European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, perhaps the amendment is not really necessary after all and should not take too much of your Lordships’ time, particularly after the previous substantial debate. One comes back to the origins of the text, which for good Europeans is sacred. Article 3a(2) of the treaty of Lisbon reminds us: "““The Union shall respect the equality of Member States before the Treaties as well as their national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government. It shall respect their essential State functions, including ensuring the territorial integrity of the State””." Article 3b states: "““The limits of Union competences are governed by the principle of conferral. The use of Union competences is governed by the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality””." Furthermore, Article 2(6) states: "““The Union shall pursue its objectives by appropriate means commensurate with the competences which are conferred upon it in the Treaties””." These are sovereign countries—positive Europeans working together agreeably more closely, as envisaged by the founding fathers, although they were not aware of the future details. We have seen how this has evolved gradually as a process: sovereign countries remaining national sovereign entities and in no way reduced by any co-operation between them on signing the series of international European treaties that brought together the previous two principal treaties of 1957 and Maastricht and have now culminated in the composite Lisbon treaty. I therefore find it difficult, as will other noble Lords, to understand why the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, is worried about this matter. The position of the monarch is in no way affected by our membership of the European Union. There are seven monarchies in the current list of 27 member states. Of those, I am pretty sure—I speak from memory so I hope that I am right, because it is not always possible to read all versions of Hansard of all the other national Parliaments—that the Kingdom of Spain, which is also armed with more than 1,000 years of history, the King of the Belgians, King Carl Gustaf of Sweden, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and the other monarchies have no anxiety about this, and I do not think that in any of those national Parliaments a single amendment has been proposed to the Bill that is going through its various stages to enact and ratify the Lisbon treaty. The reason for this strange suggestion is therefore beyond me and, I think, most people. I recall, too, that Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh paid—