| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy): That is right.
Mr. Wigley: I am glad that my hon. Friend agrees.
We still live in Wales with the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster 13 years ago, with continuing limitations on the movement of sheep on our farms. If that is difficult for us, how much more difficult it must be for the people in the areas immediately proximate to the disaster: not only Ukraine but parts of eastern Europe nearby. Decisions on the closure dates of Soviet-designed reactors and on the development of alternative energy sources must be a central part of the accession negotiations.
Those issues touch on the basic question of the economic viability of constituent countries of the EU. We must put even greater emphasis on policies of full employment in both existing and potential member states. Such a strategy must include positive policies to encourage entrepreneurship and new business start-ups. The move in Wales towards establishing a development bank, which we heard more about in the National Assembly this afternoon, aided by the structural funds, shows the positive way in which the European Union can help.
I am concerned about the rigidly stratified way in which the two groups of applicants are being considered as the first wave and the second wave. There is a danger of excessive stratification. Some countries are moving more quickly than others within each group. Would not it be more sensible, as the Commission recommended on 13 October, to have a fully flexible, multi-speed accession process, based exclusively on merit?
Enlargement has direct consequences for the internal structure of the European institutions, which must adopt more rigorously the principle of subsidiarity so that decisions are taken at appropriate levels. There must be a review of the division of competencies. We must strengthen the role of the Committee of the Regions, as Eurig Wyn urged in the European Parliament recently.
Helsinki must resolve the vexed question of the re-weighting of qualified majority voting in the EU, as the Foreign Secretary said. I listened to him with care, but I am still far from clear about the Government's objectives regarding qualified majority voting. It may be that we do not want to show a full hand now in the negotiations, but I would be grateful to hear the Minister's comments when he winds up.
My final point concerns the move to a common security strategy. There are good reasons for that move--for example, what happened in the Balkans--but I have listened to both sides of the argument. Certainly we would have grave reservations if the European Union were to become a nuclear power in its own right, because we feel that that could be a destabilising factor. Side by side with a common security policy must go greater efforts to develop non-military crisis management, and policies should be underpinned by a proactive role in conflict prevention.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
I have always regarded this debate as the most important of the year, even though it does not deal with the great issues about which our constituents write to us, such as the national health service or law and order. It is not about the decisions, but about where those decisions are made. I cannot think of a more important debate than the question whether we continue to make decisions in this House or watch our ability to make those decisions pass to another place.
As I listened to the speeches tonight, I wondered what some of our European friends would make of this debate if they had heard it. They would have concluded that they were listening to a description of a European Union that does not exist. The impression given of the state ofthe European Union by the Government, and Labour Members who supported the Government's approach, is not held in Europe. It is a view of Europe that does not exist in reality and is now heard of only from Ministers and a small number of Conservative Members. It is as if those people think that we are still dealing with a common market with some extra twirly bits and some knobs on. I travel frequently in Europe, and I used to do so as a Minister, and it is unreal to suggest that that vision of Europe is shared by our European partners.
I give due credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Sir R. Whitney) for arguing the case for the Europe that I have just described. I hope that he will not take it amiss if I describe him as a semi-grandee, but one might have hoped that the mega-grandees would have come to argue the case in favour of the European Union of their vision. If my hon. Friend had not argued the case, it would have gone by default.
I was troubled when my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said that he was not sure whether he had read the treaty of Rome. I have some sympathy with that, because I did not read the treaty of Rome until about 1988. At that time, I had to go to Europe suddenly because a ministerial colleague was taken ill, and I had to make an unexceptional speech in an unacceptable place. The experience was nicely done--the car was waiting downstairs to whisk me off to the plane, for example. When I opened my red box, it contained a copy of the treaty of Rome, so I read it. It does not take that long, because it is an easier read than the Maastricht treaty. However, it is also a horrifying read, because it makes one realise that the prospectus that was put to this country in the early 1970s was wrong.
I was a political activist at the time, and I accepted what I was told by my party. It was claimed that we were entering a common market. Yes, there were one or two strange people at the margins who wanted to go further, but we were told that that would not happen. I accepted that, but I was wrong to do so. The truth about the nature of the European Union is now obscured by the great Labour lie, but it was a great Conservative lie first. Conservatives, therefore, should discuss the subject with a fair amount of humility. It was the failure of the
Conservative Government of the 1970s honestly to tell the people of this country what was at stake that bedevils our relationship with Europe to this day.
I did not see the light for many years after I should have done, because it was there to see for those who were prepared to do so. I can do no better than to cite the example of a letter sent by the then Lord Chancellor on 14 December 1960 to my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath). It said:
A number of sensible, principled Europeans have been quoted today who believe in a destiny for their countries that I passionately reject for my own. Those quotations make the prospectus abundantly clear. I shall not quote again the remarks of Hans Tietmeyer in that regard, but hon. Members must not think that he was a Johnny- come-lately who perverted the great ideal that Europe should be no more than a common market. As far back as 1963, Bundesbank president Karl Blessing said:
People who have been prepared to read the source documents and to listen to what European statesmen have been saying have always known that that was the agenda. It was not the agenda that the Conservative Government of the day put to this country on a false prospectus, and it is not the agenda that the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz), will put to the House when he winds up the debate.
The reality facing the House and the country at large is not some fantasy Europe that we think might rather suit us, but the Europe that is in fact on offer. Although I
commend the courage of my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe, it is not good enough to say that we should not get too exercised by the words that have been used. People used those words to frame their vision of the European destiny that they desperately wanted. That destiny might have been right for us as well if our history had been like theirs, but our history is different. It would have been more honest to tell the Europeans, "We wish you well, but the destiny that you see for yourselves is not a destiny for us."
I can do no better than to quote my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major)--not someone who could ever be derided as a snarling Euro-sceptic. On 1 March 1995, he said:
When I was in Government, I well remember talking to a former Italian Prime Minister. I asked, "Why do you want to give away your power to a new state?" He said, "Are you serious? I would love to go into the Italian Parliament and say that I cannot possibly deal with this. It will have to be dealt with by the European Union." He may have been expressing things in his own way but his point was that from his perspective, the European state that they wanted to create was decent and right. It is right for them but it is not right for us.
What are we going to do about that? I am with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who mentioned the easy jibe about how we just want to withdraw from Europe. In some ways, it is sad. I get criticised by Christopher Booker for not really wanting to come out of Europe but when other people look at what I say, they say that I do.
We cannot go on this way. It is in the interests of this country and of the European Union that we should have a relationship with which we all feel comfortable. Only a fool, a self-deluding person or the Foreign Secretary could honestly look at the state of our relationship with Europe today and say that we can feel comfortable with it. That is a self-evident absurdity. People such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine)--it is
usually hon. Members on this side of the House--say, "It is no good talking about doing anything about this. It is over. You cannot possibly do anything. Our partners will never let us get away it."
When I hear such rhetoric, I think what a dismal view it is to have of our European partners. I do not believe that they want to hold us in thrall in a relationship that we do not enjoy. They are entitled to a Government and a political party that will honestly say that we came in under false pretences, that it is our fault and that we want to achieve a relationship with which we can feel comfortable. If we approached our partners with such humility and honesty, we could achieve such a relationship with Europe.
"My dear Ted . . . You wrote to me on the 30th November about the constitutional implications of our becoming a party to the Treaty of Rome . . . I must emphasise that in my view the surrenders of sovereignty involved are serious ones . . . these objections ought to be brought out into the open".
Indeed they should have been. It continued:
"To confer a sovereign state's treaty-making powers on an international organisation is the first step on the road which leads by way of a confederation to the fully federal state."
That was the warning from the Government's chief Law Officer 10 years before we were finally taken into what was to become the European Union.
"The final goal of the Commission is a European Monetary Union . . . A common currency . . . is feasible only if, apart from a common trade policy, there is also a common finance and budgetary policy, a common social and wage policy--a common policy all round. In brief, this would only happen if there was a federal state."
Those aspirations have not been forgotten today. Early last month, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl spoke at the celebrations to mark the fall of the Berlin wall. According to The Daily Telegraph--and the House will appreciate that the sentiments are his and not mine--he urged
"the current German Government to continue his policy of European integration or there would be 'no peaceful future for Germany and Europe.'
Perhaps it sounds menacing in German, but he was building on remarks he had made previously. As long ago as 1996--in Belgium, of all countries--the former Chancellor said:
Mr. Kohl told the audience at the Reichstag that 'the gift of unification obliges us . . . to drive forward the building of the European house with powerful steps'."
"The policy of European integration is in reality a question of war and peace in the 21st century."
He added that the only alternative to closer integration would be war on the continent.
"The often unspoken fear of many people--we should address it honestly and clearly and examine it--is that Europe might develop into a super-state, an overarching Government with no national veto, no control over our own borders, prescriptive decisions, a single currency imposed and the nation state retreating to a wholly subordinate role. That fear exists out there . . . and we should recognise the fact that it exists . . . I for one would find such a Europe wholly unacceptable for this country. I do not believe that it is remotely likely, but, if that were to be the future, it would not be a future that would be suitable for this country."--[Official Report, 1 March 1995; Vol. 255, c. 1062.]
The treaty of Rome foretold the creation of a super-state. There is no other way in which it can be interpreted. I do not know where my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe has been since 1998, because we are now on the verge of the creation of that state. We are almost there. That state now has its own anthem, flag, Parliament, civil service and passport. It has common citizenship and its own embassies. It has its own policies for defence and taxation--and it has its own currency as well. We do ourselves no credit, and betray our country, if we do not realise that that is what we have created. When my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe says that he knows no one on the continent readily prepared to surrender their powers, in that regard at least, my contacts seem to be more extensive than his.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |