European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall address Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 because they both reflect a shift—which one may or may not like, but which cannot be disguised in the treaty—towards a European Union that is increasingly establishing itself as an independent sovereign body rather than an association of member states. Amendment No. 11 refers to a reduction in the number of commissioners so that there is no longer a commissioner for each member state. I understand the practicalities of the difficulty in having a large number of commissioners but there are other ways of dealing with that. For example, there are rather more Ministers than members of the Cabinet in the UK Government. Not every Minister has the same status and not every commissioner need have a front-line portfolio. The problem is that this proposal has not been thought through in terms of the impact that it will have on the linkage with member states. While a commissioner is not there to represent the member state directly, it is important symbolically for each country to see that it is involved directly in the commissioner body and has a voice within it. The move to break the link between commissioners and countries is part of the overall trend that says that the EU is primarily not an association of member states but a governing body that is increasingly accountable first and foremost to a European democracy, represented in the European Parliament. As noble Lords have said, a number of shifts in the treaty increase the power of the European Parliament. Amendment No. 12, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, talks to that specifically in that under this treaty the Commission will be elected by the European Parliament. If the European Union is seen as an association of member states we might think that the Commission is there to do the bidding of the member states, which have appointed it. If we see the European Union as a democracy where the primary legitimacy comes from the European Parliament, of course we shift the responsibility of the Commission to that Parliament. Paragraph 8 of the Article 9D in the Lisbon treaty states: "““The Commission, as a body, shall be responsible to the European Parliament””." To my mind, that is a significant shift in emphasis and takes us away from the notion of the European Union as an association of member states. The Government need to explain whether their intention is to sign up to that direction, or whether they will stand on the principle that has hitherto been the case of Europe as an association of nation states of which we were a member.