European Union (Amendment) Bill

I support my noble friend’s concerns on the definition of competences in this treaty. It is one of those issues whereby those who seek in our debates to minimise the impact of these treaties will say, ““Here you have things listed in black and white that limit the powers of the European Union, and therefore that must be a constraining thing””. Others will look at the same text and say, ““Actually it is enabling of the European Union, because it is sufficiently ambiguous and vague to allow huge extensions of the role of the EU””. We will hear both arguments about this use of language. In my view, the definition of shared competences was, in the words read out by my noble friend, that the EU can legislate in any area where there is a shared competence with unlimited scope. Once the heading is there—and he did not quote an exhaustive list—the treaty prescribes that, as long as the EU can make some tangential reference to the matter in hand as being related to one of the headings, the EU can claim the competence to legislate in that area. We know that as a result of the extensions that the treaty brings in, the EU will have a right in most of those areas to legislate by qualified majority voting. Therefore, these provisions open up almost any area in which the EU might want to legislate as being accessible to it through an extension of these so-called shared competences. It is notable that the wording of the treaty states that national Governments can—it does not include the word ““only””, but it might as well do so—legislate in areas where the EU has not legislated. In other words, we have given the EU the first right to legislate in all these areas. Our national Governments are allowed scope to legislate only in areas where the European Union has not legislated. If those were only a few tight areas related to the working of the Common Market or trade policy, one might think that that was reasonable, but when the headings are as broad as they are, covering just about every conceivable area of domestic policy—whether economic, social, political, environmental, or on justice and home affairs—you realise that we are creating a European Union that has carte blanche to legislate in all those areas. The few areas that were not thought of to be included under those headings are then put in another category of supporting legislation, whereby the EU can act to support or complement the laws of nation states. It does not take too much insight to understand that most of these areas will rapidly be turned into areas where the support and complementarity of the European Union is also becoming a major driving force for legislation. There is a genuine concern that this aspect of the treaty gives the European Union carte blanche. It is a significant innovation and needs further explanation.