UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 631

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

EUROPEAN COUNCIL - JUNE 2004

 

 

Tuesday 25 May 2004

MR JACK STRAW MP, MR KIM DARROCH and MR DAVID FROST

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 91

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 25 May 2004

Members present

Donald Anderson, in the Chair

Mr David Chidgey

Mr Fabian Hamilton

Mr Eric Illsley

Mr Andrew Mackay

Andrew Mackinlay

Mr Bill Olner

Mr Greg Pope

Sir John Stanley

Ms Gisela Stuart

________________

 

Witnesses: Mr Jack Straw, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Mr Kim Darroch, CMG, Director General, EU Policy and Mr David Frost, Assistant Director, European Union (Internal), Foreign and Commonwealth Office, examined.

Q1 Chairman: May I welcome you again, Foreign Secretary, on behalf of the Committee, together with your colleagues, Mr Kim Darroch, who is the director general of EU policy, and Mr David Frost, the assistant director, European Union, internal. Foreign Secretary, I understand that, one, you only have two hours and therefore time is limited and, two, you would like to begin with an opening statement?

Mr Straw: It might be helpful for me to say a few words about the negotiations on the EU Constitutional Treaty draft which will be the most significant item on the European Council's agenda when the Council meets next month. What we are working for is a European Union which makes all its member nations more powerful and more prosperous. We are putting Britain at the centre of European decision making to achieve that. It was the United Kingdom which led the calls for enlargement which in turn has made the European Union the world's biggest single market and a great engine of jobs and trade for the United Kingdom. With enlargement, now 25 members and more to come, we need a European Union where we can do business more effectively and more efficiently so as to push forward economic reform and tackle cross border problems such as crime, illegal immigration and pollution. The draft Constitutional Treaty gives us a chance to reform EU rules and procedures which go back almost 50 years and were for just six members, so as to shape a modern EU which can tackle these challenges. The draft Treaty would make the EU easier to understand, bringing five overlapping treaties together in one text and simplifying its structure. It would say explicitly that nation states control the European Union, not the other way round, and back that up with a full time president of the European Council working for the Member States and with a greater role for this and other national parliaments in getting European Union draft laws reviewed before they were agreed, or indeed not agreed. Yesterday, I attended in Brussels the latest discussions on the text. Whilst it is in the nature of these negotiations that there is no final agreement and can be no final agreement until the closing of the negotiations in the final package, there is some sense of progress towards a deal. Having now had three days of recent discussions, two last week, one this week, in the IGC, we now await a new set of proposals from the Irish presidency which will inform discussions at the European Council itself. In the White Paper which I published in September, we set out the United Kingdom's position clearly. If we do not get the right results, we will not sign up. We have some hard negotiating ahead, but with the right outcome this Constitutional Treaty will, I believe, give us the chance to set out the kind of Europe which we want: efficient, effective and working in the interests of 25 proud and rather different nations. That will be the basis on which the government will commend it, if and when agreed, to Parliament and to the British people.

Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Am I correct that yesterday's meeting was the last formal meeting before the Council on 17 to 18 June?

Mr Straw: Yes. It is the last formal meeting for two weeks. Then there are two days of meetings of the IGC in the foreign ministers' formation at the beginning of the week, on the Monday and Tuesday, and then two days at the end of the week, on the Thursday and Friday, which is essentially the arrangement that happened in mid-December.

Q3 Chairman: From yesterday, the consensus appears to be, one, that the Irish presidency have done a very good job indeed and, two, as M. Valpin said, that a deal is very close. Can you tell us what are the key outstanding issues?

Mr Straw: There was a good sense in the room yesterday and the issues that were being raised yesterday were not issues where we are in the middle of the debate. They were issues of the voting system.

Q4 Chairman: Majority voting? The double majority?

Mr Straw: Yes, Nice versus the double majority and other issues of that kind. There is quite a long list of issues that remain to be solved and it is not by any means just the UK which has issues to be resolved. We have to ensure that on the matters which were raised in the White Paper there is satisfaction. This includes the areas on which we are seeking unanimity rather than QMV as a basic rule. I think you are familiar with that list. If you are not, I am very happy to recite paragraph 66 of the White Paper.

Q5 Chairman: I think we are.

Mr Straw: That is one area. There is finally pinning down the legal status of the charter and then there is quite a range of other issues, to which we are making a contribution along with other colleagues. The basic negotiating position is set out here.

Q6 Chairman: Even if all goes well on 17 and 18 June, the whole concept could be undermined by a referendum in this country. Can you confirm first that if one country votes against the whole structure ends?

Mr Straw: This is an intergovernmental Treaty, in international law no different from any other intergovernmental treaty. There are two stages to the ratification of treaties. There is a signature at a political level by those who have negotiated it followed by a ratification process. If the Treaty itself, as this one does, says that it has to be ratified by all Member States before it comes into force, self-evidently, if one or more do not ratify it, it does not come into force.

Q7 Chairman: What therefore is your legal advice on the proposition by some that two-thirds or another group can vote in favour and the Treaty would go ahead, if only for that group?

Mr Straw: That is not the case.

Q8 Chairman: What is the legal advice?

Mr Straw: I do not need to tell you the legal advice but the position is absolutely straightforward. We are negotiating a treaty at 25. For it to come into force, 25 have to agree. What 23 countries quite separately decide to do is their business but if you are asking about the treaty that we sign this treaty that we sign would only come into force if 25 Member States agree to it.

Q9 Chairman: It is very easy to quote back at politicians things they have said. You were very adamant indeed in December before this Committee. May I quote what you then said? "I do not happen to believe that having a referendum on changes to the way in which an existing institution operates is either necessary or desirable. I think that is Parliament's job." Why have you changed?

Mr Straw: My analysis about the effect of this Treaty, if it goes through, has not changed. I set it out in here. I do not believe and I defy anybody else to explain how, if this draft Treaty is agreed with the changes which we are seeking, it would fundamentally affect the nature of the relationship between the UK and the European Union.

Q10 Chairman: That is not what Peter Hain said.

Mr Straw: Allow me to finish, because we are not doing a disconnected Today interview, if I may put it that way. That view remains the case but for reasons which the Prime Minister spelt out it became clear, not least as a result of some of the comments made around the table when I was here in December, that there was a demand for a referendum which the government felt ought to be met. In terms of our judgment, would this fundamentally affect the nature of the relationship between Member States and the EU? No. Indeed, there is quite a lot to suggest that this would help to strengthen the position of Member States through the subsidiarity principle and also in other legal respects, as the House of Lords Committee was pointing out in respect of the issue of primacy of European law. Was there a mounting demand for a referendum which we felt it appropriate to meet? Yes. Was I in the course of the endless debates that have taken place on this issue, in the House of Commons and in this room, listening? Yes. It would be unfair to others and I am not going to say whose intervention it was which really stuck in my mind.

Q11 Chairman: Mr Pope, I think.

Mr Straw: No, it was not, but that particular intervention stuck in my mind and started me thinking down particular new avenues. Politics is nothing if it is not a proper dialogue and if people are not willing to listen to the arguments that are made.

Q12 Chairman: You are a political realist. You are going to read the opinion polls, more than two to one against. You are effectively, by the decision, going to scupper the Constitution and make it impossible.

Mr Straw: I think that is completely untrue. I remember - how could I forget? - the opinion polls in respect of the referendum in 1975 on whether we were to stay in or leave the European Union. They were showing a similar proportion but as people got closer and closer to the decision and were more and more informed that changed. What we were finding, not least before we announced the decision in respect of the referendum, was that the arguments about what was or was not in this draft and what our position was had been ground out by demands for a referendum. Given the time there will be in any event before there could be a referendum, we will find opinions shifting.

Q13 Mr Pope: When this issue cropped up about the referendum at the December meeting when you were before this Committee, I got the impression that you were not only quite dismissive of it but that it was an issue of principle that you were opposed to it. You were saying that it was neither necessary nor desirable to have a referendum to alter the way an existing institution operates. It was not really a tactic that you were opposed to; it was the principle of the referendum and I wonder what has changed between then and now.

Mr Straw: When I was drafting this bit of the White Paper, I included a very short explanation about why we felt that a referendum was not necessary. It is page 23, for those who are interested. It did seem to me, if you looked back at what amounted to the practice of holding a referendum in the UK, what you could see was that they were held. We have reduced the practice much more. Where there is a question of joining or, in 1975, leaving a new institution or it is a wholly new institutional structure, what as a principle could distinguish the proposal for a referendum here from the practice, was that we were not talking about joining a new institution. We were talking about amending an existing treaty. I am pretty sure I said this when we were here in December. If the result of this set of proposals here was to change the fundamental nature of the institution of the EU, I would always have been in favour of a referendum, but our judgment and my judgment in December has not changed as it did not. You have to take account of what the public are thinking as well in politics. It seems to me to be very important. It is the case that we have made far more use of referenda than any other party. It is only the Labour Party who introduced referenda at a national level or for use locally. We had them in 1975. We had them in Scotland and Wales in 1998 and we have had them in Northern Ireland. We are proposing to have them later this year in respect of regional assemblies and they are also available at a local level to change systems of local government. I am on record on behalf of the Labour Government as promising a referendum. There would have been a referendum had we had proposals, for example, to accept the Jenkins Committee's recommendations on voting systems. We made more of a practice of referenda and, frankly, there was an appetite for referenda. If you ask me what has changed, although I happen to believe that this set of principles laid out on page 23 remains valid, what I saw was that people's appetite was being whetted by referenda generally and other matters. This is still a Constitutional Treaty but you are now finding in a single, complete text the arrangements for the European Union. Some are much more transparent. Take primacy. Primacy in European law has been fundamental to our membership since we joined. It is now written up in lights and people wanted to re-examine the basis of our membership. That is why.

Q14 Mr Pope: There is an element of this which I am not clear about because I think it is a legal point. Maybe it is because I am not a lawyer. First of all, I share your confidence that we can win a referendum. I do not think things are as grim as is suggested. As we get closer to it, people will face up to the choices. What I am not confident about is that all 25 states will agree and I want to know what plan B is, not so much if we do not get agreement in a referendum, but if one or two other states of the 25 do not. I am not at all clear. I noticed there was a French and German idea to allow a treaty of 20 out of 25 and a clause in the Constitution to accept that.

Mr Straw: This is an international treaty made under the law of treaties. It is no different from any other international treaty. People sign up to a treaty and it is not ratified. If it is not ratified, it does not come into force. What typically then happens is that either people accept the status quo or they get together to see what the problem was. That is what happened here. There cannot be any other answer. On the issue we sometimes read about, about will 20 countries do something else, I doubt it very much as a matter of practical politics but members of the European Union are each nation states. Each of them are state parties to a variety of international treaties, some of which we support, some of which we do not. There is nothing to stop them signing up to a separate treaty. Indeed, I think the Schengen arrangements were the subject of a separate treaty. They signed up to it. We did not, quite outside the European Union. We are talking about this Treaty and whether the UK should sign up to it.

Q15 Mr Pope: I have not any further questions but I am in a high state of confusion.

Mr Straw: What is confusing about that answer?

Q16 Mr Pope: I think it seems clear that there are some nation states that are looking at the likelihood that not all 25 will ratify and there is going to be a fallback option. It seems to me that you are denying that there is a fallback option and saying, "We will go away and think about it if that happens." It seems to me that some countries - France and Germany in particular - have a more proactive and I think possibly a more realistic view that it is likely that not all 25 will ratify. They are therefore thinking quite closely about putting into the Constitution a clause which will allow, say, 23 out of 25 to proceed without the other two and you are saying that that is not the case.

Mr Straw: It will not be the case. This is an intergovernmental treaty. By its nature, all 25 Member States need to sign up to it for it to come into force. We would be against that. There has never been a proposal on the table. I have read reports from the French and German newspapers about such things but I think these are matters of speculation.

Q17 Mr Pope: Have the French and German governments not proposed that in the meetings?

Mr Straw: I do not think so, not to my certain knowledge. Article 4(7): "If, after two years of the signing of a treaty, four-fifths of the Member States have ratified it and one or more Member State encounters difficulties, the matter shall be referred to the European Council." In other words, there is a discussion about it. That is the sum of it. On the whole, if a Member State signs up to a treaty, generally speaking, it then gets ratified. Sometimes it does not and it may take a long time but generally that is the practice. Everybody round the table will know that they are expected to have the confidence of their public before they sign. That is why the process of debate has been such an attenuated one. The consequence of that should be a high level of consent. You can normally get to a deal.

Q18 Mr Mackay: If the reason for having a change of policy on a referendum was because the British public are now so smitten with referenda, were they not also smitten when you were before this Committee last December, or has there been a sudden shift in public opinion?

Mr Straw: This is an iterative process. You cannot have a situation where I am asked time and time again to change the government's policy and then go away and do this and then people say, "You should not have changed it." You have to listen very carefully to arguments that are made. In some cases, when you listen carefully to arguments that are made, you come to the conclusion that your arguments are stronger, but sometimes you come to the conclusion that they are weaker. I think one should be able sometimes to say, "Yes, we have changed our minds." This is about enhancing the consent for this. I cannot believe, Mr Mackay, that in your political life there has never been a moment where you have suddenly thought: I ought to change my mind about this. I have listened to the argument. Maybe you have been in the happy, blessed position where you have had certainty since the age of five.

Q19 Mr Mackay: I am delighted we now have an admission from the Foreign Secretary that he has changed his mind. That would have saved a lot of the earlier exchanges. Can I move on briefly to more straightforward questions? Firstly, when do you anticipate that our referendum will take place?

Mr Straw: I cannot say. What we anticipate is that, if there is a deal - and that is still an "if"; let me make that clear - there will be a period of some months before we get what is called a linguist jurist text available. It will probably be four months. It may be longer, because they need to translate it and to cross-reference it into 21 languages, Estonian into Greek and so on, making sure the Estonian, the Greek, the English, the Spanish, the Hungarian and Finnish texts are all compatible. That is going to take some time. It is a matter for parliamentary procedure. Quite a lot of the proposals in any event do not come into force until 2009. Even if we agreed it tomorrow across Europe, a number of the changes would not come into force until then. Although no final date has been added to the rest of the commencement section at the end of the Treaty, it is not likely to be before 2007 in any event.

Q20 Mr Mackay: I was hoping that was going to be a more straightforward question but clearly not. Let me try one more really straightforward question. When we do eventually have this referendum and if there is a no vote, would the Foreign Secretary confirm that that is a vote on the Constitution and not our membership of the European Union and that that would be a non sequitur?

Mr Straw: The vote would be on whether or not people approved the draft Constitutional Treaty, self-evidently. What is also the case is that, just as a yes vote would have had a wider consequence, so a no vote would have wider consequences and people would need to think about that. We are not at that position yet. It depends on the overall circumstances prevailing at the time. People need to be aware that a no vote would have consequences and the consequences would not be zero.

Q21 Mr Mackay: What would those wider consequences be?

Mr Straw: It depends entirely on what the wider circumstances are. This is why I am not wishing to go down this route too much. We will know those much more clearly if and when we sign up and if and when we have a referendum. They would include the degree to which we could maintain a high level of influence inside the councils of the European Union. Obviously, it depends what other countries are doing all sorts of things. What people must not believe is that not voting no is a kind of free good. I would hope that if we get what we are seeking we are able to persuade serious and sensible Conservatives like yourself to support this document. I simply do not understand, assuming we get what we are proposing here, how serious and sensible Conservatives can object to the fact that national parliaments are going to get a greater say. If you are a Conservative but not a serious, sensible one and you want to leave the European Union, I do not see how you can object to the fact that under the new draft Treaty you have a very clear mechanism for leaving the European Union; whereas at the moment under the existing treaties you do not. There is something both for the sensible band of the Conservative Party in this and also for those who simply want to leave the European Union. There is plenty else in it as well. It does make the system more transparent as well and, in my judgment, more workable. People need to think about that before they suddenly rule it all out.

Q22 Sir John Stanley: As you know, it is the invariable practice that your Department provides this Committee with a prospectus for the forthcoming Council paper prior to this particular evidence session. We understand that the session, because of your diary in particular, is taking place some way ahead of the meeting of the Council and we do not have the paper in front of us. Can you confirm that we will be having the prospectus paper before the Council meets?

Mr Straw: Yes.

Q23 Sir John Stanley: I want to return to the issue on which we had an extensive exchange when you last came in front of this Committee for European business on 11 December, for the Italian Council. You will recall that I asked you successively whether or not the British Government's position was that there should continue to be a veto in relation to foreign policy. I have to say you gave us what I and indeed the Committee found to be one of your more elliptical answers and, as a result, we had to come back to you in our further list of questions. We put this very precise question to you for written answer subsequently: "Will the United Kingdom retain its right of national veto over foreign policy, as was agreed at the Brussels Council, or will the issue again come under negotiation on the basis of the Naples text?" to which you replied, "There may be negotiations on the Naples text but the government's position remains as set out in the White Paper that unanimity must remain the general rule for CFSP."

Mr Straw: Yes.

Q24 Sir John Stanley: That is your statement in answer to that particular question. It sits very differently with what the Prime Minister said on the floor of the House of Commons in his European Council Libya statement on 29 March. He said this: "On the details of the Constitutional Treaty, I make it clear again that we will protect each one of the red lines that we have set out on tax, social security, our abatement, foreign policy and defence and our criminal justice system. Our ability to determine those matters is part of our nationhood and we shall insist on them." There is no way your answer that unanimity must remain the general rule for CFSP can be squared with the Prime Minister's statement in the House on 29 March and I should be grateful if you could clarify to the Committee which is the government's position, yours or the Prime Minister's, because they are clearly materially different.

Mr Straw: I do not have the Prime Minister's statement of 29 March in front of me but I do remember him saying it. I also listened carefully to what he said. There is every consistency between the two. He said words to the effect that we will stick by the position as we have set out. We have set it out in paragraph 66 of the White Paper where we said, "Unanimity must remain the general rule for CFSP as proposed in the final Convention text." Why did we say "the general rule"? Because your party signed up to Maastricht. You will recall that Article 23 of the consolidated version of the Maastricht Treaty, which your party signed up to ----

Q25 Sir John Stanley: We are very familiar with this. We know all about this.

Mr Straw: Allow me to finish because I was patient listening to your question. Allow me to finish, because I was patient listening to your question. "By derogation provisions of paragraph 1 the Council shall act by Qualified Majority," and then the occasions when Qualified Majority is to be followed is set out there. The Convention text, more or less, with some detailed changes, but in principle stuck to the structure of Maastricht in respect of CFSP, which is Unanimity Foreign Policy, some QMV in respect of its detailed implementation. The Naples draft text, which was issued in early December, moved away from that; we made it absolutely clear that we wanted to move back to the Convention text which protected our national position and is fully consistent both with what we said in the White Paper and with what the Prime Minister said.

Q26 Sir John Stanley: Foreign Minister, all I can is that those important qualifications you have made about elements of CFSP being settled by QMV, which you quite accurately point out go back to the Maastricht Treaty, I do not in any way dispute that, is not consistent with what the Prime Minister said on March 29^th to the House, where he gave the House an unambiguous assurance that foreign policy was a red line. I have to say my own view, listening to both of you, is I believe that yours is a more accurate statement of where it lies on foreign policy than the one given by the Prime Minister. The further question that I want to ask you is, you have acknowledged that there is an area of foreign policy, which your refer to as implementation that can be settled by QMV, and there is an area of policy to be settled by unanimity. The question I want to put to you is that it is not a black and white issue between policy and implementation; implementation can in part start veering into policy. Do you accept that there is a grey area between implementation and policy, and do you believe that there is need for any further clarity as to what is going to be settled in foreign policy by QMV and what is going to be settled by unanimity, and is it not the case that in the current negotiations other Member States are moving towards pushing out the frontiers of QMV at the expense of unanimity in the CFSP area?

Mr Straw: I think that the basic text for CFSP and the security and defence policy, which is set out in Articles 39 and 40 and then expanded in Title V from Articles III-193 onwards, are basically satisfactory. If the Committee has in the next two or three days some detailed drafting points we are very happy to take them on. The point about QMV is this - and I do not share your anxieties, which would seem to be implicit in what you were saying - that as the Convention text has been proposed, as with the Maastricht the policy has to be decided by unanimity. So, for example, let us take Zimbabwe, which is a rather good example. There is a policy which I pushed through which was that there was a policy of imposing sanctions on the leadership of the Xanu PF regime in Zimbabwe. There was then an issue of how we were to enforce that policy and it emerged after a year of some difficulty where enforcement required there to be unanimity. It would be to Britain's advantage that enforcement would be better if it were implemented by QMV, so we proposed when the matter came up for renewal - I think it was after the first year - that we had QMV to decide on enforcement. Very much to Britain's advantage; it was a bespoke decision. It in no sense involved some grey area. We had the policy decided by unanimity, and it was actually quite hard, let me say - it does not always work to our advantage, you always have to go at the pace of the slowest - but we got the Members on board, then the question was what happens if you have to put on an extra visa band and things like this, we did it by QMV. So it is a policy that can trigger - but does not always trigger - QMV implementation. I think it is satisfactory. There are some people around the room who will say that they want QMV to determine policy. They tend to be some of the smaller Member States because on the whole the smaller Member States, by definition, do not have the same kind of global reach as the larger ones, but when you scratch the surface you find that they like the idea but still want to preserve their own national status, and then they move away from it. We have made it absolutely clear that it is the Convention text that we want. The Naples' proposal was unacceptable; our policy is clear there, and this is to everybody's advantage within the European Union.

Q27 Sir John Stanley: Could I put to you finally, I think it is much easier to make a distinction between policy and enforcement across most areas of ministerial business, but to make a clear distinction between policy and implementation, which is something much wider than enforcement, is much more difficult. I think if you put your mind back to your time as Home Secretary, if you think of the number of policy issues that become involved in the issues of implementation you will understand the point that I am making, and I just hope you will reflect on the quite considerable difficulties of trying to make a distinction between policy and implementation in voting terms.

Mr Straw: Sir John, I have now served on the Foreign Policy Committee of the Council of the European Union for three years, and I served previously and very actively on Justice and Home Affairs. You either work by consensus or not at all. On Iraq, perfectly obvious there is no consensus, so we are split down the middle, and that was the end of it. So we had debates about it but there was no common position. On the Middle East there is a range of opinions that everybody recognises, that it is in the interests of the benighted people of Israel and Palestine, as well as of the European Union, for us to work together because our basic policy is the same. So we come together, so you could argue that we have a policy that is in support of two States, and so on. Let us take the road map, that was implementation, that was dealt with on a consensual basis, and it will continue to be so. Some specific issue within that of enforcement would be dealt with by QMV and, in my view, looking ahead as far as one can see, foreign policy will continue to be dealt with in this way. Everybody in the room knows that if the consensus is broken it will weaken the European Union.

Q28 Mr Illsley: Foreign Secretary, can I come on to the question of the role of national parliaments? As you are aware the draft Treaty does include proposals for scrutiny by national parliaments of European Commission legislation. Can I ask, what is the government doing to ensure that national parliaments do have an opportunity to scrutinise and, if necessary, oppose EC legislative proposals? Are we going to allow a vote within the House of Commons, for example, to an opinion to oppose these legislative proposals?

Mr Straw: In terms of detailed procedures obviously we have not got there yet, but I hope that if that goes through the parliament itself will come up with the most effective procedures it can for operating that subsidiarity protocol. The government has very clear responsibilities to ensure that there is an early feed of information on the draft proposals, and of course the importance of that mechanism is that parliament is involved in coming to a view about particular proposals at a much earlier stage than it is at the moment, where it is at a late stage. I want to ensure that the government has an effective machine for going through these proposals and for ensuring that they are put before parliament as early as possible, and that parliament then in turn has a very effective mechanism. The parliamentary side is a matter for parliament, but you may be aware that I published proposals earlier in the year, on 11^th February, to improve the way in which we, the British government, were held to account for the conduct of European Union affairs. Those included proposals, but no more because it is a matter for parliament, for strengthening the Committee structure in parliament, building on the experience of the Standing Joint Committee on the Convention, looking at the role of the Select Committees, but also picking up a proposal that we should spell out in detail what the work programme is of the European Union. The first product of this was Prospects for the EU 2004, which I published in mid-April. It got slightly less coverage than we were expecting because it coincided with the announcement on the Referendum.

Q29 Mr Illsley: As a Member of the Procedure Committee who is involved in drawing up the European Standing Committees A and B procedure, these were drawn up as a way of scrutinising European Union documentation, but at the end of the day one of the constant criticisms of our scrutiny of European documents, of European, directives was that the scrutiny came at the end of the process and that there was no substantive resolution or motion before either the Committee or the House. Although the procedures will be for the House to decide upon, presumably through Modernisation Committee or Procedure Committee, the resolution or the motion put before the Committee or put before the House on the subject of the determination will be the government, of course. Will it simply be a take note motion or will there be some substance to it?

Mr Straw: Mr Illsley, let me make this clear. I am in favour of parliament voting on issues, House of Commons and the House of Lords, I think it is it is job; I think if you cannot get things through if you are a government then you had better try harder, is the answer. I would just say modestly that that applies to not only to EU stuff but also to huge issues like whether or not we should go to war. I happen to think that there should be more votes in the Commons rather than fewer, and in Committees. I accept the criticism of the Standing Committees. In Opposition I used to go along to them and they were no more than a talking shop, they have not been particularly effective. They will have to make these arrangements more effective and say it is a matter for the Committee. Of course there are appropriate circumstances where a take note motion in Committee or a debate on the adjournment on the floor of the House are entirely appropriate. We have a debate on the Middle East, for example, it is hopeless trying to have a debate on a motion because people will literally tear each other apart without coming to a conclusion. Having a debate on Zimbabwe, it is probably a good idea to do it on a motion of an adjournment; or on the Armed Forces. But if it is a specific legislative issue we would have a vote for it; if it had been decided here, so we would all have a vote on it. I do not have a problem with that at all, in fact I am in favour of it. Let me say, for the avoidance of doubt, I have not consulted my colleagues about this but my view is very clear.

Q30 Mr Illsley: On the question of the subsidiarity principle, it has been suggested that there is going to be a system of objections which has become known as the "yellow card" issue; what prospect is there of that developing into a "red card" system where there will be a final veto on subsidiarity?

Mr Straw: It is not impossible that the language on this may be changed, but I think there is a misunderstanding here about the "red card" and who exercises the "red card", and it is this: the "red card" is exercised under the QMV system, by national governments, and to get an issue through anyway, assuming it requires QMV, under the current system, as you know, you have to have half the Member States, 232 votes in under the least vote weighting system and 62 per cent for the population. I do not know what the denominator is for the 232. Under the new system it will be 50 per cent of the States and 60 per cent by vote. I have thought about "red card" a lot but you could not have a system where the number of Member States and their populations required to block a proposal at an early stage was different from the number of Member States and their populations to require to block it at a later stage. It would be illogical if you ended up in that position. So it seems to me to be the situation where what the subsidiarity mechanism can do is to push the thing back to the Commission and require them to reconsider it. I happen to think that is the best way of doing it, and the number of national parliaments start kicking up about the issue then there will be change, in my view.

Q31 Andrew Mackinlay: On the Referendum, if and when we have that, would you be favourably disposed to the Referendum including the people of Gibraltar?

Mr Straw: I am sympathetic to that. As you know, Mr Mackinlay, following the decision in Matthews in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the government extended the franchise of European Parliamentary Elections to Gibraltar. We have not discussed this collectively, still less made a decision and, in any event, in the end it will be a matter for the parliament not for us. I am already on record on this in an answer to a parliamentary question, that we are looking at it as well.

Q32 Andrew Mackinlay: Can I go to enlargement? Croatia, I think at this Council, will get formal candidate status, or perhaps you can clarify that. It would be useful to have your view of the prospects of the enlargement to take in this first major State of the Western Balkans - I know Slovenia are now in - and what domino effect that might have on the region. I wonder if I could in that bounce off you the fact that there are a very large number of Croatian citizens, I believe in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Serbia. Would there be any consequences from that of Croatia coming in and the rest of the region not?

Mr Straw: Would you mind if I ask Mr Darroch to answer that?

Mr Darroch: It is true that Croatia is likely to get candidate status at the June European Council, but that is conditional upon continuing cooperation between the Croatian government and International Tribunal on Yugoslavia. Whether they get a start date for accession of negotiations in June or that does not come in until a later European Council is still open to question. As to the message that sends to the other countries of the Western Balkans, all of them either have or are negotiating stabilisation association agreements, which have in them a perspective for eventual EU membership, so the prospect is open to all of them. But I think apart from Croatia there is not another one that is anywhere close to the sort of candidate status that Croatia will be awarded in June.

Q33 Andrew Mackinlay: As of this afternoon, all the indications are, are they not, that Croatia is fully cooperation on justice and the like?

Mr Darroch: The last pronouncement by the Chief Prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal, Madam DelPonte, was that there was full cooperation from Croatia with the Tribunal.

Chairman: Mr Mackinlay, I would like to pursue the enlargement points later on, after we have dealt with Croatia.

Andrew Mackinlay: So you want me to stop now?

Chairman: I would like to pursue enlargement in detail with other colleagues later.

Andrew Mackinlay: Can I come back on that? Am I allowed to ask about mutual defence?

Chairman: Yes.

Q34 Andrew Mackinlay: I cannot see the problem on the mutual defence clause.

Mr Straw: The one we agreed or the one in the draft?

Q35 Andrew Mackinlay: Perhaps you have clarified it. It is the Naples one.

Mr Straw: The Naples one is fine.

Q36 Andrew Mackinlay: Then perhaps you can clarify what the problem is on the new one?

Mr Straw: There is none. We have discussed it; we had discussion in the autumn. The proposals in here, which you will recall were 140.6 and 140.7, were unacceptable to us for a variety of reasons, they did not accord proper status until later, and so on. So they were subject of discussion.

Andrew Mackinlay: Chairman, I do not want to lose my slot, as it were, I have other things I want to raise. We do not normally split things up. I want to raise Cyprus and I want to raise Kaliningrad.

Chairman: That will come later.

Andrew Mackinlay: That is enlargement, is it?

Chairman: We will come back on enlargement and related issues later. I would like to call Ms Stuart and then Mr Hamilton, please.

Q37 Ms Stuart: Can I talk about the weighting of votes and, before we move on to that, for the record I have to say that there is a deep flaw in the Foreign Secretary's argument, which we can pursue as and when we come to the Referendum. He simply cannot go on and asserting and thinking there is a logic in this of saying that this is a Treaty which has to be agreed by all, that the Referendum will only be on the Treaty, but then of course there will consequences to a yes and no vote, given that we are the fourth largest economy in the world. Then when in last December Spain and Poland appeared to be blocking agreement no one on this globe suggested that they should leave the Union, but there seems to be a rather curious debate afoot saying that if Britain does not agree then of course we always have an option and that is to leave it. It is no good looking as puzzled as this, the logic of this is this is a Treaty with all 25 and there is not a logic of the argument of a yes and no vote, other than that if a country as large as Britain says no there is not a Constitution. Similarly, there is a flaw in the logic of his argument on the role of national parliaments, when he suggests that there is no logic in the "red card" being based on QMV when as yet we have not agreed what the new voting weight will be. So could I have some indication as to where the current negotiations are in terms of what QMV should be, what proportion of countries and people is agreement? As I understand it, the latest discussion is around 55 to 65 per cent.

Mr Straw: On your first point, may I say through you, Mr Anderson, to Ms Stuart, that I did not say what you suggested I said. I talked about consequences in the wider sense, which for sure there would be - I did not go beyond that. I also think that there is a great deal of scurrilous speculation about the "what ifs" here, and the main "if" at the moment is, will we get a deal? I hope we do. If we do these things will tend to come together and the debate will become much more concrete than it is at the moment. Your second point, Ms Stuart, was about where we are on proposals for voting. Where we are is this, that there is now a consensus around the room in favour of the so-called "double majority" system. So, as I recall yesterday, nobody was arguing any longer for Nice - none of the 25 countries. The position, which I spelt out, again reflected what we said in the White Paper, which was we, from the UK's point of view, were content with Nice, but we also would be happy with the principle of double majority, obviously depending on the numbers. I did not directly contribute to the debate on the numbers in terms of offering particular percentages. There were a variety of percentages offered in the room. The Irish Presidency are now going away to think about it and they will come back with proposals in the next couple of weeks. If you are asking me to speculate about this my guess is that they will come up with figures higher both in terms of the proportion of Member States and in terms of the proportion of populations necessary in order that there should be a Qualified Majority, but I cannot bank on that.

Q38 Ms Stuart: Does the British government have a view as to what its own benchmark is as to what percentage below which we would not be prepared to go?

Mr Straw: We do, but for very good reasons you will have to excuse me if I say we are not willing to spell it out in public.

Q39 Mr Hamilton: Can I move on to the presidency of the European Council? The rotating presidency scheme that we have had, since the beginning really, is widely regarded as being unworkable now, with nations only being able to BE present once every 12 and a half years, 13 years. The Irish proposal I know has gone some way towards alleviating this by strengthening the President's control over the EU Foreign Minister and the Vice President and giving the European parliament more power to influence the selection of a Council President. Do you think that the President of the council will strengthen the power of Member States in relation to the European Commission? You said earlier that the President will be there working for Member States. Would it really strengthen the power of Member States in relation to the Commission?

Mr Straw: Yes, I think it will because as the Union has become larger, so in practice has it become more difficult, in my observation, to maintain the coherence of the European Council, when they give a direction by Member States, not least because the personalities change every six months. What you have inside the architecture of the European Union is essentially a creative tension, a balance of powers, in a classical political sense between the Council representing the nation States and the Commission representing the EU as a whole, and so on, and also the responsibilities of administering EU law. What this has meant, in my judgment, is that the balance of powers have become unbalanced and we need to get it back, so that it is easier for a Council to see its own agenda driven through and them acting both as a check and also a progress chaser of what the Commission are doing. You cannot do that unless you have a pretty permanent President with his own Secretariat. So that is our view. There are proposals, by the way, for changing the way the presidencies operate, to have these team presidencies. I do not think the proposals, which have come forward so far, are optimal. It is not a red line at all for us. Some Member States have suggested that we just have an Article which is enabling, but the details on how the rotation should operate should be left for Council decisions, just as the detail of Council formations, how many Committees you have should be left to Council decision, and my own view is I am sure that must be sensible.

Q40 Mr Hamilton: How will the Union ensure democratic participation in the selection of the Union President?

Mr Straw: In its normal way.

Q41 Mr Hamilton: That is a very good answer, yes! Which is?

Mr Frost: The Chair of the European Council will be chosen by the European Council Members. So it will be up to them, I guess, to take that decision.

Q42 Mr Hamilton: So we will wait for the white smoke! We do not have a say in that at all?

Mr Straw: Not directly, no. Trust the government. I refer you to the opening line of the Preamble, from Thucydides: "Χρώµεθα γάρ πολιτεία ... χαί όνοµα µέν διά τό µή ές ολίγους άλλ' ές πλείουας οιχεiυ δηµοχρατία χέχλητα".

Q43 Mr Hamilton: And in English?

Ms Stuart: It is for the many and of the few.

Q44 Mr Hamilton: Can I move on to the Commission because I referred earlier to the size of the Commission and therefore the problems of a rotating presidency amongst nations. Will every state still have its own Commissioner even if we are down to one Commissioner per Member State, because we are still going to have 25 and that is going to be very unwieldy?

Mr Straw: We are awaiting proposals on that. We have indicated substantial flexibility and we always have been flexible on this one. In the past the Commissioners were regarded simply, as it were, as representatives of Member States. The Commission could only operate if it operates collegially and is representing the Union and often against the interests of dealing with infractions by particular Member States. The Convention came forward with the proposal for double layered Commission, which we never thought was likely to work properly. What is now in the room is the proposal that the Commission should be two-thirds the size of the total number of States. So if it is up to 27 and then there are 18 Commissioners, and if it goes beyond that you then have 19/20. Each Member State would have a right of nomination in two colleges, two periods out of three. Mr Darroch can tell you much more.

Mr Darroch: The proposition that the presidency put on the table at the last meeting, as the Foreign Secretary says, is that you have one Commissioner per Member State until 2014 and thereafter it goes down to 18 Commissioners in total on equal rotation amongst Member States, so everyone has a Commissioner for the same amount of time.

Ms Stuart: It was the original proposal.

Q45 Mr Hamilton: I defer to my colleague's superior knowledge on this; she has spent enough time looking at it. Can I move on to the Presidency of the Commission itself? I understand that there are a number of names currently being bandied about, including Pat Cox, the President of the European Parliament, Chris Patten, and Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister. Who is our preferred candidate for the presidency?

Mr Straw: The one who is best for the job.

Q46 Mr Hamilton: Any names?

Mr Straw: No.

Q47 Mr Hamilton: We do not have a preferred candidate?

Mr Straw: It is never sensible to voice one's preferences in public. I am sorry I cannot be more helpful.

Q48 Chairman: However, the person who is the President would be the Commissioner, presumably?

Mr Straw: Were the President of the Commission to come from the UK that would take up the UK's position on the Commission, yes; but that begs a large question.

Q49 Chairman: It begs a question including party balance.

Mr Straw: All sorts of questions. If the President of the Commission comes from country X then that takes up country X's Commissioner place.

Q50 Mr Mackay: When do you announce the British Commissioner?

Mr Straw: Later. Normally July, after the June Council.

Q51 Mr Pope: I want to ask questions about the EU Foreign Minister. As I understand it, British policy is that the EU Foreign Minister should be responsible to the Council of Ministers rather than to the Commission, and that in the latest text it talks of the Foreign Minister's responsibilities to the Commission should not prejudice his or her responsibilities to the Council of Ministers. Does that go far enough for the UK position? It seems to me that it was not quite the same as the UK position and I wondered if it went far enough?

Mr Straw: The position is this, originally, under the relevant Articles, which were 23, 25 and 27 the position of the so-called Foreign Minister was very unsatisfactory and pulled in two directions. I took the IGC through all this in what I have to say was mind-numbing detail back in November. In the end colleagues accepted what I was saying, that these existing Articles could not work and that they were not consistent with other aspects of the Union. We now have them changed and that was in the Articles which were produced at Naples. There have been one or two minor changes since then that we have been looking at but, essentially, the person's responsibility is to carry out the common foreign policy agreed by the European Council, i.e. by Ministers. Their responsibilities within the College of Commissioners worked round that.

Q52 Mr Pope: What I was trying to tease out, if British policy is that the so-called Foreign Minister be responsible to the Council of Ministers rather than to the Commission, and that the latest text merely says that it should be without prejudice to the Council of Ministers, the responsibilities to the Commission, that did not seem to be exactly the same and I wondered were you satisfied with the progress that has been made?

Mr Straw: "He or she shall contribute his or her proposals to the development of policy, which he or she shall carry out as mandated by the Council." The overwhelming responsibility on him or her is very clear, it is the mandate of the Council - full stop. What I was concerned about was that this person could not be tripped up by responsibilities to the College of Commissioners, in particular what is draft Article 25-4, which is II-132 in this, which is that: "In carrying out its responsibilities, the Commission shall be completely independent. In the discharge of their duties, the European Commissioners shall neither seek nor take instructions from any government or other body." I felt that that statement, whether appropriate to general terms was quite inappropriate for the European Foreign Minister, which is why, as I say, I argued and one morning went through this in very great detail with colleagues. Most of them and their delegations had not thought about this but after they had thought about it, considered what I was saying and agreed it had to be changed; so it has been changed. We are still examining some of the finer detail.

Q53 Mr Pope: Are there other Member States who take a different view, who think that there should be more responsibility to the Commission, and is there a danger in the final Treaty that we could end up, despite our best efforts, with a Foreign Minister more responsible to the Commission than to the Council?

Mr Straw: No, I do not think so because there is an understanding that foreign policy is qualitatively different from, say, the common agricultural policy - it just is. It is not a matter of law which common trade policy is, it is about a policy which involves relations with other States and that has to be led by the Council of Foreign Ministers and Heads of Government.

Q54 Mr Pope: I have noticed that whenever I look at Hansard you refer to this post as a "so-called" Foreign Minister. Clearly we cannot keep on doing that, is there a consensus on what the job title is?

Mr Straw: There is no consensus. At the moment my own view is that it would be better to call the person the High Representative, as the existing person is called. This negotiation is not going to come to grief on a title, but I have made the point often enough. The key thing is it is not so much what the label is but what the substance of the job is, and on that I have been very keen indeed to pin it down.

Q55 Chairman: Mr Straw, the "no man or woman can serve two masters", what in your judgement is the nature and extent of the obligations of the Minister to the Commission?

Mr Straw: The note here says that the text now makes clear that the so-called European Foreign Minister would be only bound by Commission procedures where this did not conflict with his or her Council mandate. So it is making that clear. What happens at the moment in respect of foreign policy is that you have two individuals, Javier Solana and Chris Patten, one doing the equivalent of the FM job and the other acting as Commissioner for External Relations. They interlink but on the whole there is not a conflict. Let me give you an example. Sometimes - and this is true at the moment in respect of some countries - there may be a proposal for the Commission for a trade and cooperation agreement. The Council may propose that, as part of the conditions for the trade and cooperation agreement, we should insist on clinical conditions relating to counter terrorist cooperation.

Q56 Chairman: Or human rights.

Mr Straw: Yes, and/or human rights, and/or signature of various treaties against proliferation of chemical, biological nuclear weapons. There are a number of examples I can think of. The Commissioners may or may not have a view about whether those conditions should be tacked on, but the Commission have to put up with the fact that they are in some cases tacked on and that the decisions are matters for the Council, not for the Commission.

Q57 Sir John Stanley: Foreign Secretary, can we just be clear about the relationship between the so-called EU Foreign Minister and the Foreign Ministers of national governments, under the latest draft of the Constitution submitted by the Irish Presidency. According to the Sunday Telegraph on May 9^th the paper says this: "Among the amendments are moves to greatly strengthen the powers of the proposed EU Foreign Minister and unelected Commissioner, enabling him or her to give orders to the Foreign Ministers of Member Countries, including Jack Straw, and to control the EU core of diplomats." So, Foreign Secretary, under the new draft are you going to be subject to orders from the so-called EU Foreign Minister?

Mr Straw: No, is the answer, and there has never been that suggestion. In any event, regardless of what may or may not be in the draft, I know of no provenance for that. We would not accept any text that had that in it, and we are insisting that we go back to the Convention text or something very close to it. I do not know where they got that from either. This goes back to this issue of unanimity. The mandate for this guy comes from the Council, he cannot possibly give us orders. This is a union of Nation States. This is fantasy land. I am very happy to argue with people who do not like the European Union because it has a common agricultural policy - we can have a debate about the realities there - or do not like the fact that it is a single market. It is just fantasy.

Q58 Sir John Stanley: That is very clear, thank you. Can we come back to the other leg of this particular report? There are of course now a very large number of EU Ambassadors around the world, and can you clarify for us whether in the latest text there are different degrees of authority and executive authority from the EU Foreign Minister, so-called, in relation to what is broadly called the EU diplomatic core?

Mr Straw: At the moment they are representatives of the Commission, or in some cases representatives of the Council as well. There is a declaration which is on page 161 on this version of the Convention text for the creation of a European External Action Service, which is designed to have a joint service. I happen to think it must be sensible. There is a separate issue about at what stage they will become "Ambassadors" of which I have not seen any proposal.

Q59 Sir John Stanley: So are you saying to us that under the new Treaty text, under the latest Draft, there are additional powers given to the so-called EU Foreign Minister in relation to EU representatives overseas which, as you know, they are not technically Ambassadors but are always referred to as Ambassadors?

Mr Straw: All sorts of people are referred to as Ambassadors who are not; I meet them every day. It is astonishing. The less important the country the more people they have like this, so I call everybody "Excellency" and it avoids any problem. My recollection is that the European Foreign Minister, under the original proposal, Draft Article 27.3: "He or she shall be responsible for handling external relations and for co-ordinating other aspects of the Union's external action." There is a declaration at the back which says, that to assist the Minister for Foreign Affairs, introduced in Article 1-27 of the Draft Constitution, the Convention agrees on the need for the creation of a European External Action Service. So he or she would then become responsible for this. Obviously he or she would have responsibilities to the Commission as well, but I think it is a sensible way forward and would give us more control than we have at the moment because these things are rather spawned, to be honest, and sometimes you find all sorts of odd-bods from the European Union running all sorts of odd offices around the world, and I am not entirely clear whether they are subject to the same sort of rigorous appraisal of their performance as, say, members of national diplomatic services.

Q60 Sir John Stanley: Do you feel it satisfactory to continue with this quite difficult split of responsibility between the Commission and the so-called EU Foreign Minister for those acting in the name of the EU overseas? Have you given consideration as to whether it might be better for them all to come under one or the other, that it would be practicable?

Mr Straw: They will come under one, they will come under the External Action Service, as I understand it, run by the European Foreign Minister and therefore responsible to the Council of Ministers. I think it is a good thing. There will be individuals within an office - if you take the really big offices, say Washington - who will be responsible, say, for trade, and day by day they would report to the Commissioner for Trade rather than to the European Foreign Minister; but the overall exercise there would be coordinated by somebody responsible to the Council of Foreign Ministers through the European Foreign Minister. I think it is a better way of proceeding. So at the moment, as I say, you have a lot of these people abroad and it is not entirely clear what they are doing in every case.

Mr Darroch: I want to add to this that the point about this process is that you are merging, as the Foreign Secretary has said, a few representatives of the Council who work for Solana and all the permanent Commission's Commission Officers overseas at the moment, who will then have a unified service. This gives the Council much more control at present over what these overseas organisations, offices are doing, and they will all be working within the framework of policy performance that is set by the Council, which the European Foreign Minister is there to implement. So the net result of this is more control for the Council Member States over what these offices are doing overseas, than is the case at the moment.

Q61 Ms Stuart: There was me thinking that there was not any need for any Treaty base for the External Action Service whatsoever and we are just putting it in to keep Joschka Fischer happy. The Declaration, as I understand it, has not got a legal basis, and there is a really strong argument to be made that we are going into detail that actually is unconstitutional, or does not have a proper place in the Constitution and the Foreign Ministers and the Council of Ministers ought to make up their minds what is the best thing to do. Can I move on to my favourite pet hate, and that is the Passerelle clause, 24.4? The House of Lords report in one of its reports that its strongest criticism of the Constitution was not so much what is in there but the way they initiated some processes, and the Passerelle clause has actually been made by Her Majesty's official Opposition as one of its "red lines" or its acceptability of the Constitution or not. As I understand it, the last debate we had is that that clause has been removed, as it stands, and from what I understand has actually been improved in a way that has strengthened tremendously. As we stand now, is the Naples text still the one which we think will be accepted?

Mr Straw: Yes, it is now to be found in document 76 of the Irish Presidency, which is essentially the Naples text. It completely transforms the Passerelle clauses, objectionable for the reasons, which you have indeed often rehearsed, Ms Stuart. It is now strengthened so that if any national parliament, i.e. just one, "makes known its opposition within six months of the date of such notification, the European decision referred to above shall not be adopted." So it gives each national parliament a veto. I think it is very satisfactory, and as a result of us arguing our corner.

Q62 Mr Pope: Can I ask briefly about the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and can you say what you believe the status of the Charter will be? Will it be an integral part of the Constitution or will it be merely a list of aspirations appended to it?

Mr Straw: If the Treaty is agreed it will appear in the Treaty. That is not a problem. We agreed the Charter of Rights in any event. The issue has always been its legal status, and it is for that reason that there were negotiated in the Convention what were called Horizontal Articles, which were Articles 251 and 252. Its effect was to make absolutely clear - and I quote from Article 251-2: "The Charter does not extend the field of application of Union law beyond the powers of the Union or establish any new power or task for the Union, or modify powers or tasks defined in other Parts of the Constitution." It also makes clear that the provisions of the Charter contain principles, which are very general, and not just rights, and that they shall be "judicially cognisable only in the interpretation of such acts of the Union and in ruling on their legality." There is then the issue of the explanations. There were explanations prepared at the instigation of the Praesidium of the Convention, which drafted the Charter, and the Preamble of Part II says that, "The Charter will be interpreted by the courts of the Union Member States with due regard to the explanations ..." We carry on looking at this carefully to ensure that we pin this down but there is already a very, very significant amount of protection here. May I give you one last example, which is about the rights of collective bargaining and action? This is Article II-28. which says that, "Workers and employers, or their respective organisations, have ..." and it adopts the "right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements at appropriate levels and, in cases of conflict of interest, to take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action." But this is subject to very important saving, where the dots were, "in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices". So this does not add to any of the rights which people currently have, either under domestic law or, for example, under the ILN Convention or various Articles of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Q63 Mr Pope: There are a lot of serious concerns about this, are there not, Foreign Secretary, as we appear to be facing a Spring of discontent, as a variety of sectors are looking at strike action - thinking of the railways and the London Underground. There will be real public concern if it was felt that this Charter extended the right to strike. Could you give us a categorical assurance that that is not the case; furthermore, that you will not sign up to if it it does?

Mr Straw: I can give you that categorical assurance. Neither does it detract from the right to strike. The point is, it leaves the right to strikes within the purview of domestic parliaments - that is exactly where it should be. That is why there is this very important wording in II-28, people have these rights, "in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices", not just national laws but national laws and practices.

Q64 Mr Illsley: Foreign Secretary, can I ask a few questions on European Security and Defence Policy? The first of which is that last year, last November, at the so-called Naples conclave, the Foreign Ministers agreed a test for the so-called mutual defence clause. Are we happy with that or is there a risk that the current text could jeopardise our standing within NATO? Is there any possibility that the text for that clause will be opened up for further discussion?

Mr Straw: We are happy about the draft changes in the text. As I say, they were to I-40 and to later parts of the text. There has been no suggestion that this should be reopened - although they could be - and I do not recall a single occasion since Christmas when it has been reopened because there was overall agreement in both the Foreign Ministers at Naples and by Heads of Government. This was an issue on which people predicted there would be a great argument; there was a great debate and a very satisfactory conclusion was arrived at.

Q65 Mr Illsley: Moving on to Structured Cooperation, I think we as a government proposed the original proposal for a small group of Member States to move ahead in terms of defence cooperation. The Irish have now amended that to include any Member State within that group. Does that meet our fears for the original draft? Are we happy with the latest proposals?

Mr Straw: Mr Darroch indicates assent, and I agree with him.

Q66 Ms Stuart: Does that mean that you can no longer have the system where you set up the inner core by unanimity and then the core can move on by QMV? The core has to require validity on unanimity, that was the real objection?

Mr Darroch: In relation to Structured Cooperation or in relation to Enhanced Cooperation?

Q67 Ms Stuart: Enhanced Cooperation?

Mr Darroch: There is still a debate about that provision under Enhanced Cooperation, on whether the decision had been taken by unanimity.

Q68 Ms Stuart: That was the real problem.

Mr Darroch: There is still a debate on that so that clause is still important.

Q69 Mr Illsley: If the Irish have opened a proposal whereby any Member State can be included within a small group, that could still produce a small group in the way that it was as originally envisaged and we objected to it. In other words, although we could all, say, as a group be involved in Structured Cooperation, it still might lead to a small group of States acting on their own. Even though the facility or the mechanism is there for any country to be involved, they might just choose not to, leaving into a group of countries who are interested in being involved. Is there a danger of that?

Mr Darroch: I am not sure if I have quite followed the question. The point about Structured Cooperation as opposed to Enhanced Cooperation is the provision is designed essentially to allow small groups to move ahead, especially with defence cooperation matters, and that could be developing particular defence systems or whatever. I think the text does have some sort of entry criteria for joining that small group that is taking the Structured Cooperation forward, so you have to meet certain levels or have a certain commitment about the contribution you are going to make to the Structured Cooperation.

Q70 Ms Stuart: The real question is: if you have a mechanism that allows a small group to move ahead and then the process is so open that late comers may join as they choose, that is fine; but there is a flaw at the moment that it could actually allow the small group to form and that small group in itself becomes more exclusive by moving on QMV and not allow outsiders to come in.

Mr Straw: Have QMV within the small group and it becomes less exclusive in terms of who else can join, and that has been quite an important part of this. If you have unanimity that means that any member of the core group can veto the joining of others. This is an area where QMV works to the advantage of the greater number. So you have QMV in it so that one individual country could not veto another nation seeking to join, and that has been one of the things we have been arguing for. Sometimes QMV works in a counter intuitive way, just as one example; the Zimbabwe Sanctions is another. Can I also say, Mr Illsley, there never has been anything to stop Member States of the EU from cooperating bilaterally, trilaterally, quadrilaterally outside the Treaties, and plenty of that goes on at the moment, and long may it continue.

Mr Darroch: Just on the Structured Cooperation point, because there is a difference here between Structured Cooperation and Enhanced Cooperation. The text that we have arrived at, which is no longer under debate, it is more or less agreed, makes it clear that cooperation ... It is about capability commitments, and it is open to any Member State that wishes to join. The provisions on the Structured Cooperation have to be agreed by all 25, as a whole, not just by perspective participants, before it can be launched.

Q71 Mr Illsley: I think I have it now.

Mr Straw: You are the only one who is confused, by the way! They have Enhanced Cooperation in Afghanistan, by the way!

Q72 Mr Illsley: Et tu, Brute! Turning to the European Armaments Agency, what is the progress on the European Armaments Agency, and can you say a little bit more about this conflict between ourselves and the French in terms of this suggestion that it should have a bi-Europe policy, rather than look outside of Europe, or perhaps leasing equipment, purchasing of equipment?

Mr Straw: I think it is working all right, actually. The French Defence Minister said in Le Figaro on 20^th May, "There is no French UK divergence on the role of the Agency. This will in a balanced way cover four areas: future military capabilities, harmonising operational needs, new armaments programmes and research. The British, like the French, believe that Ministers of Defence should take on the primary responsibility within the Agency. This now seems to be agreed by everyone else. On finance and decision making there is no difference between the UK and France." The Committee may know that Nick Whitney, who is an official in the Ministry of Defence, has been appointed to head the Agency Establishment Team. I think it will work out fine, and it is to the advantage of the UK's defence capabilities; it is also, in my judgement, to the advantage of the UK's defence industry.

Q73 Chairman: You are convinced that there is no divergence on a more protectionism little European defence procurement policy by the French and ourselves looking more flexibly and more widely?

Mr Straw: I am quite sure of that. In any event, defence exports will remain a matter for each individual state, and that is very clear. As you know, we have a co-operative arrangement on defence exports within Europe with the common criteria for export controls but what we export is a matter for us.

Q74 Mr Illsley: Finally, Foreign Secretary, could you tell us a little bit more about the EU planning cell within NATO? How is that developing and is there any danger of it duplicating existing NATO structures?

Mr Straw: Yes. A lot of work has been going on on this, both about where it should be housed, how it should be housed, who should be alongside it and its numbers. There has been a debate amongst the partners over this. We have been concerned to ensure - and I personally have taken a lot of interest in this - that it does work as efficiently as possible and with as light a touch as possible, and that is where we have got to.

Chairman: Foreign Secretary, I would like to turn now to broad questions of enlargement, the next stages of enlargement, the new neighbours and so on. Mr Olner will begin.

Q75 Mr Olner: Foreign Secretary, before we get on to enlargement, one of the difficulties that has been faced is one of the 25, of course, is Cyprus and Cyprus still sadly - and I am sure you share that sadness - is divided. I know you said in a letter to us on 17 May I believe that as a country we are going to work to encourage tourism to Northern Cyprus and to have political contacts with Turkish Cypriot leaders. Can I ask how far down the road are we on that? I think it is tremendously important, seeing as the Committee has just announced it is going to do a new inquiry into Cyprus and the situation.

Mr Straw: You will be familiar with the fact of the referendum and its outcome. We discussed the matter at the end of April EU General Affairs and External Relations Council. We invited the Commission to bring forward comprehensive proposals to seek to end the isolation of Turkish Cypriots in the mainstream of the European Union, with particular emphasis on economic integration. I think my letter to you, which I have somewhere here, which was subsequent to that meeting, spelt out what the EU had agreed in that respect. We met on the Monday, 26, there was a regulation passed on the Wednesday which governed the green line to provide a model on which to base the new trading regime. The EU regulation established special rules concerning the crossing of goods, services and persons to take account of the fact that the Government of the Republic of Cyprus does not exercise effective control over the whole of the island. There are also proposals, which we await, from the Commission for spending the 259 million euro structural funds earmarked for helping the north "... catch up" with the EU acquis. Mr Olner, you will be aware that although the Government of Cyprus in practice represents only the Greek Cypriot side of the green line all citizens of Cyprus, north and south of the green line, are EU citizens and the territory as a whole is now part of the territory which has accepted its membership of the EU. That was the basis on which in the EU we accepted Cyprus's application. It is a complicated situation but what our policy was, is and will remain is for a Government of Cyprus representing a unified island being able to represent all Cypriots within the Council of the European Union.

Q76 Mr Olner: On the basis that may well take, sadly, a time to achieve, will Northern Cyprus have access to all of the EU institutions and will they be able to play, as part of the island of Cyprus a role in the European Union?

Mr Straw: We do not recognise the so-called TNRC as a state in international law. We do not as a nation and neither does the European Union. Indeed in my letter to you I say we shall not recognise the north as a separate independent state. There is no question of any so-called government from a separate independent state of Northern Cyprus sitting around the table in the European Union. What we want to see is all the citizens of Cyprus, north and south, effectively represented in the European Union by a Government which represents north and south, that was the purpose of the Kofi Annan plan.

Q77 Mr Olner: I accept that but how do the citizens of Northern Cyprus make their voice known in the European Union?

Mr Straw: First of all, by easing the restrictions on movement both in terms of trade and of people, by contact with them and by encouraging a process of political dialogue. There was a unanimity in the meeting that the people of Northern Cyprus should not be penalised for the fact that they voted in favour of the unification plan, far from it. We have obligations to them and we should follow those through, obviously in a manner consistent with our overall view about Cyprus which is that we are seeking a unification of the island not a division of it.

Q78 Mr Mackay: Continuing on Cyprus, Foreign Secretary, I think we all fully understand why it would be wrong to recognise Northern Cyprus. Having said that, do you agree with the Commission for Enlargement, Günter Verheugen, when he attacked Tassos Papadopoulos, and I quote "... for misleading the European Union by pretending to support the Annan plan but campaigning against it". Those are strong words but they look to many of us to be accurate. Would you support the Commissioner?

Mr Straw: Can I just put it this way. Hard things were said at the time of the campaign for the referendum. I think we want to put all that behind us and look forward to constructive relationships and to a bridging of these problems, which are there. Anybody who knows the history of Cyprus, north or south, knows that it arouses strong passions, particularly amongst the residents north and south about what they perceive to have happened. In this respect it is not that different from the kind of passions that we all know in respect of Northern Ireland. We also know from Northern Ireland that the best way to try and help resolve these is to look forward rather than keep raking over the coals so that is what we are trying to do.

Q79 Mr Mackay: You said, rightly, a moment ago that the people who live in the north of Cyprus should not be penalised for voting for the Annan plan, in fact the opposite. Is not the most practical way to ensure that we allow international flights into the north which would be the single best gesture to improve not just tourism but the whole economy of the north?

Mr Straw: The issues of trade, which obviously include transportation both in terms of the opening of the sea ports and the opening of the airports, are on the agenda. I cannot say exactly when firm decisions will be made. In my letter to you, I talked about a balance to establish a clear legal framework and to facilitate trade and other links between the two parts of the island. A regime to allow direct trade with the north would need to strike the same balance. That is on the agenda.

Chairman: I would like to continue with Cyprus before turning to other countries, Mr Mackinlay and then Mr Chidgey please.

Mr Chidgey: I want to get on to the Balkans actually so I will wait.

Chairman: Mr Mackinlay?

Andrew Mackinlay: I want to move on to Russia.

Chairman: Carry on then, Mr Olner.

Q80 Mr Olner: Very quickly, the two candidates which are next in line to accede to the European Union are Bulgaria and Rumania with Croatia hopefully not too far behind. Have they all three got to be in as one block or could they go at different speeds and come in at different times? More importantly, and I will finish on this, Foreign Secretary, would Croatia's entry give a very, very clear signal to the rest of the former Yugoslavia that the European Union can embrace?

Mr Straw: Bulgaria and Rumania are, generally speaking, in conclusions of the European Council treated in the same sentence and the aim is to close the negotiations with Bulgaria and Rumania this year and to welcome their accession in January 2007. On the whole, they have been making similar, not the same progress but in the end different judgments will be made about each of them. Has Bulgaria met the requirements and has Rumania? There is the issue then of Turkey, of course. Turkey are looking for a firm date for the start of negotiations, with that firm date to be made by the December European Council this year. It is our hope that such a date can be agreed.

Q81 Mr Olner: Croatia?

Mr Straw: Croatia, there has been no date set.

Q82 Chairman: June?

Mr Darroch: Croatia, there should be a decision in the June Council on their candidate status and they will, as you say, be the second country, the former Yugoslavia, after Slovenia to have joined or to be appearing to join the EU and that is, of course, a signal to the remaining countries of the Western Balkans, yes.

Q83 Mr Chidgey: Sticking with Croatia and the Western Balkans, knowing as we do the political history in those countries, Foreign Secretary, how confident are you that in a reasonable time Croatia and the other Western Balkan countries will be able to comply with the Copenhagen criteria on democracy and human rights? I say that advisedly.

Mr Straw: One can generalise about the Western Balkans because they share parts of a common history but it is also quite dangerous to generalise about them, particularly now, because they are each at rather different stages of economic and above all political development. Slovenia is already in but Slovenia has shown remarkable progress, it was always the most prosperous part of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. It was one of the countries which found it the easiest to satisfy the Copenhagen criteria and everything else and its GDP - the figures I was looking at yesterday - I think is above that of some existing Member States of the EU. That is at one end. At the other end there are territories like, for example, Kosovo and Serbia Montenegro which for different reasons are at a less advanced stage in terms of any accession to the EU. Now encouraging and supporting stability and progress in the Balkans is a very important responsibility for the EU both in terms of concern for human kind there but also because this is our backyard and we know from our own history how conflict there can spread to conflict across Europe so we remain very engaged with each of these countries.

Q84 Mr Chidgey: My main concern is that, as you rightly say, the economic differences exist and they relate to a degree to the ethnic tensions and which particular ethnic group is superior at any particular time and has access to the economic growth and development. How are we going to tackle this within the EU and have a complete change of culture within these countries?

Mr Straw: I think one of the remarkable achievements of the European Union is the way that it has been and continues to be an engine of cultural and political change within accession countries. If you look at Eastern Europe and if you look at the absence of institutional frameworks in most of the former Soviet bloc countries and look at where most of them have got to now it is quite remarkable. I am optimistic about the power for example of the European Union and its existing Member States to pull the Balkans up. That said, some of the areas within the former Republic of Yugoslavia are in different stages of development. I was talking to Lord Ashdown, Paddy Ashdown, who in my judgment is doing an exceptional job in Bosnia-Herzegovina about his proposals there. In Kosovo we know we have had setbacks recently and Kosovo's final status has yet to be determined. They are at one end. Macedonia is making progress and seems to have dealt with the trauma of the accident leading to the death of President Trajkovski pretty well and Serbia-Montenegro is another circumstance and then you have Albania. Our job is to support them all.

Q85 Andrew Mackinlay: The partnership agreement with Russia is up. There has been some alleged reluctance with the Russian Federation to deal European Union wise. Could you comment upon that and as we are pushed for time, Kaliningrad, I think the Russian Federation have some grounds for disappointment about the spirit with which previous agreements might not be being delivered in the sense, for instance, I think there was a tension there should be a dedicated rail line through to their Oblast in Kaliningrad.

Mr Straw: The Russian Federation I think have accepted that the European Union now is 25 countries and their negotiations will be with 25 and not with any fewer.

Q86 Andrew Mackinlay: Indeed.

Mr Straw: No more than in the Baltic states is some of the difficult history of the old Soviet Union more obvious. Bear in mind that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were not just part of, as it were, the wider Soviet bloc but they were part, constitutionally, of the Soviet Union before, whatever the history they are new states. That has caused some difficulties, two of the three states have very substantial Russian minority populations, I think you are familiar with the circumstances so it causes problems. These problems can be resolved. Kaliningrad we thought was going to be a really big problem and access to it, so far there has been a relatively satisfactory outcome and we just have to continue to work on this. The advantage of the European Union is that we are able to ride above some of these local tensions provided by some guidance to our colleagues in those states.

Q87 Andrew Mackinlay: What about the partnership agreement generally?

Mr Straw: Progress on the partnership agreement?

Q88 Andrew Mackinlay: Yes.

Mr Straw: There is progress being made. Since I am about to run out of time, I do not know whether you want to add anything on this? We can send you a note.

Q89 Chairman: Could you send us a note on that. Just one final question, Foreign Secretary, today's press is full of the pressure from seven countries in favour of recognising the Christian heritage of the Union in the preamble. One, what is the British Government's attitude to this and, two, is it a red line for these seven countries?

Mr Straw: You will have to ask them, and many of the other countries have not been as helpful as we have in publishing our negotiating position in advance. There is probably as high a level of scrutiny of this draft constitutional treaty here and of EU business as there is in any other Member State and I am very pleased and proud to have made a contribution to that level of scrutiny. I hope to see more scrutiny in the future.

Q90 Chairman: Where do we stand?

Mr Straw: Where we stand is we are happy with the preamble. When this was discussed yesterday I said - and I think this has been reported in one or two newspapers - that if there are proposals to include references to Christianity as part of our heritage then there has to be included in that text references to the other religions which have made an historic contribution to our heritage and that includes Judaism and Islam, if you bear in mind not just the recent history of Europe but also the distant history of Europe. There are various proposals going around, we will look at those. What I am concerned about is to ensure that any text which we do put down is an inclusive one and not seen as an exclusive one. Alongside that sentiment from these countries there was also a pretty wide sentiment that it would be unwise for this project to establish a more workable constitutional treaty to come to grief on a preambular text which has no legal status. I sort of sense in the room that much of Europe's religious history has, I am afraid, been recorded in conflict and we just need to bear that in mind.

Q91 Chairman: Foreign Secretary, some at least of us are impressed by the way in which these various clauses - passerelle and so on -are engrained on your chest, and your colleagues. May I thank you very much indeed and good luck in the future negotiations.

Mr Straw: Thank you very much. No doubt I will be back.