Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-92)
MARK LEONARD
AND TOM
ARBUTHNOTT
WEDNESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2001
Tony Cunningham
80. You talked about reconnecting the electorate
to the European Union; would you not agree that the disconnection
is not a European problem but is at local level, is at national
level, is at transnational level, it affects all of those areas?
But do you see the opportunity, with perhaps the forthcoming debate
on the single currency and this huge issue of enlargement, actually
being issues that you can use to try to reconnect the electorate
with Europe?
(Mr Leonard) I hope the debate, run properly, might
go some way to destroying some of the myths about the European
Union which frame a lot of the debate that we have here. And,
actually, the fact that media and public attention is going to
be focused on it is quite a rare thing. So, hopefully, that will
have a positive impact. But I think the important thing to realise
is that 99.9 per cent of what the European Union does is incredibly
important, that is never going to be of any interest to ordinary
citizens, and, therefore, we need to make sure that we create
frameworks which allow us to debate the big, strategic issues
and also to make sure that we have appropriate measures of scrutiny.
But one of the problems with the debate is that people sometimes
demand much higher standards of European institutions than they
demand of national institutions. Very few people understand how
the House of Commons works, and yet that is not seen as a problem,
but we get very upset because people do not understand co-decision.
I think that is one of the dangers that the debate brings. But
I agree with you that those are two pretty big issues, which can,
and could, cause the gap to be closed, so long as we debate in
the right terms, because the problem is we very rarely get beyond
arguing whether we want more Europe or less Europe, and the trouble
with the single currency debate is, it is exactly one of those
sorts of debates. And I think that if you look at the public opinion
polls it shows that people have got a clear sense that they want
Europe in some areas but not in other areas, and the interesting
debate might be to have more competition about different visions
on the environment, or different visions on a social Europe or
on a European economy, where you have got real conflicts emerging,
which people can understand and which do relate to their lives,
rather than trying to get them excited about the detail of individual
regulations or Directives, which, frankly, is a bit of a losing
battle.
Mr Hendrick
81. At the moment, obviously, in first pillar
issues, it is a very integrationist agenda, things like the civil
market, environment, etc., where it is clearly in the interests
of the European Union to have legislation which is common across
the European Union. Obviously, second and third pillar issues
look at issues which are more relevant, I think, to the nation
state, and therefore subsidiarity is important, and, in fact,
I see the role for national parliaments as in those two particular
areas. Now how we actually get some degree of co-ordination or
co-operation across the EU in those particular two pillar areas;
obviously, one suggestion you have made is another parliament
made up of national parliamentarians, which logically I have no
problem with, and it would seem quite obvious, in terms of the
development. In terms of selling it to the general public when
there is already a European Parliament, I think there would be
some difficulty. And, obviously, in the run-up to the single currency
debate, I think it would be obviously a very difficult thing to
sell, as well. Do you see any other possible fora involving national
parliaments that could actually discuss subsidiarity issues with
the Council of Ministers, and how would you see perhaps a possible
structure for that?
(Mr Leonard) I feel there are two things which we
need to look at. The first is why we are trying to do this, and
I think the problem is subsidiarity has not worked, because everyone
has had an interest in things moving up to other levels, and that
is why we have had this big debate, and the debate so far has
been about whether it should be a political or a legal decision,
ultimately, whether we should have a strict division of competencies
or not; and I favour a political route. But I think what is important
is, if we go down a political route, we need to have very clear
criteria on which to decide what level things should be decided
on, and that is almost more important than—and, obviously,
national parliaments could have a role either through increasing
the role of COSAC or through doing it in a much more functional
way, so that different committees could meet with committees of
the European Parliament, or there is this Lionel Jospin idea of
a European Congress. But one of the things which I think we need
to pin down is what basis these decisions are going to be made
on; and we have explored the idea of establishing the principle
of earning the right to act, which is similar to the idea of earned
autonomy within the Health Service, that you should set up a set
of clear criteria which apply to all policy areas, maybe have
an independent report on whether things are being delivered in
those areas, maybe by the Court of Auditors, and you should then
have a political process on the back of that report. And I do
not think necessarily we have to sell a new body, because I do
not think it has to be a sort of bureaucratic, formal, new body,
I think what we are talking about is meetings of existing bodies
in different formations. And I think one of the interesting models
is what is happening with the European Parliament's Finance Committee,
where they have invited representatives of national treasury committees
together when they are questioning the European Central Bank,
and that is a very good model for a functional role, where you
can involve national parliaments along with the European Parliament.
Mr Connarty
82. Can I just step back a bit to the broad
sweep of your approach, because I was quite minded to quote your
"Rethinking Europe" paper; you say, on page 19: "We
need to stop thinking of the EU in terms of an eventual national-style
democracy and conceptualise it as an entirely different sort of
political space." That is very broad and it seems very radical.
And then you go on, on the next page, to say, you must do this,
and I quote: "without imposing illegitimate political bodies
which emasculate our national political systems." Now that
is probably one of the most conservative statements I have heard
about Europe, because it is "salute the old Union Jack"
again, when, in fact, Europe is clearly a grand scheme. And then
you keep coming back to the privacy of national parliaments. You
talk about things that have been discredited by other people really,
the concept of using the meetings of European parliamentarians
at COSAC which everyone else thinks is a waste of time, with more
power is somehow a way of renewing Europe. I just wonder if you
are not constraining your thoughts for this new vision by the
worry that our democratic system within the UK would somehow be
diminished by giving more power to the European Parliament. Why
are you so opposed to that, to looking at the European centre
as getting more power? Why are you so thirled to the idea that
we must not somehow rock the foundations of our democratic system?
Surely, change must look at all aspects of change?
(Mr Leonard) I agree with your point that we should
look at everything. What I am simply starting from is an observation
that the European Parliament, for all the grand hopes that were
placed in it at the beginning, has not legitimated the European
Union, has not even legitimated itself, there is a grey gap between
the citizens and the Members of the European Parliament; and every
time it gets more power, as Mark pointed out earlier on, turnout
drops. So I think we need to recognise that most people participate
politically, if they do, either at a national level, through national
elections, and even when they are voting for the European Parliament
they do it for national reasons and for national parties, and
we have to respect that and not see the European Union as something
which is going to destroy that. But we also need to make sure
that we can have these debates which cut across borders, which
are not simply about more or less Europe or about the British
interest, which are these broader questions about values and socioeconomic
priorities; that is why we are trying to think of new channels
for that. And one way is of trying to use the Council as a more
political body, because you have got people, who are both national
leaders and the leaders of political parties, who should really
be playing a much more strategic role and having these big debates
about what kind of Europe we are trying to create. But also we
look at the idea of supplementing that with forms of direct democracy,
which would actually allow people to have those sorts of arguments
at a European level, through citizens' initiatives, either to
place a new issue on the agenda, to act as a safety valve or an
emergency brake if they want to oppose a particular initiative.
Or even, one of the ideas that we suggested is maybe even to link
into the Lisbon agenda of open co-ordination and to suggest a
target for the European Union, such as doubling the amount of
recycling we do by a certain year, which could then give people
a direct sense of... But I think our feeling is that it is at
that sort of level, of big, strategic moves, or of things which
people feel very strongly are going wrong, that people will want
to be involved, and the national system is one way that they are
going to be involved, quite rightly, because the Council is always
going to be the most important and the most authoritative body,
and it is the only body which people recognise in the European
system. Nobody knows who their Member of the European Parliament
is, but they all know who is the head of state, or head of government.
Mr Connarty: I think you supported the idea
of proportional representation, which destroyed people's idea
that there was any point in voting.
Chairman: I find we are going to have problems,
if answers are so long, and if other questions are added on at
the end of comments. I am going to move on now to Mr Robertson.
Angus Robertson
83. I will try to keep it short. You make a
specific proposal about the European Parliament bringing in parliamentarians
from both a Member State and a sub-Member State level; what advantages
do you think that would have over the Prime Minister's proposal?
So that is the first point of my question. And just a brief hang-on
from your previous point about politicising, in the sense of taking
the argument away from national confrontation to more left/right
political debate across Europe, does that not have the associated
potential problem at a European level that you may see the practice
of proporz divvying up jobs politically, within the European institutions,
replacing the divvying up the jobs by nationality?
(Mr Arbuthnott) I think, to the second point, again,
we are seeing a classic process of divvying up jobs by nationality
at the moment, we are seeing Mr Giscard d'Estaing being pushed
along with Jean-Claude Trichet and the European Central Bank and
Mr Ahtisaari, who might be President of the Convention if the
European Food Authority does not go to Helsinki, and so on, which
is a pretty ugly process. So I do not think there is a great deal
to defend about the current process of divvying up by nationality.
On the other hand, at least if you are having some kind of policy
platform there, in terms of doing it in some kind of political
left/right sense, you have got some kind of value judgement attaching
to that choice, rather than simply whether it happens to be convenient
within the current package deal. Then that, at least, presents
a route within which the process might become more legitimate.
I do not think we got your first question.
84. In "Rethinking Europe", you outlined
a proposal that you would like to see the involvement of Member
States and sub-Member State parliamentarians being involved at
a trans-European level, the second chamber idea. I know you have
touched on it briefly; can you perhaps go into that in a little
bit more detail?
(Mr Leonard) Yes. What we are trying to do is think
of these things in two ways. One specific idea which we looked
at, as well as the subsidiarity idea, was whether national parliamentarians
could play a role in electing the President of the Commission.
And there is an idea, which we are working on with Simon Hix,
at the LSE, looking at whether one could create an electoral college
of national parliamentarians to elect the President of the Commission,
which would have a real merit both of giving national parliamentarians
a very direct stake in the future of the European Union, creating
a national political debate about who the President of the Commission
should be, and also of making sure that there was a section of
the public and a section of the élite in every Member State
who had a stake in the selection of the President of the Commission.
Mr Hendrick
85. Would the MEPs have a stake in that?
(Mr Leonard) Another idea might be to create an electoral
college with MEPs as well. I think the advantage of doing it through
national parliaments, over the advantage of doing it over the
Delors idea of MEPs electing the Commission President, is both
because MEPs do not have the sort of level of political legitimacy
that they need to do that, because the elections are not about
European issues, and the turnout is not high enough, people do
not recognise them enough; and secondly because you would miss
out on this important opportunity to involve national parliaments,
which would change the relationship between the Council and the
President as well.
(Mr Arbuthnott) And it goes beyond that, because,
if you see your electoral college, in a sense, as being within
national parliaments, or as hosts for the debate being the national
parliaments, and you have candidates who are coming to hustings,
essentially, within national parliaments, or presenting their
policy platforms within the parliamentary arena in each Member
State, then you have a conduit to create genuine political competition,
competition between policy platforms, within the kind of national
sphere, which the media understand, the people understand, it
is a way of integrating the debate.
86. I am not bothered about the electoral college
itself, in1974-79 you had a European Parliament made up of appointed
national parliamentarians; in order to give it democratic legitimacy,
you have directly-elected MEPs with constituencies. This seems
to be a throw-back to 1974-79, to some extent. College, okay,
spreading the mandate across different interested groups, fine,
but the exclusion of the only group that is directly elected to
Europe surely does not give it legitimacy?
(Mr Leonard) As I say, another model would be to have
an electoral college which was half made up of national parliamentarians
and half made up of European parliamentarians. I think the key
thing is that you have a space for a national debate about who
should be the President of the Commission, that you have got a
clear competition between different visions of the EU, so that
you move away from this question of whether we want more or less
Europe, that you are actually arguing about what kind of Europe
you want. But also it is very nationally rooted, because, to go
back to Michael's point, I do think we have got this perpetual
dilemma of wanting to have debate, wanting to make sure that you
have visions for the future of the EU, but also making sure that
minorities do not feel completely excluded from the European system.
And it is a problem which you, as a Scot, no doubt will be aware
of, given the fact that, in election after election, Scots voted
for a different party from the one in Government, and it put enormous
pressure on the United Kingdom. And, within an EU context, that
problem will be even worse if a particular country always feels
that it is in a minority and that its views are not taken into
account.
Miss McIntosh
87. I am going to ask you one question; but
can I just congratulate the British Council on the brochure `The
Next Generation Democracy' by our two authors. In your evidence,
in `Network Europe', you do actually say that you are against
the European Parliament giving more legislative power. I would
like to challenge this, and, in particular, would you not agree
that, like any parliament, an individual MEP should have the power
to initiate legislation, not just consider legislation that comes
from other parts? As individual backbenchers, we have the right
to table a Private Member's Bill; it does not go anywhere, because
normally the administration opposes it, but should not an individual
Member of Parliament, or collectively, be enabled to initiate
legislation themselves?
(Mr Arbuthnott) Can they not, at the moment, through
the "own initiative" reports?
88. No; it is not legislation.
(Mr Arbuthnott) They can suggest to the Commission
that it comes up.
(Mr Leonard) I do not think the European Parliament
is a parliament. I think the big problem with this whole debate
is that there are all sorts of category mistakes. What the European
Parliament is, it is an extremely successful scrutiny committee,
in terms of its impact on legislation, it has got more power than
most national parliaments have, and that is very good; but I do
not see its role as an agenda-setting role, because I do not think
it has the legitimacy to do it. And, I think, if we are trying
to create this system of a network of countries, of peoples, of
regions, which are interdependent, which work together towards
specified goals, the channels for setting that agenda should be
through national parliaments and national governments, because
they are the bodies which have the most legitimacy, which are
most recognised. And then we need to create a superstructure,
to make sure that we have got proper levels of accountability
and other ways of participating. But, frankly, I would be deeply
uncomfortable about seeing the European Parliament's role as agenda-setting,
I think what its role is is what academics call "critical
democracy" rather than affirmative democracy, so that is
scrutinising both the institutions, like the Commission, and also
the quality of legislation.
89. Chairman, the point is that if the MEPs,
or the European Parliament, as an institution, find a gap in European
legislation, they are uniquely placed to plug that gap; the House
of Commons, or any national parliament, could not do that.
(Mr Leonard) That is why I think it is important they
should be allowed to suggest to the Commission that they place
proposals in front of the Council and the Council of Ministers.
90. But they are only doing that by having their
power, instead of just an "own initiative" report, actually
to have a draft piece of legislation that they could draft for
consideration by the Council; at the moment, they do not have
the power to do that.
(Mr Leonard) I think 80 per cent of "own initiative"
reports are taken up by the Commission, at least. I think that
system is working quite well. I think that if you go down your
route you just create further confusion, because the problem is,
because we do not have an alternative way of thinking about European
democracy, people are constantly forced down a route of coming
out with slightly mangled, half-baked, federal solutions, because
you have got some people who can see a national agenda who are
trying to impose that, and then other people who are opposed to
doing that but do not have an alternative vision. And I think
your suggestion about the European Parliament falls very much
into that trap, of taking a national solution and putting it up
to a European level, rather than thinking about what we need to
make Europe work and trying to come up with a different set of
procedures and a different way of thinking about that.
Mr Tynan
91. Can I change the subject onto referendum.
You made the point as regards a European-wide referendum, a very,
very interesting concept and quite unique. The situation at the
present time, I accept the fact you are saying regarding different
visions and how we would involve, I think we would involve people,
if we had that type of dialogue and you had some conflict and
some emotion, then I think we would connect with people, and I
think that is a way to go. But if you could expand on how you
see the referendum, what kinds of issues there would be? Also,
if you would expand on how you would see, in a referendum, if
it is done on a European basis, protection for the smaller-populated
countries? You do talk about double majority; how would you reach
a decision on the basis of double majority in those circumstances?
(Mr Arbuthnott) To your first point. I think there
are a lot of issues with a Europe-wide referendum, it is a really
fascinating idea, a really interesting idea, but, clearly, and
as your second point notes, there are issues, if you can suss
out some kind of binding legislation at European level, it is
really exciting, if it works, to create a debate which is genuinely
transnational, that genuinely creates a discussion between policy
platforms, and we will be looking at that over the course of the
next (general ?) project with the British Council. The one idea
we had, and given the Lisbon process, which is about having the
European Council setting objectives which then national governments,
European Commission, European Parliament, the European institutions,
working together, all try to achieve those objectives, one very
good way that the public might be able to set priorities for the
European Union is in establishing those kinds of objectives. So
having a Europe-wide referendum which works across the 15 Member
States, which is seeded perhaps by a certain number of signatures,
or a proportion of people in a certain proportion of Member States,
which then sets a binding political objective that national governments,
European institutions, and so on, had to work towards. So, for
example, I think Mark mentioned the idea of maybe increasing the
amount of recycling by a certain amount, by 20 per cent within
five years, or something perhaps rather more far-reaching than
that. And one rather strange idea we are playing with, which I
do not think is formed particularly at the moment, is if you do
that you can almost see some kind of Kyoto-style, carbon credit-style
objectives idea developing, so that if a certain Member State,
or a certain institution, fails to achieve, it might be able to
swap credits with other countries. But that is not worked up at
all.
(Mr Leonard) To answer the second one, I think there
is a danger of people putting inappropriate ideas down; so I think
one needs to create a very clear process for delineating what
is an appropriate area, because, clearly, it will be used by some
people to try to block abortion, or to change on a lot of values
issues. I think what one has to do is make sure, first of all,
that there is a clear sense that it is an appropriate issue for
European action, and that is why some of these cross-cutting issues,
like the environment, like, for instance, if one wants to speed
up the process towards having a European Rapid Reaction Force
in place, or some of those sorts of decisions, might be appropriate
decisions, but we have to have a clear sense that it is in tune
with the idea of subsidiarity, rather than trying to change the
Health Service, or do things which clearly are not appropriate
for European action. The idea of a double majority I think provides
a fairly good check against—because if you set a high enough
standard for the number of signatures and you insist that it is
in two-thirds or three-quarters of Member States, I think it is
quite a high standard, particularly if it is coupled with this
subsidiarity provision, which is the most difficult thing to pin
down. But there are examples of—I think it has to be tied
in with the idea of a statement of principles for the EU, or a
constitution, or whatever arrangements are put in place for deciding
where EU action is appropriate. And, again, it might be something
which national parliamentarians might be involved in, deciding
whether this is an area which is appropriate for a referendum.
Mr Hendrick
92. Just very, very quickly on that. I have
no problem with the mechanics that you are suggesting, in terms
of coming to possible decisions on subsidiarity issues, but where
currently you have got legislation, for example, in the area of
environment, which you mentioned, and let us say we had legislation
on targets for carbon, etc., that could be done under the present
structure, with the current model. Special initiatives I could
see perhaps on that, but surely this is the sort of thing you
would apply to second and third pillar issues, not currently first
pillar issues, that are dealt with fairly well under the current
arrangements?
(Mr Leonard) I would be reluctant to restrict it to
second and third pillar issues, because what I see this as is
a way of supplementing representative politics within the European
Union, in giving people an opportunity to put issues on the agenda,
to be directly involved in European decision-making. And a lot
of the first pillar issues are issues which people will be interested
in, and which obviously are relevant for EU action, if not, they
would not be in the first pillar. So I think we should have an
open mind. Obviously, the devil is in the detail, I think this
system could be disastrous if the issues of subsidiarity are not
thought through properly and if one does not have a very clear
set of criteria for what sorts of question are relevant and not
relevant.
Chairman: Mr Arbuthnott and Mr Leonard, thank
you very much. I am drawing the meeting to a close now. I hope
you have found it a useful experience, coming before this Committee,
and thank you.
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