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European Council, Seville
3.52 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place. The Statement is as follows:
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"With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a Statement about the European Council in Seville on 21st and 22nd June. This was the last summit of the successful and very professional Spanish Presidency.
"By 2004, the European Union will have welcomed up to 10 new member countries with more to follow. This is an historic opportunity which the Government welcome. Excellent progress on the timetable has been made under the Spanish
- Presidency and, at Seville, we reaffirmed our commitment to complete the negotiations by the end of the year.
"In preparing for a union of 25 member states we need to reform the way we operate. We have agreed a series of measures that will allow us to streamline the Council agenda in order to shorten Council meetings and to make sure that issues decided by specialist Councils are only, exceptionally, put before the European Council. We have set a limit on the size of delegations. And, in order to prepare meetings of the European Council, the General Affairs Council will become a General Affairs and External Relations Council, split into two separate parts with separate meetings, separate agendas and, if member states desire it, different Ministers taking part.
"We have opened up Council legislative meetings to the public.
"We have further reduced the number of specialist Councils. There were over 20 three years ago, 16 now, and we will further reduce them to nine, concentrating in one Council the whole of the European Union's agenda of competitiveness which is at the heart of the economic reform agenda. Our campaign for simpler, better regulation with proper consultation with business and industry was endorsed.
"The European Council itself will henceforth set a multi-annual strategic programme for the whole of the European Union for the following three years, with an annual work programme set by the General Affairs Council. This is a significant evolution in the role of member governments in setting the EU's agenda.
"In a letter to Prime Minister Aznar a month ago, I proposed that at Seville we should: give a remit for action to strengthen the EU's borders, including Community funding; make progress on returns to Afghanistan now that normal government is being restored; benchmark the performance of third countries and use our network of agreements to improve co-operation in handling migration issues.
"Since the Tampere summit we have, across the European Union, introduced tough penalties for people smuggling and people trafficking, and agreed visa security rules, and a Europe-wide database for identifying illegal immigrants. We are setting minimum reception conditions for asylum seekers and have established a European Refugee Fund to help countries, including our own, deal with this problem.
"At Seville, first, we decided on measures to combat illegal migration including action on visas, re-admission agreements and a repatriation programme, including early returns to Afghanistan.
"Secondly, this year we agreed to take steps to achieve co-ordinated management of external borders, including joint operations at those borders.
"Legal migration can and does bring real and substantial benefits to countries, including Britain. Our aim is not to prevent legal migration; on the
- contrary, subject to proper rules, we welcome it. It is to stop illegal immigration and asylum-seeking which is not genuine because that debases the system and harms the interests of the legal immigrant. And it is about ensuring that the people traffickers who trade in human misery cannot exploit weaknesses. You have only to look at the success of the joint Anglo-Italian operation in Bosnia to see what can be achieved. There, an airport was being used to transit illegal immigrants into the European Union. Unaccounted arrivals have now been cut by 90 per cent. But we are dealing here with clever, organised criminal gangs. If we shut down one route, they come looking for the next.
"So, the third element is about the integration of immigration policy into the Union's relations with third countries based on the following: all new co-operation or association agreements with third countries will have a migration clause and a commitment to re-admission; re-admission agreements with all relevant countries will be completed as soon as possible; there will be a systematic review of relations with third countries to gauge the extent of their co-operation in migration issues.
"A majority of states, including Britain, wanted to go further in hardening the language on third country returns. A minority were concerned that this looked as if we were prepared to harm our development objectives. In the end, the compromise was that, in respect of any new agreement, returns to third countries would be an integral part of the negotiation on all aspects of the agreement.
"In respect of existing agreements where there is non-co-operation, we reserved the right to adopt any measures or positions in respect of a third country we decide upon, provided they are consistent with our contractual commitments and development objectives. I have no doubt that this will now form a key part of our relations with third countries, although the test, of course, will be in the practical effect of the measures proposed.
"The World Summit on Sustainable Development meets in Johannesburg in two months' time. I have made clear for the past year my strong commitment to the aims for this summit. Many leaders, including myself, will be there. The European Council gave a strong message of support for the policies of sustainable development. We re-affirmed our commitment to breaking down trade barriers, including on agriculture. We called for initiatives at Johannesburg on water, sanitation, energy and health—all top UK priorities. I urge the House to give this programme its full support.
"The conclusions of the summit have been placed in the Library of the House. I draw the House's attention to the declaration that we issued on India/Pakistan and to the statement of the Council which takes note of a national statement by Ireland.
"Finally, we discussed the grave crisis in the Middle East. We agreed that there must be an end to the violence so that the Israelis and Palestinians
- can re-launch the peace process as rapidly as possible. As I have said many times, this must result in a secure Israel recognised by its Arab neighbours; and in a viable Palestinian state.
"I repeat my praise of the six months of the Spanish Presidency. On economic reform, reform of the Council and on the sensitive issues of illegal immigration and asylum, they have made substantial progress. The direction of policy is clear. It is the pace that we need to quicken. But that is a far cry from where the agenda of reform stood five years ago. For Britain, the policy of constructive engagement is right, proves itself consistently and under this government, will be maintained".
3.59 p.m.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House for repeating that Statement. I begin by condemning the new bomb outrages in Spain. I hope that he will convey to the Spanish Government the sense of anger and the solidarity of this House. I welcome the declarations on the Middle East, on India and Pakistan and on sustainable development.
However, the overall truth about the Seville summit is stark. The Prime Minister said that Barcelona was a "make or break" summit and yet it failed. Before Seville the Government's spin doctors said that we had two objectives: firm action against nations failing to stop what Mr Blair called "sophisticated global people trafficking and exploitation rackets on an unprecedented scale" and resistance to any question of a European border police force. But we failed on both counts. We got what we did not want and we did not get what we wanted. Yet again, the spin was strong but the delivery was weak.
Is it not astonishing that one Minister was openly briefing against the Government's declared aim on the trade in asylum seekers? We must be entitled to expect the Government to enter a summit with a united voice, otherwise what prospect is there of any other country taking seriously our negotiating position? Against that background, was it surprising that the Prime Minister was mugged and humiliated on his asylum proposals?
Will the noble and learned Lord explain what concrete progress has been made on asylum? At the Tampere summit there was an agreement to act, but as the Prime Minister admitted last week, action did not follow as it should have done. Why should it be different now?
The Government have a new rallying call: the need for uniform asylum rules in the European Union. We have had a common approach since 1997, but it has failed. Will the noble and learned Lord tell us what new rules were agreed at Seville with this issue top of the agenda? And, following the summit, what hope is there for unanimity behind tough proposals? The communique says that inadequate co-operation on illegal trafficking,
- "could hamper the establishment of closer relations between that country and the EU".
Would it not be a better course to return to the pre-1997 situation: firm action by individual governments and concrete co-operation between nation states? Of course we welcome the bilateral approach to France over Sangatte. Will the noble and learned Lord tell us when he expects agreement on its closure? Surely closing Sangatte is treating the symptom and not the cause? Surely Seville has left tough EU action on the causes as far off as ever? Will the noble and learned Lord tell the House whether the United Kingdom Government will apply sanctions against governments that connive at human trafficking, as the Prime Minister said he wanted to?
The Statement failed to mention the plan for European border police, which was part of the summit conclusions signed by Britain. A co-ordinating body is to be set up without delay to prepare an EU force, and the Justice Commissioner said that a force will be in being in five years' time. Will the United Kingdom contribute to the cost of an EU border police? Will it contribute personnel? If so, will the force have powers to arrest British citizens? Surely this is another example of British objections being ignored? We were told—and we are still being told—that that would never happen on the road to delivery.
Will the noble and learned Lord confirm that early implementation of a European arrest warrant was discussed? Will he give an assurance that Parliament will be able to reject the arrest warrant and that, if it does so, the Government will not implement it? The power of arrest goes to the heart of personal liberty. Only our Parliament should be permitted to give that power over British citizens to a foreign jurisdiction.
I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord knows the implications of the Danish presidency's unwillingness to chair the Defence Committee. Will he confirm that the chair will instead fall to Greece for a full 12 months? If so, what are the implications for relations with Turkey, the accession of Cyprus, and, if that is not achieved, the accession of other applicants?
Was there any discussion of further action against the tyrannical Government in Zimbabwe; any discussion with Spain on the proposed referendum in Gibraltar; and did the French Government at last give undertakings to lift their unjustified ban on British beef?
Rarely was any EU summit more hyped, but rarely has a summit delivered less. The Government are seen as failing at home. The Seville summit is evidence that the Downing Street culture of hype and spin is increasingly failing abroad.
4.5 p.m.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I too thank the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement. Although I hope I can do so with due moderation, I must say that the Statement on this far-reaching and important meeting bears little relationship to the
presidency conclusions. It is as if out of two possible interpretations of the summit the Government have deliberately chosen the minimalist one.That is a great shame because this House and the other place must be able to obtain answers to questions about what happened at the summit. The Statement relates in detail to only one substantial aspect of what was discussed and almost nothing else. That makes the job of this House and another place in assuring accountability to Parliament much more difficult. I hope that in future the Government will give more adequate Statements about summits of such importance.
However, I warmly congratulate the Government, and indeed the summit, on their part in a great historic achievement by any standards: by the end of this year—a much earlier date than many of us supposed—there will be an additional 10 members of the European Union. I want to place on the record that outside this country, it is widely regarded as a major achievement of this country and the other European member states. It is an astonishing achievement to have brought the whole of Europe together within the Union.
I am afraid that that is where my congratulations stop. I turn to the annex on the reorganisation of the Council meetings. It is highly significant, although it was hardly mentioned in the Statement. It will lead to the setting up of nine specialist councils. So far there has been no discussion on how those councils can be made more fully accountable, although the Statement makes it clear that most major decisions will no longer go to the four council ministers, but will be dealt with by the specialist councils.
That throws up substantial questions about how we can hold the specialist councils accountable on crucial matters. The Statement referred to making the council's procedures open. With great respect, they will be only partially open because the openness will be restricted to televising discussions on issues subject to co-decision making. Many issues not subject to co-decision making can be made accountable only to national parliaments. That is where we want the openness of the council to be established, with full media coverage of what goes on there. No one can hold accountable anyone who meets in secret. After nearly 50 years, it is high time that the Council meets for legislative purposes fully openly and attracts the media to its proceedings.
I turn to asylum and immigration, on which I part company with the Leader of the Opposition. As he will appreciate, we believe that steps forward have been taken; in particular, the decision to move towards a common definition of the minimum standards required for claiming asylum; a common standard on the reunification of families; and a common standard on the right to emigrate legally into the European Union.
However, I have two questions for the Leader of the House. First, what consideration, if any, has been given to a proper policy of legal immigration in a continent that is growing steadily older and where
increasingly semi-skilled and unskilled jobs are going to people outside that continent? Will the noble and learned Lord tell us whether there is a serious approach to a legal immigration policy, which would ease some of the pressures on illegal immigrants?Secondly, we are delighted that the presidential conclusions referred to the need to uphold international agreements, including the Geneva Convention 1951. Will the noble and learned Lord give us an assurance that the Government fully accept those conclusions? Will he recognise that as a civilised continent we need to accept that there are justified asylum seekers as well as illegal immigrants and that steps taken to stop the latter must not have repercussions to stop the former?
I turn to the European security and defence policy. Can the noble and learned Lord tell us more about the position of Cyprus? As I understand the situation, it has been impossible to proceed with that policy, even though the welcome conclusion of the summit statement made plain that—and this is important—no "binding mutual defence commitments" are imposed on any members. That puts to rest the—I think—absurd rumour about a European army.
Furthermore, what will happen if the declaration on the Middle East—yet another of those worthy declarations we hear about almost daily—is simply disregarded by the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as so many others have been?
Finally, in the report on the convention there is a government reference to the need for a full debate. There is also reference to the fact that in this country no such debate has taken place. Later this week we shall discuss the Education Bill. We must consider seriously why in our discussions on the national curriculum, on which our children are educated, there is no discussion of Europe and no consideration about how citizenship of Europe as well as the United Kingdom can be taught. If any country needs a full debate, it is this one. The polls show that most people know little about Europe. Can the Government say when that full debate will be introduced? Will they consider bringing forward the referendum on the single currency so that the debate in this country can at long last be started?
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