Examination of witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
TUESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 1999
THE RT
HON ROBIN
COOK, MR
EMYR JONES
PARRY, CMG and MR
NIGEL SHEINWALD
40. That is to many farming people slightly
discouraging, but you will understand that, I am sure.
(Mr Cook) I fully recognise that the farmers in the
west country and elsewhere do face serious problems with structural
adjustment at the present time, but in fairness to the farmers
of Poland I do not think the problems can be related to that.
Sir Peter Emery: I will forward that to the
Minister of Agriculture.
Chairman
41. May I wind up this section on enlargement
in this way: is there any doubt that the Helsinki Council will
endorse the recommendations of the Commission in relation to the
six new countries?
(Mr Cook) There must always be a question mark until
the decision is taken formally but I am not aware at the present
time of any Member State which is against the proposals by the
Commission. Britain has taken a position first of all that we
support in principle the recommendations of the Commission in
relation to enlargement because that is the product of their objective
and independent judgment and we are content with their recommendations.
Secondly, we have always made clear we are a leading advocate
of enlargement. The Prime Minister when he was in Romania and
Bulgaria gave them a very firm commitment we would support them
proceeding to negotiations at Helsinki and we intend to do that
and we are hopeful that will be agreed.
42. Can there equally be any doubt that there
will not be entry by countries one by one, simply and if only
because of the ratification processes, and one would therefore
expect a cluster of countries and it would be politically very
difficult not to have Poland in the first group of countries?
(Mr Cook) Those are two separate questions. First
of all, any country has to prove it is ready for membership, that
it has made the necessary reforms to its economy, that it matches
the standards of democracy and human rights, and that it has assimilated
European law into its domestic law. No country can short-circuit
that process on whatever political basis. In relation to your
other point, in practical terms of course ratification will be
an easier process if we are doing it in groups of countries rather
than 12 separate times—indeed, I would anticipate some problems
with the business manager if I asked for 12 separate Bills on
this question. That said, each country will be assessed on its
own individual merits and if we do end up in a position in which
there are a few countries ready, I do not know it will be necessarily
right to hold them back for ease of ratification.
43. What is your working assumption about the
date when the first cluster of countries would be able to join?
(Mr Cook) I have no working assumption, because it
is not really down to the work I do, it is down to the work they
do. What I do think is important is that we fulfil the European
Union's own target of being ready to absorb them by 2002.
Chairman: I would now like to turn to the Intergovernmental
Conference.
Mr Rowlands
44. In the run-up to IGCs, Foreign Secretary,
there are reports, some of them more important than others. I
assume the Wizsaecker-Dehaene-Simon report is of at least some
significance and therefore I wonder if I could probe you on your
position on some of the suggestions they have put for the IGC?
(Mr Cook) All the contributions are of significance
but they are not necessarily determinant.
45. I know, that is why I am seeking where you
stand on this issue. One of the most interesting and rather far-reaching
proposals is to split the treaties and have a large part of one
of the existing treaties no longer subject to IGC changes but
subject to qualified majority, leaving just the basic core text
of the treaties as subject to future IGCs. Where do you stand
on that, Foreign Secretary?
(Mr Cook) Can I take one step back before I respond
to the particular point? First of all, we see the IGC as about
preparing the European Union for enlargement and we therefore
want it to be focused on those questions. We also want it to be
completed in a timescale which is relevant to enlargement. IGCs
have the capacity to go on for several years and the wider we
let the horizon go, the longer it will take us to cover the ground,
therefore we will be arguing at Helsinki for a very focused IGC
tackling the essential question of enlargement.
46. The left-overs?
(Mr Cook) Yes. That is not a term I find particularly
attractive but, yes, certainly the Amsterdam left-overs would
be a prime candidate for them. Therefore we would in any event
be inclined to resist that particular proposal and some of the
others as a matter for this IGC because they are quite capable
of adding a year or two on the timescale. As it stands at the
present time, we are not persuaded of the case for what is proposed
and we are rather hopeful it may not be on the agenda at the IGC.
47. I welcome that. What will be on the IGC
is the question of expanding qualified majority voting. We have
seen Mr Prodi's statement that everything, the norm, in European
decision-making should be QMV, will we be going along with that
idea?
(Mr Cook) We made it perfectly plain that we think
issues of key national interest which touch on the identity of
a nation should always be resolved by unanimity, and in practice
you would find it caused difficulties and friction if you tried
to do it any other way. That is why we have said we intend to
see unanimity retained for issues such as border controls, defence,
treaty amendments, the decision on own resources, taxation, social
security. Once you have looked at those issues, where not only
Britain but quite a broad range of Member States see these continuing
to be solved by unanimity, you are left with the conclusion that
actually already most of the remainder is by and large settled
by QMV; QMV is the norm for that. We are willing to look at the
remaining areas on a case by case basis—
48. Could you identify those for us?
(Mr Cook) I am not sure I could give an exhaustive
list but perhaps I can give some examples of where we might entertain
a case where it might be in our interest to agree to QMV. For
instance, the articles relating to transport which are subject
to unanimity although in many ways they are as much part of the
single market structure as other parts of the single market legislation.
At the present time, for instance, railway liberalisation through
Europe is held up by France which does not wish to allow liberalisation
of its railway system. We see no reason why those kind of single
market issues should not also be dealt with by means of qualified
majority voting. The European Court of Justice is essential to
policing the single market. Without it, the rules would not be
commonly applied, yet any reform of its procedures has to be resolved
by unanimity which makes it very difficult to get agreement. So
we would like to see reform of procedures of the Court of Justice
and perhaps one or two other institutions subject to QMV rather
than unanimity. These are changes where we can see a case for
it and we can see a British advantage in agreeing to it.
49. Would we be more relaxed over QMV if we
had a re-weighting of the votes? Do you see there is a trade-off
one way or the other?
(Mr Cook) I would not say we would be relaxed unless
we saw there was a case for change, and the onus of proof has
to be on the case for change, but the re-weighting of votes will
be a prime British interest in the IGC. The present system of
weighting provides that smaller countries get a disproportionately
larger vote in the Council and the larger countries get a disproportionately
smaller vote. Nobody actually is arguing that is a construct.
The practical problem is with every new enlargement with smaller
countries the smaller becomes the weight of the larger countries.
We now face the arithmetic nonsense that if enlargement was to
proceed on the basis of the present weighting, Germany, France
and Britain added together would not even be a blocking minority
by qualified majority voting. So all of us, and Italy, feel very
strongly there must be some shift in the weighting which restores
something more of a balance to the larger population countries.
50. How shall we build up a consensus around
that, given in fact there is not much of an interest in very large
numbers of the members of the Union actually wanting that change?
(Mr Cook) It is going to be tough and that is why
we did not solve it at Amsterdam.
51. Has anything changed since Amsterdam which
leads you to be more optimistic on this matter?
(Mr Cook) We concluded the discussion at Amsterdam
at 4 o'clock in the morning with the Agreement to a Protocol,
which Britain had proposed, which was that before enlargement
takes place there must be a change to the Commission and to the
weighting, so if countries wish enlargement to take place, they
have to bite on this bullet. As to what is in it for the smaller
countries, to the smaller countries retaining their seat on the
Commission is actually much more politically important than the
size of their vote in the Council. What we are offering is an
outcome in which every country keeps one seat on the Commission,
we as a larger country will give up our second seat on the Commission
but only in return for a larger vote within the Council of Ministers.
That is not a bad package. It gives us what we are looking for,
which is a larger vote in the Council, and it gives the smaller
countries what they find most important to them, which is retaining
a single seat on the Commission.
52. Do some of the Fins go along with that?
(Mr Cook) This would not itself be negotiated at Helsinki,
this would be on the agenda for the IGC and it would be for the
IGC to resolve this.
53. I remember a predecessor of yours saying
that there was a high tide of integration and Maastricht was the
beginning of the ebb tide. Is the tide still ebbing on integration
or is it coming back in?
(Mr Cook) I cannot say that I identify anything in
the agenda for Helsinki which I would see as further integration.
The three main issues we are handling will be enlargement; making
the institutions effective and efficient, and we support many
of the changes which are necessary there, and the European security
initiative, which I anticipate we will be turning to next, is
a British initiative and one which we are putting forward because
we believe Europe needs a stronger security system.
54. You said you wanted to get the next IGC
very focused on the Amsterdam left-overs; the three institutional
issues which are left over from Amsterdam. Will that be decided
in Helsinki? Will that be determined in Helsinki?
(Mr Cook) The agenda will be resolved at Helsinki.
55. And that will determine whether it is a
left-over issue or a broader IGC?
(Mr Cook) More or less, yes.
56. How confident are you that you will be able
to confine this?
(Mr Cook) It is very difficult to predict with accuracy.
We will be arguing for a focused IGC on the three main questions
of the Commission, the re-weighting of votes and the question
of the system of voting. There may be some other issues which
it may be appropriate for the IGC to look at along the way, for
instance it is possible that the development of European security
will produce a need for some amendments to the treaty. It is possible
there are one or two other things it may be sensible to do. For
instance, there is a broad consensus in Europe that we need to
have the ability to hold an individual commissioner to account
if he or she is under-performing, rather than the thermo-nuclear
option of sacking everybody which is the present treaty arrangement.
So there are some other issues we would not resist, so long as
they do not take us out to wider shores of speculation and considerable
work. There is a lot of other countries which will be supporting
us in that. Do remember the two countries which inherit the presidency
next year are Portugal and France and they also see it in their
interests to keep it fairly tightly focused because they will
be the countries responsible for the treaty at the end of next
year.
Sir John Stanley
57. Foreign Secretary, I would like to continue
on from where Mr Rowlands has just left off. I think you would
acknowledge that though the British position is, as you say in
your paper, "for a short and focused IGC", there are
others who do clearly have a very different agenda, not least
apparently Mr Prodi and the Commission. Certainly from what has
appeared from statements made by Mr Prodi he would appear to have
a really quite radical federal-type agenda in which we would be
moving towards widespread tax harmonisation, a substantive defence
competence and so on. What I would like to ask you is, do you
envisage at Helsinki that this much wider agenda is going to be
pressed hard by the Commission? If so, do you detect that there
may be some degree of support from it from some of the significant
other EU Member States?
(Mr Cook) First of all, the Intergovernmental Conference,
as the name suggests, is a conference between governments, and
the Commission is not a party to it. Mr Prodi is of course at
perfect liberty to set out a visionary agenda and has sometimes
done so. There may be countries which may see attractions in individual
parts of that package. I am not at the present time persuaded
that represents the centre of gravity of thinking within the European
Member States and we would hope that we can come away from Helsinki
with that focused IGC that we require.
58. I certainly agree with you that the Commission
does not have a central role in the IGC, but recalling what happened
prior to Amsterdam, there was significant documentation by the
then Commission putting forward the Commission's own agenda for
the outcome of the IGC. Would you not agree that is likely to
happen this time round again?
(Mr Cook) The Commission will certainly play a role
and it will put in proposals and submit papers but it does not
have a vote at the IGC, which is a matter for the Member States.
Although they may lobby for certain things, that does not necessarily
mean that they are going to secure those objectives. I also do
recall that in the opening of the report of the three people chosen
by Mr Prodi to produce the report—I am trying to avoid the
phrase "three wise men" which I do not think is terribly
appropriate—they do themselves say that it is for the Member
States to decide the content of the IGC and that is what will
happen in Helsinki.
59. Can I come to the issue which was again
touched on in Mr Rowlands' earlier questioning, the British Government's
position on the retention of unanimity and therefore the retention
of the right of veto of Member States? In answer to Mr Rowlands
you gave a list of areas which you said were essential for the
British Government to retain unanimity and therefore our right
to veto. The Prime Minister gave another list on 19 October. I
should make it quite clear that I am not seeking to suggest there
is any difference of view between you and the Prime Minister;
both lists were illustrative.
(Mr Cook) I would stress that where the Prime Minister
and I have differed, the Prime Minister's list takes precedence.
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