House of Commons - Foreign Affairs

Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Third Report

1 Introduction

1. The Foreign Affairs Committee has maintained an ongoing Inquiry into Developments in the European Union since 2001.[1] We take evidence from the Foreign Secretary or the Minister for Europe before each six-monthly formal meeting of the European Council, the body of EU heads of state or government. We also periodically publish Reports, the last of which assessed a number of issues following the UK's Presidency of the EU in the second half of 2005, and was published in July 2006.[2]

2. In 2007 we took a particular interest in the process of EU Treaty reform. We questioned the then Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP, on this when she gave evidence on 19 June, in advance of the June European Council.[3] Under the Portuguese EU Presidency in the second half of the year, an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) among the Member States opened in July and concluded in December with the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon. We held further evidence sessions following the launch of the IGC—with the new Minister for Europe, Mr Jim Murphy MP, on 12 September;[4] with the new Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hon David Miliband MP, on 10 October;[5] and with the latter again on 12 December, in advance of the December European Council.[6] The following day, 13 December, Mr Miliband and the Prime Minister signed the Lisbon Treaty on behalf of the UK.

3. On 24 October 2007 we decided to produce a Report on foreign policy aspects of the new EU Treaty.[7] At the informal meeting of the European Council in Lisbon on 18-19 October, the Member States had reached political agreement on a new Treaty which was expected to be signed at the formal European Council meeting in December. By this stage it was clear that the Government would be asking Parliament to consider legislation in early 2008 incorporating the provisions of the new Treaty into UK law, thereby enabling its ratification.

4. In publishing this Report, our aim is two-fold. Our primary purpose is to inform the House's consideration of the Government's Bill, which was published on 17 December as the European Union (Amendment) Bill. In addition, the Treaty sets out a bare outline of several aspects of the EU's new foreign policy arrangements, leaving the details of their implementation to be worked out. Under these circumstances, we thought it useful to identify some policy issues for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to address when it participates in discussions on these matters.

5. Although our focus in this Report is on foreign policy aspects of the new Treaty, we do not wish to imply that other issues are unimportant or of no interest to us. We have questioned Ministers widely on a number of aspects of the new Treaty and the 2007 IGC process. Our remit is to scrutinise the "expenditure, policy and administration" of the FCO and its associated bodies.[8] This report aims to illuminate for Parliament and the public those aspects of the Lisbon Treaty most directly relevant to the future operation of the FCO and of UK foreign policy in the EU framework. These include a number of matters which go wider than the narrow focus in the public debate on the Government's "red lines". We are also aware that other aspects have been looked at in detail by the European Scrutiny Committee.[9]

6. To help us prepare this Report, we took oral evidence on three occasions, in addition to the sessions on general EU issues referred to in paragraph 2 above. On 21 November 2007, we heard from Professor Christopher Hill, of the University of Cambridge; Professor Richard Whitman, of the University of Bath; and Mr Graham Avery, of St Antony's College, University of Oxford, and until retirement in 2006 a longstanding European Commission official, whose career included service in the Directorate-General for External Relations.[10] On 5 December, we heard from the Rt Hon the Lord Owen, former Foreign Secretary.[11] On 8 January 2008, we took evidence in Brussels from Dr Javier Solana, the EU's High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).[12] We are grateful to all those who gave oral evidence and made written submissions.[13] We also wish to thank our interlocutors at a series of informal meetings during our visit to Brussels, and staff at the UK Permanent Representation to the EU who facilitated that visit.

7. In addition to the witnesses listed above, we invited serving officials of the EU Council Secretariat and European Commission to give oral evidence. However, they declined to do so before the new Treaty was signed, on the grounds that such a move would be premature. We regret that we were not able to elicit their views in a public evidence session. This has unavoidably limited the extent to which we could draw upon those views in this Report.

8. The structure of this Report is as follows. Chapter 2 briefly considers matters relating to the 2007 IGC in general, including necessary background to the rest of the Report and consideration of the involvement of Parliament in the IGC process. The rest of the Report deals with foreign policy aspects of the Lisbon Treaty. Chapter 3 briefly considers the development of the foreign policy arrangements contained in the Treaty, including the Government's position in regard to its foreign policy "red line". Chapters 4 to 7 deal with the Treaty's substantive foreign policy content. In each of these chapters, we first set out the relevant provisions in the Treaty and then assess them. Chapter 8 provides several points of overall assessment. Annexes 1-4 set out in diagrammatic or tabular form many of the key foreign policy arrangements under the Lisbon Treaty which are referred to in the text, and Annex 5 provides a glossary.

9. This Report was prepared on the basis of the final text of the Lisbon Treaty, dated 3 December 2007.[14] Article numbers in the final text of the Treaty—which are referred to in the text of our Report—may vary from those in earlier drafts of the Treaty, which may be those referred to by witnesses in their evidence.

Terminology

TREATY NAME

10. When we decided to produce this Report, the new Treaty was commonly referred to as the "Reform Treaty". This was the term used both by the UK Government and in the mandate for the 2007 IGC agreed by EU leaders.[15] As a result, it is the name which is used in much of our evidence. However, when the final text of the new Treaty was published in December, the term adopted was the "Treaty of Lisbon". This is the name used in the Government's Bill, and in this Report we therefore refer throughout to the "Lisbon Treaty".

THE EU'S "COMMUNITY" ELEMENTS

11. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 made formal a distinction between "Community" and "intergovernmental" elements of the EU. "Community" elements are governed according to the "Community method", under which there may be legislation which is binding on the Member States, which only the European Commission may propose, which typically requires European Parliament approval, and which is subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and to enforcement by the European Commission. Until the Maastricht Treaty, only the European Community (EC) existed, governed according to the Community method under the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC). The Maastricht Treaty, officially called the Treaty on European Union (TEU), added to the EC two "intergovernmental" elements, namely co-operation in the field of foreign and security policy, and co-operation in the field of justice and home affairs. These two elements fell outside the Community method. The Maastricht Treaty brought all three elements together under the umbrella of the new European Union. The three elements are often referred to as to the EU's three "pillars", namely the Community first pillar, the intergovernmental Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) comprising the second pillar, and intergovernmental cooperation on Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) comprising the third pillar.

12. The Lisbon Treaty would abolish the European Community. If the Lisbon Treaty comes into force, only the European Union will exist. However, despite this, the "Community method" and its associated institutions and procedures will continue to exist as part of the EU, governed by an amended version of the TEC, which would be renamed to refer to the EU instead of the EC. Compared to the status quo, the difference—under the Lisbon Treaty—is that these "Community" elements would legally and linguistically be subsumed into the European Union. Although the proposed formal abolition of the EC means that it is problematic to continue to refer to these elements as "Community" ones,[16] it is vital to be able to continue to distinguish between "Community" and intergovernmental elements of the foreign policy aspects of the Lisbon Treaty. At the time of preparation of this Report, no new conventional terminology had emerged; we have therefore continued to refer to "Community" elements, as the wording least likely to cause confusion.

"FOREIGN POLICY" AND "EXTERNAL ACTION"

13. In the policy field discussed by this Report, the distinction between the EU's "Community" and intergovernmental elements gives rise to a need for a term which encompasses both. In the title and some of the chapter headings and conclusions of this Report, we use the term "foreign policy" informally in this inclusive way. However, in the Lisbon Treaty, the official EU term encompassing both "Community" and intergovernmental elements is EU "external action".[17] Given the purposes of our Report, we felt that we should adhere as closely as possible to the terminology of the Lisbon Treaty. To refer jointly to "Community" and intergovernmental elements as "foreign policy" might in any case cause confusion with the intergovernmental Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In the main text of this Report, therefore, the term EU "external action" refers jointly to relevant "Community" areas of policy plus the intergovernmental CFSP.

"COUNCIL"

14. There are two EU bodies with the word "Council" in their title. The European Council is the grouping of Member State heads of state or government, i.e. Presidents and/or Prime Ministers. The Council of the European Union is the body of Member State Ministers. As such, the Council of the European Union has been known as the Council of Ministers. The Council of the European Union meets in different configurations of Ministers depending on the policy area under discussion—for example, Foreign Ministers meet currently in the General Affairs and External Relations Council. Along with the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union is the EU's legislative body. By contrast, the European Council has no legislative powers, but sets the EU's direction and strategy. In this Report, we follow conventional practice in using the shortened form "Council" to refer only to the Council of Ministers; when we mean the European Council, we use the full term.

1 Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 2001-02, press release No 3, 20 July 2001 Back

2 Foreign Affairs Committee, Sixth Report of Session 2005-06, Developments in the European Union, HC 768 Back