Examination of Witness(Questions 20-39)
RT HON PETER
HAIN, MR
NICK BAIRD
AND MS
SARAH LYONS
WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2002
Tony Cunningham
20. Would you not agree that one of the, perhaps,
best examples of that was given by a senior police officer not
too long ago who said that of the top one hundred criminals who
were involved in trafficking drugs and all sorts of things in
this country not a single one of them actually lives in the UK?
How on earth do you deal with a problem like that when these people
are living in Spain and Portugal and so on unless you deal with
it at a European level?
(Peter Hain) I think you make the case perfectly for
why we share sovereignty to fight international crime, and why
it is in our national interest to do so. I am sure your constituents
would thank you for having achieved that, just as my constituents
will. I guess the honourable Member for Stone's constituents would
thank him too, even if he may not thank himself.
Mr Tynan
21. The idea of a Congress of the Peoples of
Europe has been floated. Could you give the Government's view
on that proposal? Secondly, what role you see for that Congress?
(Peter Hain) The idea was first put forward by the
President of the Convention, Giscard d'Estaing, and it is not
an idea we had encountered before. His proposal, and there is
some support for it in the Convention (though considerable opposition
as well), is for national parliamentarians and European parliamentarians
to come together in a Congress, meeting perhaps once every five
years or once a year—the detail is distinctly unclear. As
to what we feel about this, until we know really what this animal
is it is difficult to form a view upon it. If it is a way of involving
national parliamentarians in determining and discussing a kind
of policy agenda for Europe on a periodic basis then there may
be considerable merit in it, which even your Committee, Chairman,
might want to look at, and I would be interested in your views.
If it is an entirely new institution (and, by definition, I guess
it would be a new institution) to change the nature of decision-making
in the European Union and to, in a sense, bypass Member States'
vital strategic role in that decision-making, then I would be
very concerned about it.
22. At the present time your view is that there
is not enough information or discussion taking place in order
to give a Government view on it?
(Peter Hain) We are adopting an attitude, as I have
on the Convention, of always being open to a good idea, if it
is a good idea. What does it mean? What role could it perform?
I have been asking these questions and the answers have still
to be given. We are not ruling out support; it may be it could
play a role in annual consideration of the European Union's work
programme. That may be valuable. It may be a way of tying national
parliamentarians more into it. It is quite interesting that, again,
an additional role is being considered for national parliamentarians—another
sign of Europe changing more towards the kind of future where
we want it to be.
23. Obviously, the whole purpose of the Convention
was to make sure that people understood what was happening here
and felt closer to Europe on the decision-making. If you are in
a position where you create another body, is there not a danger
that it will further divorce the ordinary people from participation
in Europe.
(Peter Hain) I think there is a real issue here, which
is one of the purposes of the Convention. Indeed, one of the remits
given to it by the Laeken Council in December of last year was
to simplify and clarify the tangled web of decision-making and
treaties that make it very difficult for the average citizen really
clearly to understand what is going on. On the creation, or setting
up, of another body, I think the jury is out on whether it will
do that or not. That test has to be applied very rigorously before
we take a view on it.
Angus Robertson
24. Moving on to another question, may I ask
you about the obstacles to opening up more of the legislative
proceedings of the Council of Ministers to the public? Is this
something you are pressing for in the Convention?
(Peter Hain) Yes, it is. We are advocates of full
transparency of the decision-making. Not of negotiation because
if you put the cameras in when the Council of Ministers is in
negotiating formation it would not happen; it would happen, as
it does in the Security Council, in a side room or it would happen
in the corridors or various smoke-filled rooms (I do not think
you can have smoke-filled rooms in the European Union). At any
rate, if you leave that negotiating role of the Council aside,
then I think the cameras should be in all the time, when speeches
are being made, when positions are being argued and when votes—where
they happen—take place. For me that is a crucial part of
the chain of accountability being established so that the public
know what their elected minister is doing on their behalf, and
so that parliaments know. The advantage, too, is that very often
governments become parties to a decision willingly in the context
of the Council but then deny it afterwards and say "Oh, no,
it was the rest of the mob that forced this on us." We have
got some advance on that, as you know, from the changes in Seville,
the European Council there, which brought the cameras in to some
extent, but I think we need to go much further.
Mr David
25. Minister, one of the things that has happened
over the last few years is that through a number of treaty changes
we have seen the European Parliament gain more and more legislative
powers—something which I welcome—but it has meant
that in dialogue with the Council of Ministers the European Parliament
has, nevertheless, embarked upon a process which is very convoluted,
very complicated and very difficult for anybody outside of the
Council and the European Parliament to understand. I was wondering
if there are proposals from yourself or the Government so that
the process could be made more open and transparent.
(Peter Hain) It is a very interesting point, because
when you get into conciliation and co-decision all of that becomes
a bit of a fog. I know that several former MEPs on your Committee
would confirm that, Chairman. We have not really had the opportunity
to go into this matter in the Convention, but if the Committee
has any ideas I would gladly have a look at them and take them
on. We have still to discuss institutional matters, of which this
might be one area. The role of the European Parliament, I think,
is due to come up in the January period of the Convention's deliberations.
If you have any thoughts before then, formal or informal, I would
be glad to receive them.
Tony Cunningham
26. Following on from those last two questions,
we would all support the idea of more openness and more transparency
as far as the Council is concerned and as far as the conciliation
process is concerned. However, there is a genuine dislocation
between the European institutions and European citizens. What
discussions have gone on within the Convention? What can be done?
It is difficult enough even for our own Parliament to actually
bring the citizens of Europe closer to those institutions.
(Peter Hain) It is a huge challenge.
There are, broadly, two models, I think, in the Convention. One
is that you achieve greater connection by electing through the
European Parliament the Commission President, who on one model
would be elected by the people of Europe and, on another, by the
European Parliament. So you would have either indirect democracy,
as it were, through elected European parliamentarians, or you
have direct democracy on this model through the voters of Europe.
I believe—and it is the Government's view—that that
is actually a false model for the Commission President; the Commission
President should not be the big political leader of Europe, The
Commission President should be the person responsible for making
sure the European Union works well, that it works effectively
and that it is delivering for the citizens of Europe the matters
which are proper to it. The other model, which is one we favour,
is that you have a much clearer chain of accountability, with
the European Council reconfigured and reformed (I think we have
discussed this before, but I am happy to go into the detail) in
such a way that you have an elected president of the European
Council who is a full-time figure rather than rotating every six
months, as is the present situation, who is elected by elected
heads of government, those heads of government themselves elected
and answerable to their national parliaments and thereby to voters.
That is a chain of accountability much more readily understood
by the average citizen. If you then introduce greater transparency
into the Council's decisions then I think you get a much clearer
picture for the average citizen and a better connection to what
is going on in Europe.
Chairman
27. Moving on to the Charter on Human Rights,
Secretary of State, you welcomed the report of the working group
on the Charter as a "building block" for the creation
of a constitutional treaty and added that, provided an appropriate
way of integrating the Charter into the Treaty was found, the
UK Government would be "ready to work towards incorporation."
What has led the Government to change its mind on the Charter?
(Peter Hain) You know, our views on the Charter have
not changed; we have all along said that it contains a set of
admirable principles but we said, at least, that it was unsuitable
for legal incorporation—indeed, the Nice European Council
agreed with us—because it risked creating a legal uncertainty
for the citizens and for Member States. We could not have agreed
and still could not agree to giving the Charter full legal status
and incorporation into the Treaties unless that problem of legal
uncertainty and the role of the Member States was resolved. So
in the working group, where Baroness Scotland represented the
Government, we fought very hard and began, I think, to win the
battle for ensuring that the Charter could not be legally enforceable
through our domestic courts. So the working group unanimously
came up with a proposition which was, essentially, British ideas
to strengthen the horizontal articles in the Charter that, effectively,
in simple terms, stopped it reaching down into our domestic courts
and changing our domestic law. That position was endorsed almost
unanimously in the plenary. So I do not think that can be unpicked.
We still have to see exactly how that might, as it were, come
out on the night in terms of its full incorporation into the new
constitution, which would have to be the case. We would need to
be absolutely clear that, for example, you could not change our
strike laws, you could not change our employment laws and you
could not enable an individual citizen who felt they were not
getting the housing opportunity they wanted from their local authority
to take that local council to court and, ultimately, to the European
Court of Justice under the Charter because that is not a role
for Europe, that is a matter for national decision-making and,
ultimately, for local authorities. We could have had a situation,
if the Charter had simply been incorporated wholesale and unamended
into the treaties, which would have been a matter of national
veto for us. We are still very far from being certain that our
concerns in that respect have been fully accommodated, but we
have got a major part of the way and a significant change of stance
by other European countries and their parliamentarians. So we
are in a much more encouraging position than we were.
28. You may have covered part of this question.
What practical difference would it make if the Charter was incorporated
as a protocol to the Treaty, as you want, rather than being part
of the Treaty itself?
(Peter Hain) I think you raise an issue that if it
were to be incorporated and if all that necessary protection were
built in and, in effect, a fire-break created through these horizontal
articles, stopping the impact of the Charter coming down and changing
our domestic law—because, remember, the Charter was about
citizens of Europe's rights against the institutions, to stop
the institutions behaving in a way contrary to those principles
of civil rights and so on, not to change domestic laws—then
the issue arises should it just be incorporated wholesale into
the Treaty with those necessary horizontal clauses, or should
there be an article in the new Treaty that cross-references to
a protocol, which is what you refer to? We favour the latter,
with, also, a full explanatory text associated. That has been
the decision of the Convention so far. So it would not be possible
to unpick this or to change it in a way that threatened the interests
of British citizens—indeed European citizens—as a
whole. What was very notable as we made these arguments was that
we got more and more Member States and national parliamentarians
from other countries supporting us. However the jury is still
out for us on whether we can support this or not. We will have
to see exactly what the final wording looks like, and there will
probably still be some negotiation.
Mr Cash
29. From what you have just said, we have moved
substantially from the statement that was made by one of your
predecessors in your previous incarnation that this Charter of
Fundamental Rights would not add up to much more than The Beano.
Having said that, we are now taking it more seriously. The second
point I would make is that of course we took evidence in relation
to the proposals for the Fundamental Charter as they were being
put forward at the Nice Treaty and Richard Plender QC made it
abundantly clear (and you can check this evidence for yourself)
that however you juggle with this, the reality—and I am
certain this is true—is that the courts will use whatever
is contained in that Fundamental Charter however you try to go
about trying to write horizontal clauses or anything else. So
the question, basically, is this: I hear what you say about your
confidence that things are moving in the right direction, but
there is going to come a bottom line when the full constitution
is considered, and I would like you to give us a guarantee that
you would not allow this Fundamental Charter to become legally
binding. My second question to you would simply be this: how do
you see the Fundamental Charter interacting with the European
Convention on Human Rights as incorporated by the Human Rights
Act 1998? Is it not going to be massively confusing to have two
parallel operations which have, also, the intrinsic likelihood
of interacting with one another and creating massive confusion?
(Peter Hain) Can I first of all say that I am a much
more grey and boring minister than anyone who could have produced
a quote like that.
30. You are The New Statesman?
(Peter Hain) No, I am just more grey and boring. You
said "the courts will use". This is precisely the area
which we have been very concerned about, which is why we opposed
full-scale incorporation at Nice. Until and if (and we are not
there) that changed so that effectively the courts would not be
able to pray the Charter in-aid for decision-making then we could
not even consider going down this road. We are not there yet,
but you will understand that to have achieved a situation where
there was virtually unanimous support elsewhere in the European
Union for full incorporation of the Charter, with Britain standing
with a few others outside, to have emerged from that position
to one where we have changed thinking fundamentally so that now
there is unanimous support for strengthening the horizontal articles,
is a major step forward, which I am sure you would concede. It
is not a big enough step forward for us yet to consider incorporation
because we want to be absolutely one hundred per cent certain
that we have built in the necessary protective layer. There is
an issue, and this was another factor, as to whether the European
Convention on Human Rights came into the picture. This was one
of the issues to be resolved, but the idea is for the European
Union, to accede to the European Convention on Human rights and
to do so in a way (which I think is a good thing) that does not
contain a contradictory set of routes, for example, to which court
do you go, Strasbourg or Luxembourg, in order to assert a right.
So there are issues here still to be resolved.
31. Very big issues indeed, Mr Hain.
(Peter Hain) Which is why we are treating them with
very great caution and great prudence, to borrow a word.
Angus Robertson
32. Secretary of State, moving on to areas of
foreign policy and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP),
what proposals does the Government have which could make the Common
Foreign and Security Policy more effective without countries like
the UK or others losing their room for manoeuvre in foreign affairs?
(Peter Hain) First of all, I hope the Committee would
agree that we want Europe to play a stronger role in the world
stage. I think the world is evolving into a multi-polar world.
Yes, we will still have one dominant super power for the foreseeable
future and it is very important that Europe, as Britain does,
works as a whole in partnership with the United States of America.
I think the world will evolve beyond the present situation, with
China becoming much more significant on the diplomatic stage,
not just economically; with Russia wanting a partnership with
the European Union and being a significant player, and other countries
as well—India, I think, cannot be written out of the picture
in terms of it influencing in future decades this century. Where
does Europe stand? We are the biggest, richest part of the world
and have the biggest single market in the modern world, after
enlargement. After enlargement of the European Union the European
economy will be bigger than the two biggest economies in the world,
Japan and America, combined, and we are the biggest provider of
overseas aid and development assistance in the world, providing
more than half as the European Union. The question is do we take
our global responsibility seriously on the diplomatic stage? I
think we should. I think we should have a stronger Common Foreign
and Security Policy and it is in Britain's interests for that
to be the case, so that, for example, we can intervene as the
European Union more effectively in resolving matters in our own
back yards, such as the Balkans.
Mr Cash
33. Or Iraq?
(Peter Hain) I will come back to Iraq if you wish
to press me on that point. Your question was—and I am sorry
to set the stage but I think context is quite important—how
could this be done? First of all, we need a much more effective
European Council instead of the leadership changing every six
months and instead of the agenda being a matter of an individual
Presidency's fads on a rotating six-monthly basis—there
being a strategic agenda. So I think that is one part of the picture.
That links straight back into the nation states, as the Council
is run by Member States such as ourselves, and the veto would
have to exist as far as all the big questions on foreign policy
and security policy are concerned. As far as implementation is
concerned, that is done by qualified majority voting at the present
time. So reform of the Council is part of that. Linked to that
is the position of the High Representative, Javier Solana, currently
doing an excellent job, giving the European Union a voice in the
Middle East negotiations, in the Balkans and so on, and being
seen as a credible figure in Washington, which the European Union
has never had before. So we want to see that position strengthened,
given more resources and so on. There is then a question as to
how you link it into the Chris Patten figure, the External Relations
Commissioner of the Commission, who has all the money and has
the important responsibilities for aid and development and association
agreements with other countries, and so on. So it is a question
of how you co-ordinate those two roles. We are not in favour of
a straight merging or a Commission takeover because that would
effectively communitise foreign policy. So getting a much more
effective CFSP for the European Union will involve strengthening
that figure, strengthening the European Council, but it remaining
essentially an intergovernmental matter but doing it in a way
so that—because foreign policy is a continuum between the
hard end, being the military dimension, and the soft end, being
the aid and development dimension, as we have seen in Afghanistan,
for example, only recently—there is a continuum and a continuous
linkage between the different roles, but it being a matter ultimately
for Member States to decide.
Angus Robertson
34. I agree wholeheartedly with what you said,
although there has been one omission, which is—
(Peter Hain) The role of Scotland?
35. Well, yes. If I say more in general "parliaments
wherever". That is, to use your words, how important it is
to be in favour of full transparency and to have a chain of accountability.
This Committee recently received its first documents with regard
to the CFSP which, in large, were not shared in full with Committee
Members because of their sensitivity. I would be interested in
how you foresee parliamentary oversight in this particular policy
area being as open and transparent as it should be, because up
until now Members of this Committee have not been able to share
and have insight into the full documentation. I am unaware of
other committees of this House having sight, whether that is Defence
or Foreign Affairs. Many Members would see that as being particularly
important.
(Peter Hain) I understand that and you have got a
reasonable point to make here. I am sorry that you have not got
an answer on the question as to why documents relating to an ESDP
operation could not be provided to the Committee. It is actually
proving to be a much more complicated subject than we thought
at first sight when we were considering this in the Foreign Office.
What we are trying to do is marry together the way we consult
Parliament during NATO operations and the way in which we provide
European Union documents to parliaments, which is proving all
the more complicated by the fact that some European Union documents
to an ESDP operation may originate elsewhere. I think the Minister
of State for the Armed Forces has been in touch with the Committee
and this is now not a matter for me but a matter for the Minister
for Europe and for the Foreign Secretary, but there are discussions
going on with the MoD to try and clarify these issues in order
for your own wishes to be satisfied.
Angus Robertson: Thank you.
Mr Hendrick
36. Coming back to the CFSP, Minister, you did
mention there is, if you like, a hard end, in terms of military
action, and a soft end where you get things like international
development. Clearly, in terms of the European Union having one
voice on foreign policy, what effectively you get—and I
think you said it yourself—is an expression of whatever
the intergovernmental or Council view is. Now, at the softer end
I think, in many cases, that is a much easier affair, in that
you can get a genuine consensus view that will be put forward.
At the harder end it becomes that much more difficult. Given,
for example, the circumstances in which we find ourselves, at
the moment, where there is a potential for conflict with Iraq,
would you think it is much more important that there is a single
spokesperson for foreign policy for the European Union, given
the fact that we may wish to differ with other European Union
Member States' views on, let us say, potential action in Iraq,
or are you happy with things as they are? In addition, certainly
in my time in the European Parliament, there was a view that perhaps
the European Union should have a seat as a permanent member of
the United Nations, for example. Do you not see possibly a danger
or a risk—or perhaps you might say it was a desirable thing—that
Britain and France's place at the table as permanent members of
the Security Council may be taken away and the European Union
would have a seat as a permanent member?
(Peter Hain) Dealing with that point first, the constitution
of the United Nations does not provide for regional groups in
the world to be represented on the Security Council. So that is
not really an issue. It perhaps is in a theoretical sense. Even
that minority of voices in the Convention that want foreign policy
communitised, basically because they are small players on the
world stage, to be perfectly brutal about it, have not argued
a case for France's seat or Britain's seat to be given up, and
we would not agree to that. That is just out of the picture, full-stop,
end of the story, as far as we are concerned, and that goes for
France. It is not a serious proposition. On your more interesting
point—or even more interesting point—about the soft
end and the hard end, if you look at what we have done—and
this is a very practical issue—we have agreed, for example,
to share sovereignty on trade negotiations, which comes into foreign
policy. So a European Commissioner, Pascal Lamy, very brilliantly
represented us, Britain, our national parliament, through the
European Union at the Dohare talks and was able, because we are
a strong block, to strike a deal with his opposite number the
American negotiator to get a much more progressive position on
opening up world trade and trying to create the basis for world
trade and open up trade to poorer countries in the world, for
instance. Now it is all part of foreign policy, you could argue,
so that is a communitised soft end of external relations which
we are happy to have agreed to. I do not think anybody would challenge
that seriously. The same goes for development aid and assistance,
it is an advantage that Europe has got a big programme but that
does not stop us having our own programme or any other Member
States. These things can run in together. The red line for us
is we could not agree to a decision in Brussels committing British
soldiers into a conflict zone where their lives may be at risk,
that is a matter for this Parliament and our Government which
is accountable to this Parliament. That deals with the Iraq issue,
for example. What we are trying to establish is a Common Foreign
and Security Policy which is a serious policy because you have
this schizophrenia in the Convention, if I can be frank about
it, that the most strident voices for a completely overwhelming
foreign policy for the European Union are the ones who do not
really want a serious foreign policy, they want to just issue
resolutions and make statements and think that the world changes
by that. We all want the conflict in the Middle East to end and
for an independent Palestinian state to be established and the
security of Israel to be guaranteed. The way some other Europeans
operate, ministers included, which I have seen first hand is they
just think you can rush out and issue a statement to the nearest
television camera and then everything changes, of course it does
not as we have seen with the expert work done by the Foreign Secretary
and Prime Minister on Iraq. This is painstaking negotiation and
diplomacy and to get the European Union into that position requires
big changes and a complete change of attitude as well on the part
of a lot of Member States, and particularly the part of European
parliamentarians.
Mr Cash
37. I would like now to turn to the question
of the European constitution and the alternative proposal that
it could be a constitutional treaty. First of all, do you agree
that this is a distinction without difference because the legal
effect will be the same in either event? Secondly, you may not
agree with this but I put it to you that the Government has sold
the United Kingdom down the river already by conceding the principle
of a European constitution for reasons that I am sure you understand.
The reality is that once you get to the point in the context of
the shift towards more governmental functions within the framework
of this constitutional framework then of course you are conceding
that you are moving towards a single European state which is endorsed
by the notion of the single legal personality for the European
Union which goes to the question of Common Foreign and Security
Policy and the rest. Would you be good enough to comment on the
question of which parts of the Giscard d'Estaing proposals you
do not agree with? Would you disagree, for example, with the idea
of the arrangements for the representation of the Union in international
relations and the definition of the role and future rank of the
high representative, touching on the matters you have referred
to in relation to CFSP? Would you agree, for example, that the
European Commission should be given an exclusive monopoly in relation
to the initiation of legislation? Could you give us some idea
as to what it is? It is a new monopoly in case Mr Baird is suggesting
otherwise, it is not a minor matter. The question is to what extent
would you be in disagreement with the Giscard proposals? Do you
reject my general proposition that at the bottom line by giving
way to the principle of a European constitution you are selling
Britain down the river effectively? Just to refer to Mr Straw's
article again, he makes three comparisons. Golf clubs, which is
absurd, of course. Then he mentions the United Nations, of course
the United Nations is not a country. Then he mentions the US constitution
in aid of his agreement with the idea of a constitution but, of
course, that concedes the point because the US constitution is
the constitution for a country. What are your comments on those
points?
(Peter Hain) Well, there are a lot of them.
38. There are indeed, and there are more to
come, Mr Hain. We ought to go back to Papua New Guinea and discuss
this.
(Peter Hain) That would be very pleasant. First of
all, can I say, Chairman, good friend though he is, I think anything
that any British Government does, including those of Mrs Thatcher
and John Major, in the Hon. Member's eyes would be selling Britain
down the river in the European Union. It is just an article of
faith for him as far as the European Union is concerned, even
if it is in the British national interest. Let me just make that
point, in a sense. To deal with his specific matters. First of
all, the European Commission has large rights of initiative at
the present time, excluding Common Foreign and Security Policy
and some aspects of justice and home affairs. I do not think anybody
is envisaging that changes, that it is either reduced or increased.
It leads to the point about a single legal personality as well.
At the moment you have the European Community and you have the
European Union which is pretty confusing for most citizens and
also confusing for third countries. If you are negotiating an
association agreement say with a North African country in the
Mediterranean area, effectively you have a whole series of agreements,
some of which are with the European Union, some of which are with
the European Community, some of which have to be negotiated by
the Commission, others of which have to be negotiated with the
Council and this is a very confusing way to go about life. Provided
that a single legal personality—which meant effectively
that in legal international terms there was no distinction between
the European Union, it was one body effectively in international
legal terms—for example, Common Foreign and Security Policy
was not communitised, provided that did not mean that aspects
of justice and home affairs were communitised, provided that did
not mean that the EU became some federal super state then I think
we should approach this in a very practical way, let us see what
it means not just react in a kind of knee jerk fashion to it.
The same goes for the principle of the constitution. To all intents
and purposes the treaties of the European Union, running as they
do to hundreds of thousands of words and hundreds of pages, amount
to a kind of constitution for the European Union. The issue is
do you bring these together in a simple straight forward clear
test which the Foreign Secretary has called the European constitution
or not? Now I think your constituents and mine would think there
is quite a lot of merit in doing that provided—and this
is the important proviso which relates to your question as well—that
it is a constitution on the foundations of Member States, not
some Brussels super state. I do not think there is any prospect
of the Convention agreeing a federal super state model for the
European Union. The support does not exist, not only Britain would
oppose that, France would oppose it, Spain would oppose it, Italy
would oppose it, Sweden would oppose it, Denmark would oppose
it, most of the candidate countries would oppose it because they
have only in the last decade or so emerged from under the shadow
of being run from Moscow and they are not about to be run from
Brussels so I do not think that is a serious runner. I am sure
you would all want to look constructively at what is in a constitution
rather than simply rejecting it wholesale.
Miss McIntosh
39. Secretary of State, there is a little confusion
at the moment because there was another draft constitutional treaty
tabled, also, by Professor Alan Dashwood and other leading legal
academics prior to the publication of Giscard d'Estaing's. I understand
that was funded by the Foreign Office. Does the Foreign Office
support this? Is it Government policy? Would you like to see either
the whole of that draft treaty or only part of it effectively
as part of the constitution?
(Peter Hain) First of all, I omitted to answer one
of the Hon. Member for Stone's questions, if you would forgive
me and allow me just to do so briefly. There are aspects of the
Giscard draft that we do not agree with, for example renaming
the European Union. He suggested it could be called the United
States of Europe, that was one option, well forget that frankly.
Another idea was United Europe or Europe United which sounds like
a football team to me to be frank. I think most Members of the
Convention attacked the renaming the European Union and said "Look,
we have got a name, let us stick to it". Then there was a
rather odd proposal for dual citizenship and it was not clear
what that meant. On the contribution from Professor Dashwood,
what is known as the Cambridge text—because he is a professor
at Cambridge University—it is not Government policy. We
commissioned Professor Dashwood and his team at Cambridge to produce
a text and we gave him Jack Straw's speeches and said we would
like to see what his best shot at a European constitution could
look like on the principle of a Union of Nation States rather
than a federal super state. He came out with his own version.
He retained complete editorial control. It contains some very
good ideas such as clear dividing lines between the European Union
and Member State roles, which is not defined often as clearly
as it is in his text in the existing treaties but it differs from
government policy in a number of areas too. I am sure you do not
want me to give a running commentary on Dashwood but we thought
it was a valuable contribution to the debate, not least because
there was a text produced by the European University Institute
at Florence which was a text we did not like and which was in
a sense going the super state way. We wanted to put another contribution
into the debate. In practice what will happen is we will negotiate
from January onwards and, indeed, the presidium of the Convention
secretariat is hard at work already trying to do some drafting
around fleshing out the Giscard skeleton. We will negotiate around
that and bring into play some of Professor Dashwood's ideas where
these things seem appropriate.
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