European Union (Amendment) Bill

During my time there I never had any feeling that my colleagues were driven by political motivation or that they were setting out to achieve anything that was not clearly and expressly covered by actual provisions of the treaty. I never had any ambition to create a new Europe all of my own or to develop principles that happened to be dear to me personally. I believe that we all looked at the wording of the articles of the various treaties and gave effect to it. Giving effect to it sometimes surprised people. People who had never read the treaty thought that it was just a Common Market treaty. They had not read the social provisions; they had not even read all the economic provisions to understand what was included in the treaty. I well understand that people react adversely to decisions of the Court. I have suffered from that not only in Luxembourg but, at different levels, in the courts of this country, including in the Judicial Committee of your Lordships’ House, of which I am grateful to have had the opportunity of being a member. People sometimes resent the decisions of the Court. Noble Lords who read the press sufficiently will know that even the courts of this country are constantly being assailed by those who write about these matters. There will certainly be decisions in future that some people will not like. What is essential is that one should be sure that the Court is genuinely seeking to give effect to the provisions of the treaty. For my own part, in the light of my time there, and from following what it has been doing to some extent since, I am quite convinced that that has always been its intention and its wish.