European Union (Amendment) Bill

Indeed, had the provisions of Maastricht gone through in the sense of this country submitting itself to the euro, that would be just about the point. Does the noble Lord imagine that the French, Germans or Italians are very happy about their degree of autonomy over their economic policy? They are not, to judge by the noises that I hear coming from them. The noble Lord reminds us that there could be changes in the politics of Europe more broadly under the stress of the economic problems that will be caused by the European single currency until there is one chancellor of the exchequer for Europe. We all know that a currency cannot have more than one chancellor. Those stresses will continue to bear heavily upon various countries in Europe. According to some on the left, Italy is veering towards a neo-fascist style of government again. There is much talk of neo-fascism on the Continent of Europe. I am not very comfortable binding my country and its foreign policy to countries over whose electoral fortunes we have no control. I still believe that we should be an independent nation, and that there is a place for independent nations in the world. I do not take the view of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, that that is all silly old stuff that belongs to the past and is sentimentalism. If a country cannot have untrammelled rights over its own foreign policy and to change that policy when it wills, it is not a fully sovereign nation. I support Amendment No. 113 to make that matter plain.