that commitments under the European Union’s common security and defence policy shall be consistent with commitments under NATO. This new language makes explicit the fact that the European Union is in no way a competitor with NATO. Perhaps in the light of developments in France and Cyprus, we may soon be able to improve relations between those two organisations. They ought to be working together better. In foreign affairs and defence, the treaty removes some of the obstacles to the Union developing and implementing effective policy. It does not, as the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, has said, guarantee that member states will use it, but the arrangements are an improvement on the present situation and deserve our support.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
700 c922-4 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Back to top