European External Action Service

Like other Conservative Members, I am sceptical about the Lisbon treaty, but we are where are. We have the European External Action Service, and it is in Britain's interest that it at least works. The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs has taken a close interest in the EAS, and I welcome this debate. It hardly helps that the negotiations have been taking place in Brussels when we have not had a European Scrutiny Committee. However, the Foreign Affairs Committee is grateful that the Government and their predecessors have co-operated with it in providing the information that it needed and, in that spirit, I hope that they continue to do so. We are able to consider today's documents in advance of the Council formally giving its approval only because High Representative Ashton has spent the past three months negotiating with the European Parliament. I have to confess that having had a look at the documents, I am sceptical about whether the changes secured by the European Parliament amount to any major alteration to the likely functioning of the EAS. The Parliament largely won confirmation on a number of points that were either implied or explicitly set out in the Lisbon treaty or in the Swedish presidency report on the EAS adopted by the European Council last October. I note that the explanatory memorandum to the revised draft Council decision states that it ““respects the essentials”” of the proposals on which the Council reached political agreement in April. Under the circumstances, I congratulate the Government on resisting a number of demands regarding the EAS that would have been very unhelpful from a British point of view.