European Affairs

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, as it allows me to develop an argument that I was going to come to anyway. However, I did not mention another interesting phenomenon: one of the countries that is seriously considering joining the EU, despite its historic problems with fisheries, is Iceland. The newly elected Government there have recognised that, in this global world, they need the protection of a big organisation. Iceland is one of the most extreme examples of what the crisis of unfettered and deregulated liberalisation has caused. One consequence is that the Icelandic Government recognise that they need the support of other countries, but there is a problem, and the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) alluded to it. It is that the EU needs to get away from its obsession with the institutional agenda and think of ways that it can assist the many countries on its periphery to become members. There is, of course, quite a lot to be discussed in that regard. One of the items on the agenda of the forthcoming Council will be a debate about the so-called eastern partnership. Unfortunately, there are signs that some of the bigger countries in the EU are growing cold on the future enlargement agenda. I think that that is very disappointing. There is a growing queue of countries wishing to join the EU. I have mentioned Iceland already, but the others include Montenegro, Albania, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Earlier, the shadow Foreign Secretary referred to the difficulties that Bosnia and Herzegovina is experiencing with Republic Srpska and growing nationalism. The real danger is that, 14 years after the Dayton process, we could, through lack of attention, find ourselves with a new crisis in the heart of the Balkans. Then, of course, there is Serbia, and Turkey has had an outstanding application to join for many years. I want to say something about the importance of the EU's future enlargement. It would be a terrible tragedy if, at this time of economic uncertainty and crisis, we started to put up barriers to the future enlargement of the EU. If we create an arc of instability in the Balkans and say, in effect, that the existing EU is full and cannot have any more member states, that would send out very bad signals for the future stability of the Balkan states. In addition, it would also send out signals to those other eastern partnership countries which, although they may not be candidates for EU membership, are nevertheless important neighbours of the EU. I refer the House to the crisis that is developing in Moldova, and to the authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies of President Saakashvili's Georgia. If the EU does not provide economic and political support to the neighbour countries—I am not talking about membership—we will find that Russia will once again try to have a hegemonic role in the region. Russia is not a pluralistic democracy in the western European model. It sees itself very much as a country with a near-abroad, and that is an area that it will want to dominate. That is not the kind of Europe that we want, the kind that will lead to the prosperity and peace that have been developed by the EU over previous decades. The Swedish Government are about to take over the presidency of the EU. Sweden, along with Poland, has developed the concept of the eastern partnership, and it will no doubt be trying to take that concept forward over the coming six months. I believe that we need to take seriously the Swedish and Polish initiatives on these matters, as there is a clear need for EU countries to extend their focus beyond their internal problems. We must recognise that neighbouring areas—the applicant countries in the Balkans or the partnership countries to the east—provide very important lessons. We must not allow our internal obsessions to cause us to fail to provide co-operation, assistance and help for our European neighbours.