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'1, paragraph 9 (Cm. 3780, page 10)'.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael J. Martin): With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 8, in page 1, line 13, at end insert
'(except Article 2 paragraph 57)'.
Mr. Rowlands: The amendment was designed to offer the Committee the opportunity to discuss the new article F.1, but it has been made semi-redundant by the contributions to the previous debate, so I hope to be brief. The shadow Foreign Secretary took up at least two columns of Hansard on the subject of article F.1 when he opened the debate on amendment No. 65. He made a bit
of a meal of the issue, and over-egged the pudding. I would not say that he was put in his place, but the position was, quite rightly, well qualified by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who spoke from the Back Benches. The shadow Foreign Secretary argued that the new article was vaguely defined and that it would be dealt with not by a judicial body but by politicians. I detected a somewhat derisory view of the idea that politicians should be involved. I think that he said that individual countries would be at the mercy of others. He argued that there was no need for such a provision, because if a country in the European Union fell into dictatorship, started persecuting its citizens, and confiscated private property or suspended the due process of law, there was one simple solution: expulsion. I do not think that my hon. Friend the Minister had the full opportunity, despite his extensive reply to the previous debate, to remind us what procedures and effort would be required to expel a state under the present provisions of the treaty, given that expulsion was the shadow Foreign Secretary's only solution. How difficult would it be to deal with a state that had offended? When I tabled the amendment, I wanted to underline my support for the principle of the provision in the treaty. Despite some differences of nuance, I think that we all agree that it is essential that European Union membership--to become and to remain a member--should require good, fundamental democratic credentials. As many hon. Members said in the previous debate, it is almost impossible to envisage how one could sit on a Council of Ministers if one of the company was a colonel who had seized power in a coup. That idea is not all that fanciful. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe reminded us of the fact that when I entered the House in 1966 Greece was governed by one of the most brutal abusers of human rights that western Europe has known for a very long time. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman also pointed out, the Iberian peninsula had been in a similar position. Therefore one need not go back into the mists of time to recall that, even within the existing membership of the European Union, in my parliamentary and political lifetime, we have had dictatorships and authoritarian Governments that would now be intolerable in the European Union. Therefore it is important to assert that democracy is a fundamental obligation and to say that, if a member state persistently abuses fundamental human rights, it should be subject to discipline. However, I found it difficult to appreciate the argument by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) that a country could go from nothing to expulsion without any gradation of action that could be taken by other member states to tackle the problem of persistent infringement of human rights. We all support and endorse the argument made by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe that, as a precondition for membership, applicants must root their institutions in principles of democracy and human rights. It will be a matter of considerable scrutiny by the Commission and by the present Union that any applicant must fulfil those conditions and achieve those democratic institutions in a way that has a sense of permanence and does not look fragile or capable of being abused.8.30 pm
I believe that we all agree with that, so one hopes that the situation envisaged in the article will not arise. If, as observations made by Front-Bench and Back-Bench Members on both sides of the Committee suggest, the provisions turned up in the treaty in anticipation of the problems that might possibly occur if applicant states enter the European Union but cannot sustain democratic institutions, obviously the key must be to ensure that the application process for membership ensures that the institutions that create and form that state are generally democratic.
I should be grateful if the Minister would reveal more about the origins of the article and tell us how and why it came into existence when it did. Was it anticipating some of the problems that may occur in the case of new applicants?
I wondered where I might get a feel for the issues that the article might wish to address. I believe that it is useful to bring to the Committee's attention the Agenda 2000 document and the Commission's assessment, under the Copenhagen criteria, of the political situation of the applicant countries. The document gives a flavour of some of the issues and arguments that may well arise, even after individual states have successfully joined the European Union, and of how, presumably, F.1 might address them.
I shall quote from two of the country reports of the Agenda 2000 Commission opinions. The first relates to an applicant country that I believe had expectations of being in the first group--Slovakia. The report obviously damaged those expectations. The following passage gives us an idea of the problems that might arise if a member state lapsed into certain behaviour. On the subject of applying the Copenhagen political criteria to Slovakia, the Commission said:
As a result of that Commission opinion, it now appears that Slovakia would not achieve membership without tackling, and satisfying the present European Union that it had tackled, those fundamental problems. In fact, as the Commission report says,
I do not want to take too long because these arguments have been discussed, but I want to prise out of my hon. Friend the Minister some illustrations of the persistent breaches of rights that would trigger the processes described in the new article.
The other Commission opinion that raises a similar set of arguments is that on the political institutional position of Bulgaria. The Commission says that democratic institutions in Bulgaria
Those are the questions that have been left in my mind. I have listened in the Committee to most of our previous debates. I want to know more about the way in which Ministers envisage the operation of the provision.
If the article relates to the types of problems that have been identified in the Commission opinions on applicant states, I say to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe that I believe that there is a case for a political judgment, not a judicial one. These are decisions about politics and democracy. I am not sure that judges are necessarily the best guides in that area. There is a case for saying that, in assessing whether certain behaviour is acceptable, the collective view of democratically elected politicians who represent public opinion is as good as that of a judge.
"The operation of Slovakia's institutions is characterised by the fact that the government does not sufficiently respect the powers devolved by the constitution to other bodies and that it too often disregards the rights of the opposition. The constant tension between the government and the President of the Republic is one example of this. Similarly, the way in which the government recently ignored the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the Central Referendum Commission on the occasion of the vote on 23/24 May 1997 directly threatened the stability of the institutions."
That is a powerful assessment of the fragility of the institutional position in an applicant state--Slovakia.
"Despite recommendations made by the European Union in a number of demarches and declarations, there has been no noticeable improvement."
Would the provisions of article F.1 apply if a similar situation arose in a state such as Slovakia after it had joined the European Union? Are those the areas of constitutional and democratic concern that were considered when the article was drafted? If a member state in a sense persistently abused its own constitution in key respects relating to human rights, would that allow the European Union to act as the article suggests?
"need to be reinforced by fuller respect in practice for the rule of law, at all levels of public administration".
It says:
"the operation of the judicial system"
needs to be improved
"to protect individual liberties in the face of too frequent abuses by the police and the secret services."
That is another opinion in the context of an applicant state and the Commission giving its view. If such behaviour had occurred in a member state in the enlarged Union, would it be the type of behaviour that the article was meant or designed to start to bite on?
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