European Union (Amendment) Bill

I support these important amendments. As a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the European Union I was fortunate enough to discuss some of these issues when we visited Brussels. As other noble Lords said, it is clear that there is huge uncertainty and work still to be done on turning some of the institutional arrangements that are described in this treaty in very outline form into practical and settled arrangements. That matters, because the way in which those institutional arrangements develop has a profound impact on the way in which Europe will operate and the kind of constitutional settlement that it puts in place. I want to dwell in particular on the relationship between the various presidents. We should remember that three presidencies will be concurrent in Europe: the new term-elected President of the European Council and the existing President of the European Commission, and there will still be the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers. What is not at all clear is how those three concurrent presidencies will interact. One model would maintain that the national presidency—the rotating six-monthly presidency —should still be the predominant presidency as it represents the member states, and that the others should be the servants of the nation states with the president of the Council merely orchestrating the agenda as a kind of chairman of committees and the President of the Commission continuing to manage the legislature. Another view states that what we are creating here is more like the tiers of a presidential state where the president of the Council, who is elected for a longer term, acts like the President of France or the President of the US with a Cabinet around him and sets the agenda, and that the President of the Commission becomes in effect a First Minister or Prime Minister as the head of the Executive, in the same way as the Prime Minister of France relates to the President of France. In that model the rotating national presidency is merely there to arrange the venue and clean the floors. How this turns out is a matter of substantial importance in the model of Europe that we are building. It is no accident that it is not clear, because there are differing views on what model different members of the European Union and different members within each delegation might want, as was made clear in the Select Committee’s discussions. It is fundamentally significant that this House knows whether what is envisaged is indeed a French-type model of a president of Europe and a Prime Minister, with the rotating presidency kicked into the sidelines, because it has an impact on the constitutional settlement that we have just been discussing. In saying that this amendment does not go far enough, my reservation is that I think we ought to have this settled before the House and the country are asked to agree to this treaty. That ought to be one of the things we consider as we go through this debate. We should as a minimum ask for a report-back six months later to ensure that we have clarity on this.