Foreign Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence from Lord Howell of Guildford
THE EU AND UK STRATEGY
This paper argues that rather than becoming bogged down in sterile, polarising and ultimately divisive arguments about renegotiating Britain’s relations and powers vis-a-vis the rest of the EU (a situation towards which we are currently fast slipping), the moment has come for the UK to take the initiative for once in reforming (ie changing the direction of) the EU as a whole -and doing so in a thoroughly pro-European and Coalition-friendly way. We have, in short, to mount and win the argument for a better sort of Europe—and do so in a manner which wins over, rather than antagonises, allies throughout the EU and the best and brightest Europhiles in all parties here at home. We have to show that the integrationist doctrine has reached its limits (as everyone privately acknowledges) and that a better model, in tune with our times, is available.
There are always voices ready to assert—from both Eurosceptical and Europhile wings—that this is “not on” and that the rest of the EU “will never have it”. But these views are becoming rapidly out of date. Big forces are building up not only at national and political level throughout Europe, but also at the levels of intellectual argument and theory, which invalidate the old integrationist case and put in reach the alternative, but still highly pro-European, model of flexibility, diversity and decentralisation of powers.
The time is fast becoming ripe for Britain to lead in this new direction, not only in the interests of the EU itself, but also to head off major and imminent problems here at home.
As an undeniable old-timer, I suspect that I have been tangling with these matters longer than most in Parliament, or indeed in Government (since 1962 when I wrote the D.Tel guide to the Common Market, after interviewing Monnet!). I don’t know whether that qualifies or disqualifies me from opining, but I do know that the need now is for a European policy—repeat, a European policy—not a policy for Britain in Europe but a strategic framework for the reform of the structure of the whole EU enterprise, in line with commonsense and completely up-to date needs and principles.
We are constantly told by advisers that this is “Not on”, that “no-one in Brussels will listen” etc. This is no longer so. Lots of quality support for a radical overhaul of the EU—its powers and institutions—exists in France and Germany, the Netherlands, in Central Europe (where they long for a British lead) and even in Club Med. countries.
There is also the view that no initiatives of this kind would be appropriate until the present Eurozone problems are resolved. But that could take ten years. Neither we nor the rest of the EU can afford to, or need to, wait that long. Anyway, the intellectual conversion required takes time (just as it took time to convert the world to privatisation and market economics thirty years ago).
Ideas on a reform programme for the EU emanating from the UK must be strongly pro-European, pro- France, pro-Germany and pro-the smaller member states. We will get nowhere at all by sounding anti-European or withdrawalist (or anti-French or anti-German). The question is not about us v. the EU, it is about what kind of EU we want to see develop and how we intend to use our full weight and intellectual capacities to promote it.
The watchwords must be decentralisation and flexibility. The balance of competences study is an excellent start—but only a start—from which to build this approach. At all costs this exercise must not be allowed to degenerate into an argy-bargy about Britain in Europe, and about which powers we can take back or “repatriate” unilaterally. That way lies certain polarisation into a sterile argument about withdrawal, inner or outer cores and so on. We have been round this course before and it always ends in stalemate, bad feeling and political divisiveness. It would also suck us into an in/out referendum which is not what most people want.
Instead, the emphasis should be on the contribution British thinking can make to overall EU reform as it effects all member states (in different ways). The phrases in statements on the balance of competences exercise about contributing to the modernisation of Europe as a whole are therefore the key ones.
We come to the substance. What does reform really entail and how does it interrelate with the on-going Euro crisis and its resolution? There is first a profound intellectual conundrum—or indeed series of conundrums—to be resolved—which have been debated over many years in endless EC/EU conferences and informal circles.
What does integration in Europe really mean. Does it mean conformity or diversity? To get on the right track we first need to demonstrate that our EU vision is superior, in European terms, to the outdated integrationist one.
This approach has never been seriously attempted. Most of the campaigns for change on the EU front—including the current backbench Fresh Start one—begin from the narrower and shallower assumption that integration will prevail for the “core” majority of member states, that it will work and that this therefore forces us in Britain to review our relationship with Brussels.
A much better starting point is that integrationism is not the best thing for modern Europe, that it probably won’t work, that we have a better model and that our ideas can do more for the EU and its future health and interface with the rest of the world, than the prevailing “more Europe” orthodoxy can ever deliver.
How do we do that? We have to open a new front of proposals and initiatives on EU reform. Of course this does not resolve, or even engage immediately with, current headaches such as the upcoming Budget issue, fiscal union and any consequential Treaty changes, FTT or other challenges. But the gap to be filled here is one of vision, strategy and direction—without which every second order issue becomes another damaging and defensive struggle.
The central intellectual contention, which we need to build on, and which to the world outside politics is becoming a self-evident feature of the way society now works, is that networks triumph over hierarchies.
Hierarchies produce pyramid thinking, constant centralisation, laager mentalities and inclinations to wall-building and protectionist measures. The old EU is shot through with these tendencies. The current signs of growing support for climate protectionism are an excellent example of this.
So our policy has to demonstrate (repeatedly) that decentralisation, diversity and flexibility (the “refashioning of the EU” the PM calls for), offer a superior model to political integration, more in line with 21st-century practices and technological possibilities and bringing Europe closer to the people, in line with the (largely forgotten) principles of Laaken.
More specifically it is an approach which insists on real subsidiarity, not just tokenism. It demands the transfer of a range of competences back to national and local level—e.g making social legislation more intimately tailored to local needs and circumstances and bringing employment and health legislation closer to the shop floor.
We have to be able to argue convincingly that our model—involving a more variable and less standardised approach to European co-operation—is a better dedication to the integrity of the single market than the current Euro-orthodoxies. We have to establish that the mindsets of those who still hanker after tax harmonisation, fiscal union, FTT and other centralising trends lie outside the Treaties and outside the interests of the Union in modern conditions.
This applies to the whole Eurozone itself, for which we should now seek legal separation from the evolving Union. Whether pure political integration is the answer to the Eurozone’s future—and whether it is actually practicable if attempted, however logical—is for others to try out and establish. Britain’s message should ride above that. The force, in the end, is with decentralisation, variety and member states acting democratically—rather than with central power attempting to rule Europe. The essence of Europe is diversity, and always has been. The web age of information and interactivity makes it ever more of a necessity.
To make all this more than a set of mere assertions (or dismissed as another perfidious British try-on) we have to go still deeper into the analysis and show that modern economic thinking is swinging to our side. We have to call in aid the fact that revised economic theory and example are recasting economic activity as a process and increasingly rejecting conventional macro-economics as system-shaped and mechanical—leading, as it invariably does, to the apparent need for more and more central control, bloc planning and regulation. For Europe, we have to demonstrate and establish propositionally this does not and will not work.
Beyond economists’ arguments one can also summon in aid many other professions and disciplines. The spearhead principles of today in science, biology, engineering all point towards self-assembly, self-regulation and against central compression. Difficult stuff but reflected in EU localism. From these new perspectives and insights flow the practical arguments for unravelling the existing accumulated acquis, for more competition and bringing social and economic policy much nearer the shop floor and the local office.
A further “pro-European authentication” of this new direction can be secured by tying it up with the widely accepted principle of subsidiarity. Even the Lisbon Treaty, despite its heavy integrationist bias, accepted subsidiarity as a founding principle of the Union. On this growing consilience of modern theory and practice, together with the new social and technological imperatives of the information and cyber ages, and together with the new economics, we can and should build our case for a different Europe.
The delivery politics of this new approach are challenging, but a good deal more promising (and enjoyable) than the prospect of constant defensiveness in face of new Continental initiatives and Treaty change proposals, and constant domestic pressures for EU withdrawal where our defences fail (as they inevitably do in places).
The first step towards getting on the front foot is to advance the arguments, with the real profundity and intellectual backing which is there to be mobilised from the sources enumerated above. The best brains in all parties have to be won over to the anti-integrationist case.
The second step is to join up in harness with the other EU member states, and the growing opinion blocs within them, who take the same view—pro-European and also pro-reform. The conventional integrationists and federalists have long been better organised than their critics. They have to be assured about new ways of proceeding as their old ones fail, not just confronted. There has to be mutual give and take.
The third step is to promote and apply, with the support of organised allies, principles of decentralisation, local intimacy as against remote bureaucracy, and flexibility at all levels of decision-making within the Union. Specific focuses and strategies are required to beam in on all the official power centres and institutions of the EU, as well as the unofficial ones. The four official centres of directional drive are the Council, the Court of Justice, the Commission and the Parliament. The key lessons of lifelong experience and studies of Union (and before that Community) progress are that decisions and trends are hatched in think-tanks and at informal gatherings, with which alliances of opinion must be sought and to which unrelenting intellectual pressure must also be applied.
Further reinforcement for this whole new approach comes from events and developments outside the Union. The EU is now dealing with, and competing in, markets that are no longer just developing but are in some areas fully matured and pulling ahead of the West in sophistication and general standards. Established Asian dynamism and market opportunities are now being reinforced rapidly by rising African and Latin American prosperity. For the EU to survive in these new conditions demands an agility, flexibility and openness which the conventional integrationist approach cannot deliver.
Behind these remarkable shifts in the global economic pattern lie, amongst other things, big developments in energy prospects, revolutionised by enhanced discovery and recovery technologies. Led by shale gas and shale oil prospects (already realised in the USA) the African states, both East and West coast, are emerging as major world energy suppliers, while across the southern Atlantic the same pattern, as predicted by geologists, is emerging, with Brazil now taking its place as the sixth-largest energy- producing power in the world.
Alongside these resource developments, and in part because of them, the emerging powers are becoming the world’s chief sources of wealth and investment capital. The flow of capital has been reversed. The EU, in making itself an attractive destination for funds, has no alternative but to become less of a standardised and regulated bloc, and more of a region of varied opportunities.
In Sum: In the PM’s words “the EU is an organization in peril”. Another attempt at unilateral British recapture of EU competences is a dead end. It will strengthen the withdrawalists, antagonise our European friends and allies, divide our parties and undermine the Coalition. Instead the argument has to be won, as it now can be, against the traditional EU integrationist model and in favour not just of variable geometry but of a more decentralised, modernised EU structure. This reform strategy has to be built up and promoted (with allies) in a PRO-European manner, as an attractive model for all those who genuinely want to see the EU survive and prosper in the transformed global landscape
29 September 2012