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Mr. Vaz: I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. I have told him before, and will tell him again, that the charter is to act as a presentation point of the rights and responsibilities that citizens of Europe have received under treaties. It will not be legally enforceable or binding. Lord Goldsmith will be an excellent person to serve on the drafting committee.
Mr. Cash: I hear what the Minister says, but there is much determination among other member states to take us in another direction.
On the question of the Prime Minister and my call for a constitutional White Paper, it is inconceivable that the British people should not be informed of the rights that they enjoy at present under our constitution and to have those explained in terms of the developments in the EU--not just the single currency, but matters such as justice and home affairs and the whole business of the new
judicial area. The Prime Minister cannot be allowed to get away with it. An early-day motion in my name has well over 100 signatures. I strongly urge other hon. Members to sign it. It is inconceivable that the British people should not be given a proper White Paper. In his evidence the other day, the Minister of State said that there would be a White Paper, but that it would not deal with the questions that I have raised with the Prime Minister. I should like the Minister to explain why not.
Mr. Bercow:
If the Prime Minister is so strenuously opposed, as he claims, to the vision of single European government, why on earth did he so enthusiastically back for the presidency of the European Commission a fanatical federaste who supports that vision?
Mr. Cash:
For the simple reason that it encourages, all the way down the line, further and further integration. The more those people have their place men, the more certain it is that they will take us deeper and deeper into European government. That is the clear intention.
I regret to say that I do not have much confidence in the idea of flexibility. Some years ago, I secured an Adjournment debate about the European Commission's view on flexibility, but I have considerable reservations about applying the restrictions to new areas of legislation and, indeed, to unspecified core areas.
Mr. Nigel Beard (Bexleyheath and Crayford):
I should like to concentrate on the European security and defence identity aspect of the Helsinki conference.
As has been mentioned, the hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) is waging a campaign on that front, starting with his infamous appearance in the United States Congress and continuing in The House Magazine. The essential theme is, "But what will the Americans think about it?" It goes along the lines that, if Europe shows that it can operate alone, the American attachment to NATO will be weakened. It is almost like saying that we should stand around in Europe looking helpless, and charitable America will come along and underwrite European defence policy. The message from my own side and many other sides is that such a policy is both a forlorn hope, in that the Americans would never tolerate it, and undesirable from the point of view of our foreign policy interest.
American foreign policy interests are not congruent with those of Europe. There is a substantial area of common ground, but it is not an exact parallel. Therefore, although NATO should and will be preserved, and is the keystone of our defence policy for common areas of
interest, we need a dimension that enables us independently to tackle other interests that are not in that sphere.
Even within NATO, Europe needs to ensure a contribution that is much more in line with its growing economic strength. At present, European gross domestic product totals $8,346 billion, which is almost the same as the United States GDP of $8,231 billion. There are no economic grounds why we should take an inferior place in such defence matters. At present, despite that position, the defence capability of the European nations of NATO is nowhere near a match for that of the United States.
While such an imbalance exists and Europe remains dependent on United States defence capability, our ability to conduct foreign policy will suffer--it will be circumscribed--and there will be political pressure from the United States, which will complain that Europe does not shoulder enough of its own defence burden. That alone will weaken the alliance; some of the murmurings in the United States Congress have already made that plain.
That will weaken the NATO alliance far more than any indications of a separate capability for Europe to operate on its own. After all, why should young men and women from Kansas and California be involved in Bosnia and Kosovo, on the doorstep of the European Union, if young men and women from London, Lille and Ludwigshafen are not? Today, the answer to that question is ignominious for Europe.
American troops have to be involved because, without them, European forces lack the necessary range of capability and so cannot mount a substantial operation on their own. It is not because of a manifest lack of resources. Last year, European defence budgets totalled $200 billion and the American defence budget $250 billion, according to the House of Commons Library. Europe spent 80 per cent. of the United States defence budget on defence, but its capacity is nowhere near that of the United States.
European countries were recently unable to mount an operation of 50,000 to 60,000 personnel in the Balkans without American help. What an indictment--and what complacency from the Conservatives, who are objecting to the first step now being contemplated in the European Union to remedy such a glaring inadequacy.
Dr. Julian Lewis:
Surely the hon. Gentleman understands that what worries us is not an improvement in Europe's defence capability, but the fact that it is proposed to be outside the structure of NATO. If it were being done inside the structure of NATO, it would add to our combined strength with the Americans, but the proposals will undermine the whole structure.
Mr. Beard:
The capability is required for times when Europe's foreign policy diverges from America's or is outside its realm of interest. If the capability were within NATO, it would be under the American command and control system and the other NATO controls. That is why it needs to be outside. The European Union provides an eminently suitable vehicle for such a capability.
The proposal is for a self-contained, multi-national European force of 50,000 or 60,000, drawn from within NATO earmarked forces. That would be a valid way of starting to address the problems, while respecting the argument that it should not be a lever that separates us from NATO or weakens NATO in any way. Had such a
force existed, it could have made a vast difference to Balkan diplomacy when Milosevic began his expansionist probes in the early 1990s. We are now addressing the defence issues that are most likely to confront European nations, as the strategic defence review pointed out.
We also need to review all areas of European defence capabilities, with a view to plugging the gaps and realising the full potential of the present force. Heavy lift transport aircraft are but one example. We do not need to waste time and political energy on grandiose concepts such as a European army. We are embarking on a pragmatic, step-by-step approach to ensure complementarity and value for money in Europe's defence forces. If each step is justified, NATO will gain and Europe will be able to exercise an independent foreign policy.
That is the more mechanistic aspect of a European defence and security policy. The other aspect is mainly diplomatic and economic and relates to Russia--a country that has seen an immense 30 per cent. drop in its standard of living in recent years. To put that in perspective, the recessions that cause us great anxiety over here account for barely a 3 per cent. drop in GDP. The dissolution of social, civic and economic institutions has followed. Russia is an area on which European and American foreign policy might diverge.
I have read the headlines on all the current European initiatives to aid Russia. They are all worthy. Hardly a sphere of human endeavour is left untouched. However, it is not clear what is happening or what effect the initiatives have had. We need a focus, to have a discernible impact on what is happening in Russia. It is time to explore with the Russian Government the scope for a major European Union initiative to transfer technological and managerial skills, improve public administration, particularly tax collection, and establish a programme for regenerating derelict infrastructure. Letting the situation deteriorate further by turning the other way is inhuman and dangerous.
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