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Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I very much hope that right hon. and hon. Members will exercise more restraint in the length of their speeches ; otherwise, some of them will be disappointed.
6.30 pm
Mr. Peter Shore (Bethnal Green and Stepney) : This is one of the most important debates on the European Community that we have held. It comes immediately ahead of the two major conferences--the intergovernmental conferences on economic and monetary union and on political union.
The right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), who chairs the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs with such distinction, will recall that earlier this year the Select Committee published a report on what was happening in Europe and the enormous changes that were taking place. We must consider what is happening in some perspective, so I should like to begin my remarks by quoting two short passages from that report. We said :
"We should not underestimate the continued strength of the momentum for the move towards federal objectives There may be varying tactical shifts and differences of detail, but the old objective of a federal Europe is being reinforced at the highest official and political levels."
The concluding paragraph said :
"It is clear to us that the Community now developing is very different from the Community that the UK joined in the 1970s." And it is. The Europe that we joined in 1973 was still basically a "Europe des patries"--a Europe of independent nation states determined to co-operate to achieve a common European goal. The Europe that the two
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intergovernmental conferences wish to create is a supranational quasi-federal union in which major decisions are taken no longer by national Parliaments and Governments but by Community institutions. Many tributaries of feeling and experience have led to this great and remarkable surge in favour of European union. In Spain and Portugal, the long experience of fascist and authoritarian rule led their people and politicians to believe that their democracies could be made secure only within a larger democratic union. In Italy, the weakness of the state and the extent of public mistrust in the Government in Rome has led most Italian political leaders to the belief that they are likely to be better governed from Brussels than from the capital of their own country. France, which has long been the champion of national independence in the European Community, has radically changed its stance, motivated basically by its fear of a united Germany and its wish to enmesh its great economic power and that of the Bundesbank in European decision-making. No doubt that is what the Lilliputians thought about binding Gulliver with cords. Meanwhile, the Germans are anxious to assure the world that they see their future not in national but in European terms.A great mele e of different sources of inspiration are moving in the same direction. The supranational institutions of the Community--the Commission and the European Parliament have always been supranational--are, as always, anxious to extend their own decision-making powers. Hon. Members, and certainly the Government, have fed those unionist ambitions and created new opportunities by agreeing, in the Single European Act, to a substantial increase in majority voting in the Council of Ministers and to the commitment to European monetary union in a foolishly written preamble from which we are now desperately trying to escape.
We have not been helped by the assize to which the right hon. Member for Guildford referred. I very much fear that Members of Parliament from other countries who attended that assize between 27 and 30 November might have gained a false impression about the position of those who attended it and the extent to which they spoke for Members of Parliament generally. I must draw attention to some of the extraordinary passages in the meeting's final declaration. Paragraph 2 says that it
"Takes the view that EMU must be achieved on the basis of the timetable and conditions agreed by the European Council in Rome on 27/28 October 1990".
They accept that timetable, which as I recall is 1994 for the second stage, and then onwards as quickly as possible to the third stage with a full single currency and economic and monetary union. The declaration continues :
"Political union comprising a foreign and security policy on matters of common interest must be established and that European Political Cooperation must be incorporated into the Treaty Takes the view that the Community should be given additional competence in the field of the environment and that decision-making in this area should be by qualifiedvoting
Considers that the time is right to transform theentire complex of relations between the Member Statesinto a European Union on the basis of a proposal for a constitution
Calls for meetings of the Council to act by majority voting except in connection with amendments to the Treaties, the accession of new member states."
That is an extraordinary and outrageous commitment.
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The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones) : The right hon. Gentleman is right--it is an extraordinary commitment. I assume that he is aware that Conservative Members who attended the assize as individual Members of Parliament representing their constituencies--a perfectly proper thing to do--distinctly heard the Opposition spokesman not only vote for the list that the right hon. Gentleman has just read out but declare that it was Labour party policy. What has he to say to that?Mr. Shore : I think that I know the answer. The only part that has appeared in a Labour party document is that relating to qualified majority voting on environmental issues. The other propositions cannot be found in any policy document of the Labour party.
Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton) : It would be advisable for my right hon. Friend to have a word with me before jumping to conclusions and accepting some of the propaganda being put out. What the Minister said was entirely untrue and wrong. When I spoke on behalf of some of the Labour Members who attended the meeting, I made it absolutely clear that we had severe reservations about some of the points in the text, which I identified and many of which were made by my right hon. Friend. May I point out--I am as careful as my right hon. Friend about Labour party policy-- that a decision has been made subsequent to the policy document which was passed by the conference? The national executive committee endorsed the Dublin declaration made earlier this year by the leaders of the socialist parties. Many of the points that were part of that declaration were part of the Dublin declaration, to which our party is committed.
Mr. Shore : I take seriously what my hon. Friend has to say--except, of course, his remark that I might have consulted him. He might have consulted all of us before he went to Rome and after he came back. I content myself by advising him to read with care the extracts that I quoted. Apart from the environmental issue, they are clearly and definitely not part of Labour policy.
Mr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central) rose --
Mr. Shore : I am sorry ; I need to make progress.
All the points so far have been the small change of the debate and we want to get on to the serious subject of what we are facing in Europe. I used the quotations as an illustration of the powerful forces which, in Europe today, are trying to bring about a federal European union. It does not matter how they describe it and we could have a long debate about what federal union is. The aim is, above all, a union which goes far beyond the "Europe des patries" that we thought we had joined 17 years ago.
We should judge the current proposals for European monetary union and for political union against the background of the thrust in Europe towards union. The content of the proposals is aimed not so much at solving the practical problems that have arisen, but at furthering the cause of European union. Let us consider, for example, the argument in favour of economic and monetary union. It is said--by those who advocate it, of course--that it will help currency stability, that it will help to deal with the familiar problems of currency speculation and that it will introduce a strong anti-inflation bias into the economies of the member countries.
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Mr. Giles Radice (Durham, North) : Hear, hear.
Mr. Shore : My hon. Friend may say that, but I must point out that the same objectives were followed and the same claims were made on behalf of the exchange rate mechanism. It was said that that would have an impact on inflation and would stop currency speculation. We are entitled to ask what the special virtue of economic and monetary union is over the exchange rate mechanism. The only serious point that I have been able to find is references to the so-called "great savings" in transaction costs. Transaction costs were virtually unknown in the House until the Delors report appeared a year or so ago.
I want to quote from a speech by Karl Otto Po"hl, who is something of an authority on banking matters, on transaction costs and on the contribution that European monetary union would make towards a great saving. On3 September 1990, he said :
"The repeated references to alleged huge savings in transaction costs for the countries of a single currency area are not in the least convincing."
I take it that he has a fairly serious opinion in these matters. What is the real reason for going beyond the exchange rate mechanism into European monetary union? It was stated by Mr. Andreotti, the President of the Council of Ministers, during the six months of the Italian presidency. He said to the European Parliament on 21 November :
"for the first time in the history of Europe, we shall confer upon the Community one of the distinctive and essential competencies on which national sovereignty is historically built."
That is the prize and that is the objective. European monetary union is not primarily about solving economic problems, but about transferring to the Community something that is central and indispensable to what he calls "national sovereignty" and I call parliamentary democracy and the accountability of Government to the people of this land.
Mr. Quentin Davies : Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that the fact that he had not heard of transactional costs before the Delors report came out shows his remarkable personal ignorance of business and industry? If he had ever tried to import or export anything, he would have known all too well what transactional costs were.
Mr. Shore : This is too small a point about which to bicker. I am very familiar with the phrase "transactional costs", which has become a central argument for the merits--so-called--of joining the European monetary union. That is why I have brought the matter forward for discussion and that is why I quoted Herr Po"hl's comments. The thrust to European union colours and distorts all judgment on the approach to economic and monetary union. I fear that the Government are in for a difficult time. While they are trying to argue for a rational economic policy, they will find themselves up against that overt thrust, as Andreotti made plain in his address to the European Parliament.
I fear that we shall face the same problem at the conference on political union. We know that the Commission, the European Parliament and the Governments of Italy, of Spain and of Germany are strongly in favour of four objectives. They want a certain concept of subsidiarity to be adopted in the treaties themselves. They do not want from subsidiarity what this House would like from subsidiarity. We want the
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interpretation of subsidiarity to lead to the minimum of supranational control or intervention in our affairs. They want the concept to be included for the opposite reason, so that they can then argue the case for taking more powers away from national Parliaments and from national democracies. That concept is dangerous and it would be even more dangerous if it were introduced into a treaty which also gave powers of interpretation either to a court or to a majority of the Council. If that were to happen, we should find ourselves wide open to the ever- increasing encroachment of European law on our national life.Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) : Is it not true that the problem with the European Court already is that it is highly political? Its role is to interpret in a political sense whether countries are complying with the treaty. This country is not used to accepting that concept.
Mr. Shore : That is right. The European Court has been an emblem of centralism, as my hon. Friend has suggested. That is part of the reason why we coined the phrase "the creeping competence" of the Community. That comment was based on the extension of the powers of intervention of the Community as a result of rulings in the European Court.
Those who favour political union want to give the European Parliament legislative powers and they want to extend the competence of the treaties into foreign affairs and security, and into a wider and ever-growing area of social policy. However, the heart of the matter is the pressure to extend majority voting in the Council of Ministers. That view has been expressed in the Commission's report, in the European Parliament submission and in the wretched assize. Why are they so keen on that? The reason is that it would disarm the national democracies.
We can influence our Ministers, but if they do not exercise the right of veto through the unanimity rule, they can be constantly outvoted in the Council of Ministers. As an increasing number of areas of policy are brought within majority voting, those who favour such change say, "The democratic deficit is getting bigger and bigger--we must have more and more powers so that we can rectify the loss of democracy which we, in our folly, allowed to take place by transferring the powers to the Europeans in the first place." The right way to deal with the democratic deficit is not to give more decisions to majority voting, but to take some of them back. I hope that that proposal will be given due consideration.
What should we do on 14 December? I wholly accept what the Foreign Secretary said about playing our full part, about seeking to persuade, and about having certain proposals to put forward. They sounded reasonably innocuous, and that is right. I am sure that we should seek to persuade, not just hector and lecture. That would be very much better--in the end it would pay off. We have to face clearly what, after all our best endeavours in respect of EMU and political union, we shall do if we find ourselves either in a minority or alone. We have to be prepared for that. I do not necessarily forecast it--I hope that it will not occur--but if it does, we must stand up.
Some people say that if we opt out from the proposals, either alone or with others, we shall be condemned to a second tier or to a two-speed Europe, or that we shall abandon the high ground. They are intoxicated by their own inaccurate metaphors. The real analogy is far closer.
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Suppose we did not have a common agricultural policy and that we are to have an intergovernmental conference to establish a CAP this December. The EMU proposals alone are 10 times more damaging to the interests of the British people than the CAP. Would we stand alone and say to the rest of Europe, "Go ahead with your CAP ; we do not agree ; we are in with the rest of the matters which join us together in the Rome treaty and accession to it, but not with the CAP." We would be very pleased to have stood out and stood our ground. I very much hope that that will be the position not only of the Government but of my right hon. and hon. Friends.6.51 pm
Mr. Michael Spicer (Worcestershire, South) : In my first speech from the Back Benches for 10 years, I take this opportunity to say what a great privilege it was to serve for so long in the Government of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). I am particularly pleased to have been able to play a small part in taking through Parliament the Electricity Bill, which resulted yesterday in an estimated 6 million people applying for shares. That is a huge success by any standards and a shining example for other European countries. [Interruption.] Even my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) was queuing for shares.
It is now pretty well common ground in Britain that we should press forward fast with the creation of a single European common market. Well over half our trade is with the European Community, and it is in the direct interest of the jobs and prosperity of our citizens that Britain should thrive within that Community. Indeed, it has been Britain's position in Europe for many years that we wish to see a free market trading openly with the rest of the world. This country also leads the way in welcoming the potential expansion of the EC to include the nations of what used to be called the eastern bloc. The argument about Europe, at least in this country, is not about the pace at which we remove barriers to trade--the quicker the better for most of us--but about the character and development of the financial, monetary and political mechanisms which are thought to be necessary for the European market. As the discussion moves from the trade market to the mechanisms of finance, so the questions have less to do with co-operation and more to do with supranational and potentially undemocratic controls.
In my view, it is distracting, if not absurd, to contemplate a single currency for Europe run by an unelected central bank before we have begun properly to sort out the workings of the single market. With many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I shall certainly play my part in ensuring that that remains the view of the British Government, especially in the days ahead in Rome. I was relieved by what I read into what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said on that matter.
I now refer to a European matter which is even more immediate and pressing than EMU--the exchange rate mechanism. Our entry into the ERM was welcomed by both sides of the House and by most of the press, but it is clear now that the bands within which the pound is allowed to float are sustained only by damagingly high rates of interest in Britain. That means, for instance, that German industry in recent months has enjoyed a 50 per cent. advantage over its British competitors in terms of the cost of its borrowings and investments.
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Even with those differences in interest rates, highly disadvantageous as they are to our industry and commerce, the pound is falling towards the bottom of the band. There is, therefore, a case for arguing either that United Kingdom interest rates are too low to sustain the band or that the ERM bands are themselves too high. Far from believing that interest rates are too low, I have been concerned for many months about the level of interest rates and, from time to time, have expressed anxieties in writing to colleagues. In February--nine months ago- -I wrote :"There must be a danger now of a demand squeeze turning into a real threat to supply side confidence. There seems now to be a lag of about two years between a major change of interest rate levels and investment rates.
Seven months later--in September--I wrote again :
"I have been asking myself again why it is that the UK continues to suffer worse swings of stop-go' economic cycles than any of our competitors, with more serious effects in particular on business confidence.
The answer I believe continues to be that our economic and monetary authorities have less of an appreciation than others of the lags in the economy in particular between changes in interest policy and business investment.
They tend, as they have done for the past fifty years, to respond to the events of the day without projecting forward the effects of their policies for the necessary 18-24 months. These policies are therefore alternatively more severe and more lax than is required. Thus, for instance, high interest rates, introduced when the economy was already entering a downswing (and when inflationary forces were mostly caused by a slowdown of productivity increases) will begin seriously to bite as the economy enters a recession next year.
The two arguments against reducing interest rates are now 1) inflation and 2) the pound. Inflation will be brought under control by the emerging recession. A pound related to genuine market conditions is surely what is required for our balance of payments. For this reason I have been convinced for some months that interest rates are too high and that they should start to be reduced at once."
All of that was written before we entered the ERM. There are those who argue that if we now renegotiate the ERM bands, as I believe that we should, and thus devalue the pound, we shall stir up the embers of inflation, but I do not believe that. It would be true only if there existed the purchasing power here greatly to expand more expensive imports, which will clearly not be the case in the economically difficult months ahead. Despite the recent peculiar figures for consumer credit, the retail market is plainly in the doldrums and likely to remain there for the time being.
Others argue that the German mark will itself collapse as Germany sorts out its eastern half. It would, of course, make matters worse from our point of view if Germany responded by raising her interest rates. It would be ironic indeed if British industry had to pay the cost of German unification through high interest rates. The French are already beginning to grumble at that prospect as it dawns on them that Germany may choose high interest rates in preference to increasing taxes on her own people. For the United Kingdom, the hard probability is that if we are to reduce interest rates from their present dangerously high levels, and under the existing European financial mechanism the pressure may actually be upwards, we shall have to renegotiate the ERM band to a lower median level of the pound against the deutschmark.
Now is precisely the time to do it, while a new Prime Minister and a new Chancellor of the Exchequer are
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enjoying a honeymoon period at home and abroad. Should they wish to do so, they would be able in their negotiations to offer to reduce the range of the banding to the narrow 2.25 per cent. The alternative to such negotiations is high and probably rising interest rates at home. Those would, next year, turn a recession into a severe slump. The consequence of that would be the almost certain electoral defeat of my party at the next general election.As a former deputy chairman of my party, I have never waivered in my belief that the economic cycle, and not such issues as the community charge, is the real and probably exclusive determinant of election results. What matters in politics is economics. Conservative Administrations have made historic improvements to the supply side of the economy. We must not now put all of that at risk by compelling British industry and commerce to compete unfairly through a combination of high interest rates and artificially high exchange rates, brought together within the present banding levels of the pound in the European exchange rate mechanism.
Several Hon. Members rose --
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : Order. I remind the House that the 10-minute limit on speeches is now in operation.
7 pm
Sir Russell Johnston (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber) : Although I shall be putting a view that is not generally popular in the House, as I have only 10 minutes in which to speak, I shall not give way. I normally give way, because I believe in doing so. I appreciate the necessity for a time limit on speeches, although it means that we become like the continental hemicycles that we criticise for lending themselves to setpiece speeches.
It is about time, too, that the Front-Bench speakers in this place took their share of the limitation on time. I am sure that the House would not have suffered greatly if the one minute less than three quarters of an hour which the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) took had been cut by half.
I, too, was at the assize in Rome. I found it a remarkable and inspiring occasion. I was enormously impressed by the general enthusiasm expressed by the representatives--they were very much representatives--of the political movements from all our partner countries in the Community.
The right hon. Member for Gorton complained because, he said, the Government did not know where they were going. I assure the House that Liberal Democrats know where we are going. We also know where we stand, and, what is more, we are not split. Indeed, the Liberal leaders in Berlin, when meeting on 23 November, urged, among other things,
"the Intergovernmental Conferences convened in December 1990 to take substantial steps towards transforming the Community into a genuine European Union based on a constitution of a federal type." That was part of the declaration of the assize, as hon. Members who were there will appreciate.
I fail to understand what all the objections and fears about federalism mean. After all, federalism represents a democratic limitation on central power, not the other way
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round. I am continually amazed by the apparent new conversion of Conservative Members, in particular, to the idea of decentralisation.The Labour view, expressed over three quarters of an hour, boiled down in many respects to continually asking the Government when they would use their veto. There was a negativism about the speech of the right hon. Member for Gorton.
The Government view is that by day we will order a suit from a Bruges tailor, but by night we will slip into dungarees, make a few quick changes and hope that nobody notices. I am left wondering precisely where the Government stand. I notice, for example, that a friend of the Government, Mr. Jacques Chirac, reported in the Financial Times this morning, in launching a new party policy document, said :
"We refuse the conception of the French Socialists, as well as of the Germans and of the Italians"--
doubtless he could have mentioned a number of others
"for a federation of the Twelve."
He went on to talk about
"an intergovernmental union of European nations."
Is that what the Government want?
I do not have time to express in detail the Liberal Democratic view, but following the meeting on 23 November to which I referred, those attending said :
"the Intergovernmental Conferences should make a qualatitive leap forward to democracy by granting full co-decision powers to the directly elected European Parliament in all areas of Community legislation, with Council, when acting in its legislative capacity, deciding in public and by qualified majority."
I do not have time to develop that point.
The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) considers those to be shameful declarations. There is nothing shameful about them. I accept that the concept is different, but it is a searching after democracy. We in this House are not all that accountable. We in this country do not apply subsidiarity particularly well. Was the poll tax in Scotland, on the basis of 28 per cent. of the vote and only 10 out of 72 Members of Parliament, an example of the operation of subsidiarity, a concept for which Conservative Members seem suddenly to have developed an enormous affection? I do not think so.
On enlargement, I have time only to agree with the view on Austria, although, in the view of the eastern countries and, I believe, the Scandinavians, we should not hold back the greater coherence of the European Community. Indeed, they would approve of it. We Liberal Democrats also accept references to foreign affairs, defence and security and we believe that in the end those will be European Community responsibilities. A Labour party document commented : "A military role for the EC would make the position of Ireland as a neutral country very difficult--and make it impossible for Austria, Switzerland and Sweden, as neutral countries, to join."
Why are they neutral, and between whom are they neutral? The neutrality agreement is dead, because the cold war is dead. In Ireland, Fine Gael is already asking for a re-examination of those questions.
I do not have time to deal with the question of European monetary union. The issue is how to share sovereignty properly in a different world, and it certainly is a different world in which we are now living. We often talk about the sovereignty of this House. Hon. Members who want to maintain the status quo frequently talk about it.
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In reality, a strong party system based on a truly unrepresentative and divisive electoral system has created sovereign Governments who, when in office, do their will without much regard for Parliament. We want the citizen to have greater sovereignty ; or, as the Leader of the Liberal Democrats said on Tuesday :"The European debate must stop being one about the power of nations, and start to be one about the entitlements of the citizen." Liberal Democrats-- Liberals generally--are about individuals and individual freedom. We naturally think that way.
The issue is not only London and Brussels. It is London and Edinburgh, London and Cardiff and York and Bristol. We were happy to co-operate with the Labour party in the Scottish convention, and that represented a relevant issue. It was an important illustration of the need to re-examine the nature of how we are governed, not only without but within the United Kingdom.
That does not only mean accepting that we can no longer do certain things alone at the European level. It means looking at subsidiarity internally, breaking down the centralisation of Whitehall and giving power back to the peoples in the old nations and regions of the United Kingdom. It also involves seeing whether in some areas the link need not be London to Brussels but Edinburgh, Cardiff and so on to Brussels.
We are in a period of great change. I do not agree with the Foreign Secretary when he says that there is no ineluctability--there is an ineluctable movement and we must ask ourselves how we should handle it because it will change the nature of the nation state. In that moment, Liberal Democrats will argue throughout for giving the individual citizen greater freedom and influence. That can be done within the frame of the ideas set out in the assize and argued in our policy statements on the European Community.
7.10 pm
Mr. Ray Whitney (Wycombe) : Due to the time constraints under which we are labouring, I hope that the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) will forgive me for not following his points, except to say that his contribution highlighted the diversity of opinion that understandably exists in the House. As is well recognised, that diversity spreads across and within our parties. Another feature of European affairs debates, as all of us who are regular attenders understand, is that the individual contributors are not at the centre of gravity of their party, but tend for the most part to reflect the extreme views of either position. There is a great mass of opinion in our party that should be more widely represented, but sadly is not.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary referred to continuity on the part of the Conservative party. It is a perfectly understandable and fair debating point for Opposition politicians to suggest that there is a lack of continuity. However, in that regard, the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) is underestimated. In a debate on the subject on 19 December 1988, I suggested that the Government would do well to take down from the archives a memorandum that my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley put to her fellow Heads of Government in the European Community in 1984.
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We learn from the press that there is discussion about whether there should be another Government paper about our attitude to European Community affairs. Whether or not there is to be another one, I recommend Ministers to re-read the 1984 statement of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley. In it, she said :"responding to the needs and aspirations of its 270 million inhabitants"--
of the Community before its enlargement--
"means giving greater depth to the Community in both its internal and external activities."
It continued by saying that we had
"only just begun to take advantage of its"--
the Community's--
"great potential."
The memorandum stated that there was a need to
"create the sense of common purpose and momentum needed to defend our collective interests in an increasingly troubled world ; fulfill our international responsibility to the causes of freedom, democracy, prosperity and peace."
It went on to talk about the need to develop a genuine common market and the intra-Community trade that we have seen in the evolution of the Single European Act and the Community market to which we are now moving, and to which the Government have made such a contribution.
The memorandum said that the common agricultural policy--a familiar target- -needed
"a continuing effort to correct the distortions."
As we well recognise, that effort continues to be needed. In the industrial sector, my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley called for
"action on a Community basis rather than nationally"
and
"Better co-operation on research and development."
She continued :
"Many environmental problems require action going beyond the capabilities of individual Member States."
My right hon. Friend showed the great foresight and vision for which she is noted. Some six years ago, she spotted environmental problems and the contribution that the Community could make to help solve them.
My right hon. Friend said that our objective must be
"to aim beyond the common Commercial Policy through Political Co-operation towards a common approach to external affairs The growth of Political Co- operation enables the members of the Community increasingly to adopt common positions on world problems we must be ready in Europe to make progress towards the liberalisation of our trading practices, and to play a full part in strengthening the GATT trading system."
How sad it is to reflect on that objective in the light of the events of the past few days in Brussels. Let us hope that progress can be made there.
The penultimate paragraph of my right hon. Friend's memorandum stated :
"Periodic expressions of pessimism about the future of the Community have never turned out to be justified. Europe needs to advance its internal development. The progress that has been made towards an ever-closer union of the peoples of Europe' of which the Treaty of Rome speaks in its first paragraph is unlikely to be reversed."
That is the objective and aim on which we are set.
I do not believe that we shall ever be talking about a United States of Europe based on the model of that in north America. I simply do not know-- no one knows--what we shall have achieved in 10 or 50 years. I know that it will be a difficult and exciting time, different from anything that exists, or has existed, in history. I also know that if this part of the globe, western Europe, is to achieve
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