Foreign Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence from Dr Martyn Bond, Visiting Professor, Royal Holloway University of London

Please find below my evidence submitted to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons concerning the future of the European Union.

The Argument of my Submission can be Summarised as Follows

The UK has lost its way in adapting to the challenges of globalisation. It is heading for an increasingly isolated position, out of sympathy with its regional partners in Europe. It needs to develop a leading role within its regional bloc, co-ordinating its priorities with other leading players there. UK foreign policy should prioritise the EU and project UK power increasingly through this regional organisation.

A Note on my Background

I am Visiting Professor of European Politics and Policy at Royal Holloway University of London, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the European Business School as well as a Senior Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar.

My main career was as a European civil servant, serving eight years from 1974 as press spokesman in Brussels for the Council of Ministers of the EU (then the EEC), a further seven years, first as a senior administrator during the negotiation of the fourth Lomé Convention with the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, and then with responsibility for relations between the Council and the European Parliament. From 1989 until 1999 I worked in London as Director of the UK Office of the European Parliament.

My initial professional training, however, was in the BBC, which I joined on my return from Hamburg in 1966, working there until 1970. I later took leave of absence from my civil service post in Brussels from 1981 to 1983 to work as BBC correspondent in Berlin, broadcasting in German and English about politics, economy and society in West Berlin and East Germany. In 2005 I was invited to become the London Press Correspondent for the Council of Europe, advising on media strategy and promoting the image of the Council in the UK.

I gained a BA in modern languages and literature from Cambridge, followed by further study at Hamburg and Sussex Universities (D.Phil 1971). Between 1970 and 1973 I was lecturer in West European Studies at the New University of Ulster. After retiring from the European civil service I was Director of the Federal Trust for Education and Research from 2000 to 2003, and from 2005 I have been Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway. In 2006 I was invited to become a patron of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies.

I have written and edited several books, including Eminent Europeans (Greycoat Press, 1996), The Treaty of Nice Explained (Federal Trust, 2001), Europe’s Wider Loyalties: Global Responsibilities for the New Europe (Kogan Page, 2002), The European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe (Council of Europe, 2010), and The Council of Europe: structure, history and issues in European politics (Routledge, 2011). I also write for Public Service Europe (web only) and for Parliament Magazine, a Dods publication in Brussels, and I lecture on European issues both in the UK and abroad. I have contributed to numerous training courses for UK civil servants, in particular in the context of Dod’s programmes Westminster Explained and Brussels Explained.

The Future of the European Union: Implications for UK Government Policy

Global framework—Regional priority

1. The power of individual states such as the UK to shape an effective response to global shocks has considerably diminished over the past 50 years. Poor economic performance in relation to other European economies has increased the need for the UK in particular to work with other members of the EU in seeking common solutions for the region. The UK is not as impecunious as Greece, but it is also not as wealthy as Germany.

2. In addition to the shock of the current financial crisis, the member states of the EU now face cultural, social and economic adjustments to an exceptionally strong migratory influx as a result of globalisation. Doubtless other external shocks—possibly ecological or energy-related—will also soon call for a European response.

3. As Chou-en-Lai predicted long ago, at the global level the move to dialogue among several strong regional powers appears unstoppable. The EU represents one such power. The UK individually—despite retaining some elements of power acquired in earlier years (nuclear deterrent, Security Council seat, special relationship, Commonwealth)—does not. Sooner or later it will be the EU and not an individual nation which will answer Kissinger’s phone call and speak for Europe. The route to optimising the UK’s influence globally lies therefore in strengthening its position inside the EU.

Government influence or Party politics?

4. Many policy initiatives derive from party political discussions at European level. Across the continent, political forces are organised in three main groups, the European Peoples Party, the Socialists and Democrats, and the Alliance of Democrats and Liberals in Europe.

5. The absence of the Conservative Party from the EPP represents a serious weakness for the UK in its efforts to exert influence in the EU at a political level. Without a close alliance with the EPP, the Conservative element of the Coalition government is absent from the dominant circle of those deciding the direction of EU policies in most other states. This is a party political issue that is harming the national interest. It should be remedied as soon as possible.

6. The December fiasco last year was the most recent high-level example of the UK’s misjudgement of continental responses because of Conservative political isolation. Absent from the meeting of the EPP in Marseilles just before the Brussels Summit, the Conservative leadership was unable to grasp the importance of other states’ political capital invested in the Eurozone.

7. Ideological assumptions increasingly shape member states’ political positions at continental level. They influence the European argument well before the Commission puts practical proposals on the table for formal discussion in Brussels. For the UK, the underlying issue is as much a matter of political contacts and ideological affinities as of institutional structures.

8. In this analysis, the fiasco of last December was not a watershed, but one of a series of accidents as these broad political affinities surface from time and time. Until the Conservative Party changes its continental political alignment, the UK under its present leadership will be isolated again and again. In the 2014 European Parliament elections, for instance, the main political groups are all likely to nominate their candidates for the post of President of the Commission well in advance. Conservative absence from the EPP will again isolate the UK Prime Minister when the European Council is subsequently called on to endorse the next President of the Commission.

9. The grand narrative of European unification has little attraction in the UK at the popular level. However, it clearly still has—as it has had since 1945—considerable strength among European political elites. The assumption of “strength through unity” drives the policy choices of major political parties across the continent. If the alternative is impotent isolation, it also makes more and more sense for the UK.

Maximising UK influence inside the EU

10. It is only within a grand strategy of close co-operation with other like-minded political forces in the EU that the UK government—whichever Party is in power—will achieve its specific foreign policy goals: security of supply for food and raw materials, open markets in third countries, and respect for our values in regard to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. All these objectives are shared with other members of the EU. Only by playing an engaged and proactive role in advancing further integration within the EU will the UK have a powerful voice in deciding how these objectives are to be secured at a global level.

11. Successful opposition to manifestly unfair proposals or specifically detrimental policies at EU level increasingly requires enough allies to form a blocking minority, and preferably a positive majority to press for improvements. This is not achieved from a position of isolation, opposed to the main thrust of integration. Opposition by the UK can be productive—as witness stalling proposals for a financial transaction tax and advancing reforms in agriculture and fisheries—but it is considerably more successful when exercised from within the tent.

12. The UK government should move from a default position of opposition in principle to further European integration to a position that allows it to respond positively to new proposals. The UK administration is still respected for the clarity and consistency of the positions it takes in Council, and a shift of stance in no way detracts from its right to raise objections and call for amendments to proposals as discussions proceed. But to gain a more sympathetic hearing, the UK government needs to signal that Brussels is appreciated more as the solution and criticised less as the problem.

13. In particular the UK government needs to show that it wants to stay as closely associated as possible to initiatives undertaken by groups of other states under “enhanced cooperation”. The UK should avoid formalising divisions within the EU, maintaining above all the option to join such initiatives later. It should maintain this option for itself and argue for it as a principle for other states.

14. With specific regard to the “fiscal compact”, the UK should rapidly seek allies within the Eurozone prepared to argue its case to keep open the option for the UK a) not to be excluded from the decision-making fora set up for Eurozone countries, and b) to be able to opt in without onerous conditions if it later decides to. Hence the fiscal compact treaty should be agreed—like other EU treaties—by all member states.

15. Exclusion from the treaty would cause political, moral and economic damage to the UK. It stands to lose its traditional status as a leading member state of the EU if it is forced to position itself outside the mainstream of European integration. This is reflected in exclusion from political decision-making (the top table argument), the absence of British officials in important posts (the engine room reality), and reduced formal and informal influence in Brussels (the everyday experience). The UK stands to lose morally if it is not present alongside its traditional allies in debate, notably states of Scandinavia and central and eastern Europe. In economic terms it stands to lose by being absent from decisions that directly affect the UK’s trading interests, notably regarding currency issues and matters relating to the Single Market.

Re-positioning among larger and smaller allies

16. As the EU develops further it will need more than just Franco-German leadership, and the UK should have enough awareness of its own interests to seek a role alongside them in deciding the future of Europe. France and Germany need the UK as a balancing partner in their bi-lateral relationship, if this traditional core of the peace settlement in Western Europe is to develop into a regional force in the world.

17. The reformed voting arrangements of the Lisbon Treaty give the larger states a greater say in the development of EU legislation and policy. The UK should therefore prioritise its efforts, identifying and developing common interests in particular with the big players. The UK’s main allies in the EU should be those countries which have the capacity—material and moral—to lead it.

18. At the same time, the UK should not neglect its relations with smaller states in the EU. Many of these—Scandinavia, Ireland, Portugal, Benelux, Malta, Cyprus and the Baltic States—have traditionally had close relations with the UK. As it has done in the past, the UK needs to maintain good relations with the medium and small member states, building up clusters of friends, but in doing so it should not lose sight of the need to identify common interests with the larger leading countries.

Wider responsibilities and the longer view

19. As the UK is increasingly linked with its European neighbours—tourism and residence abroad, trade and aid, finance, military alliance and foreign policy co-ordination, higher education, intermarriage, historical experience and cultural roots—it should strive to maximise its interests in playing a leading role in the new structures of Europe. That cannot be done effectively from the sidelines.

20. The UK government should take measures to stop the drift towards isolation from the continent which has recently marked the country’s relations with the EU. A role for the UK comparable to Norway without its oil or Switzerland without its reserves is profoundly unattractive. If the country were reduced to this, the UK would be dominated by an integrated power on the continent and relegated to a subordinate role in both regional and global affairs—an outcome which would realise the worst fears of British foreign policy.

21. As an alternative, the UK should develop its own vision of an EU under conditions acceptable both to this country and to our European allies. It should position itself in the mainstream of economic and political integration, from which position it would be better able to steer it in the direction and at the speed which optimises British interests.

22. Division among EU states plays into the hands of other powers which are not slow to take advantage of it. Examples include Russia on energy supply, the US on air transport, China on a range of trade issues, and many multinationals (backed by their governments) on conditions for FDI. Temporary advantages won by the UK in competition with other EU states are more than balanced out by benefits won by other members and lost to the UK. Overcoming this zero sum game would benefit all and permit the development of a more coherent foreign policy as a regional bloc.

23. That geopolitical option will involve a considerable revision of recent UK foreign policy aims and means, which have assumed that the UK will continue as a priority to relate bilaterally to the rest of the world. The future will require a perspective looking from London through Brussels out to the wider world. The world by 2020 will be looking first towards the EU and only secondarily towards the individual member states.

24. A view of the UK independent of this perspective is doomed to increasing irrelevance. If the UK does not want to be marginalised in international affairs by positioning itself outside any regional power bloc, it must quickly concert its efforts with other European states to optimise its interests both within and through the EU.

15 May 2012