European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I am aware that I have become unusually controversial in your Lordships' House on this subject—irritating those noble Lords who support the project of European integration and boring those who have kept an open mind—so it is generous of so many of your Lordships to stay in your seats now. Very briefly, I feel that I should recall the EU's genesis—the basics of how it works—which is boring but important. The powerful idea that gave rise to the European Union is that the nation states had been responsible for the carnage of two world wars. Those nation states, with their unreliable democracies, had therefore to be emasculated and diluted into a new form of supranational government, run by a Commission of technocrats. That is the big idea. It is from that idea that we have the EU's claim to have brought peace to Europe since 1945, which I do not have time to query now, although I will just mention the part played by NATO. It is also from that big idea that we have the EU system of law-making, with all EU legislation proposed by the unelected Commission in private, negotiated in private by COREPER or the committee of permanent civil servants from the member states, and passed in private in the Council of national Ministers. It is true that the elected European Parliament has growing influence over that process, but it cannot propose legislation and it is not in its interest to resist it.