Previous Section Back to Table of Contents Lords Hansard Home Page


Lord Howell of Guildford moved Amendment No. 9:


The noble Lord said: My Lords, we turn from the excitement of designing Christmas cards to the more leaden but nevertheless important matter of European Union legislation. Amendment No. 9 covers ground which we examined during the Committee stage and involves amending Article 214, paragraph 2, of the second treaty of the European Communities, which proposes that in future there shall be qualified majority vote decisions for who should be president and members of the European Commission.

We on this side of the House are against that proposal and hoped—it was obviously a vain hope—that the Government might have stood out against it. It means a substantial step forward in the politicisation of those appointments. As I indicated in Committee, it never was the intention of the founding fathers of the European Communities—subsequently the European Union—that the Commission should be full of politicians or people who had to use political skills and arts in order to obtain their position. It was the dream of Jean Monnet, whom I had the privilege of meeting once or twice, that the commissioners and the president of the Commission should be dedicated servants of Europe and of the European aims and ambitions, but should not be high profile political figures who struggled up the political ladder in order to receive the nomination.

Therefore, I still see the proposal, which has been slipped into the Nice treaty, as going the opposite way to the intentions of those who truly had the interests of European unity at heart. It also moves the opposite way in another sense; that is, by elevating the whole business of the appointments of the servants of Europe up to presidents, elected commissioners, commissioners appointed by a majority and so forth, the status of the Commission and its president is subtly changed. We know what the present president wants because he has said it so often: he wants the Commission to become the government of Europe. I have quotations of his before me and I can confirm that he has said that several times. That is not, I understand, the policy of Her Majesty's Government and it is certainly not the wish of noble Lords on these Benches.

The Commission has had a certain role, designed by Monnet. Hitherto it has had the monopoly over the right to propose initiatives to the Council of Ministers,

22 Jan 2002 : Column 1390

along with a good many other powers. Originally it was seen as the driving force or motor of European integration. I believe that that is why Monnet sought such skilled but low-profile civil servants who would use quietly that driving force to push matters forward without igniting too many political sparks and creating too many antagonisms in the member governments. That is what he saw as the way forward. But that era is probably now over. To quote Jacques Delors, the era of top-down decision making and legislation is over. Already the Commission is having to cede considerable power to the Council of Ministers and, indeed, to national agencies through soft legislation, concentration on frameworks rather than detailed regulation and so forth.

All that is to the good, but if one rose up against that and returned to the notion of presidents and commissioners appointed by QMV, one would reverse what could be quite a desirable trend, that of moving away from the elite, top-down nature of the European Union which has done so much damage and threatened its legitimacy in ways that Community officials and national governments are now seeking to try to remedy. Indeed, in a later amendment we shall consider the ways in which proposals are being put forward for a remedy and for reshaping the European Union into a more democratic form.

Part of the democratisation of the Union involves reasserting the point that the European Commission is a subordinate institution. It is not a superior institution set somewhere higher up the pyramid of the command structure of Europe; rather it is subordinate to the elected national parliaments and to the member states which have signed the treaties that brought it into being and gave it its powers. For those reasons, the European Commission is their servant. I feel that it is extremely important for us to remind ourselves, the Commissioners and the President of the Commission of that fact. Otherwise what is already evident to the Commission will become even clearer; namely, that it is losing the trust and confidence of the people and that it has become remote from the citizens. Those are words that appear in the Laeken Declaration and in the European Commissioners' own White Paper on governance. The Commissioners appear to be lofty, remote individuals who do not act in a subordinate and serving way on behalf of Europe, but rather in a more imperious and centralising way. That is extremely unhealthy and not what I believe true democrats or those with the true interests of Europe at heart would want to see.

On top of all that has come today another warning. There is talk of proposals for a full confederation between France and Germany. The matter was discussed yesterday at the Goethe Institute in Germany. The confederation would have common armies, common embassies and a common seat at the United Nations—one can rely on that. If that is to be the arrangement, then we can guess whose candidates will always be preferred and which majority will always prevail when it comes to appointing the high officials of the Commission. It needs no expertise to assess how such matters will turn out.

22 Jan 2002 : Column 1391

All this I believe to be profoundly unhealthy and not in accordance with what is now the quite desperate need for the European Union institutions to reassociate themselves with the grass roots of Europe and with its citizens in an intimate way; that is, not by inventing new institutions at the centre but rather by coming back and listening to people at the grass roots and in the national, democratically elected parliaments. That is the vital and overriding need. This proposal goes against that. Although the matter was discussed in Committee, I do not believe that it was brought to a vote or to a decision. Nevertheless, some very important matters are being brought forward here which merit further explanation from Ministers. It is in that spirit that I move the amendment. I beg to move.

3.15 p.m.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, is quite right. We debated this issue at considerable length in Committee and the position of the Government was made clear at that time. Where QMV is in the interests of this country, we shall agree to it. Where it is not in Britain's interests, we shall not agree to it. It really is as simple as that.

That is how we approached the negotiations on the Nice Treaty itself. Where we felt strongly that an issue was of such fundamental importance that the decision must remain within the United Kingdom, with the Government and with Parliament, we simply said no. We did not agree to extend qualified majority voting. We stated in advance that we would not accept QMV for taxation, social security, defence, border controls, treaty changes or the Community's own resources; that is, its budget. We did not accept any extensions for those issues and thus the UK veto remains in place on all of them.

However, we do believe that it is short-sighted to oppose QMV in principle. It is important to recognise that QMV can work for this country. It built the single market on which over 3 million United Kingdom jobs and thousands of businesses depend. It is simply not true to say that Britain always loses out and that others always win with the extension of QMV. In 1999, the United Kingdom was not outvoted on any single issue, but Germany was outvoted twice, France outvoted three times and Italy eight times. I regret that I do not have the figures for 2000 and 2001—I am not leaving those to one side because they do not prove my point, it is simply that they were not available to me.

When the UK joined the then EEC a considerable number of articles in the Treaty of Rome were already subject to QMV. But as the EEC, later the European Union, has grown larger, so there has been a need to extend qualified majority voting in order to stop decision taking from coming to a grinding halt. Of course the biggest extension of all came about with Mrs Thatcher—now Lady Thatcher—in her negotiation of the Single European Act in 1986. Literally thousands of directives and regulations have been passed using the articles that were extended for

22 Jan 2002 : Column 1392

QMV at that point. It allowed progress to the single European market to be accelerated and I am bound to say that I think that it was a very good thing.

The Government support QMV for appointments. We support it because we believe that it will lead to greater efficiency. It will help to secure quick decisions that lead to the appointment of the right person, irrespective of that person's nationality. The President of the Commission provides political guidance for the whole of the Commission. The Nice treaty will give the President more flexibility to organise the College of Commissioners and its work in the most effective way possible. Of course that is a vital job.

It is precisely for that reason that it would not be right for one country to be able to block appointments or, worse, hold to ransom policy decisions by insisting on having its own candidate. I cannot stress strongly enough that we want the best person for the job. We shall want to see that person appointed on the basis of merit and experience, not on nationality.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said that he wanted to see less politicisation in appointments. I agree with him wholeheartedly on that point. What we disagree on is the best way of achieving it. However, the irony of the situation is that those very officials—one of whom the noble Lord quoted earlier in his remarks—about whom the noble Lord has such strong misgivings were, on the whole, elected unanimously. Thus unanimity really has not delivered for the noble Lord what he claims. As a result, I really cannot understand his reluctance to move away from a system that has not given him what he wants.

I urge the noble Lord to look at the other side of the argument; to look at the positive side of why QMV is, in this instance, in the United Kingdom's interest. Decisions on appointed officials will be taken more effectively and deliver for him what he wants—which is, among other things, less politicisation—and the process will be more diligent and efficient.


Next Section Back to Table of Contents Lords Hansard Home Page