| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
9 May 2007 : Column 1488
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, I have a small, diffident, private suggestion to make. When I was a Minister in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board conducted a market survey in the Republic to find out, first, how many people had visited Northern Ireland in the previous 25 years; secondly, how many people would be prepared to contemplate spending a night in Northern Ireland; and, finally, how many would not go to Northern Ireland under any circumstances. The answer to the first question was about 25 per cent; to the second about 25 per cent; and to the third about 50 per cent. Perhaps I may suggest that actions speak louder than words and Members of your Lordships’ House could contribute to their vote of confidence and interest in the Province by paying a private visit over the next 12 months to see how everyone is getting on.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I endorse that. Northern Ireland is hosting international conferences on a very regular basis now. The people who visit Northern Ireland see a skyline of cranes, building activity and investment. I have to say that not enough of it comes from the private sector, and therefore the economy must seriously be attended to, but the inflow of people—who are coming not only to learn but also to understand the joy of Northern Ireland and its countryside—is enormous compared to what it was. Yesterday can only add to that. I fully endorse what the noble Lord said.
Baroness Butler-Sloss: My Lords, I go to Northern Ireland regularly—at least twice or three times a year. It is a beautiful place, and I have many friends there. It is in many ways a buoyant country, and has been buoyant for a number of years. I am sure that the Minister will agree that it does not need to take off now because it has taken off, but not, until now, in politics. In every other way, it is a buoyant community. I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, suggested. It is a place where one should go not just because one should, but because it is a super place to go and one from which one would benefit from going. If anyone has not yet been there, do go!
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I had never set foot on the island of Ireland until 2005, when the Prime Minister asked me to go there as a direct-rule Minister. I made that clear to him. I had to say on the phone, “But Tony, I’ve never been to the island of Ireland”. “Don’t worry,” he said, “they’ll look after you really well”. They did. I have gone back voluntarily; I think I was the first direct-rule Minister ever to go on a weekend when I was not on duty. It caused consternation because the people who looked after me said that there was already someone on duty. I had gone over to support the game fair, privately in many ways. The noble Baroness is quite right that Northern Ireland is an enormously joyous place to visit. It can only succeed following yesterday. It is not all about money and investment, but the fact is that it has lower unemployment rates than most of Great Britain. Things have really changed during the past few years. If anyone had any doubts about that, yesterday should put the final seal on them.
9 May 2007 : Column 1489
Lord Haskins: My Lords, we are all rightly celebrating the end of the trouble of the past 40 years. I am a Protestant from County Wicklow, the county of Parnell, and I point to the fact that the Irish question has troubled this and the other House for some 800 years. We are celebrating a moment of great historic significance in what happened yesterday. In history, the Prime Minister’s legacy will surely be tied up with the way in which he has handled the Irish question better than any other Prime Minister in the history of this country.
Lord Rooker: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his kind remarks about the work of the Prime Minister.
EU: Enlargement (EUC Report)
5.52 pm
Lord Grenfell rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on Further Enlargement of the EU: Threat or Opportunity (53rd report, Session 2005-06, HL Paper 273).
The report can be found at the following address: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeucom/273/273.pdf
The noble Lord said: My Lords, enlargement is one of the weightiest issues facing the European Union today. Developments since this report was published confirm and reinforce some important arguments and conclusions in it. Today—Europe Day—we can reflect on the accession of Bulgaria and Romania on 1 January and on current disquieting developments in Turkey. Efforts to agree a road map for reform of EU institutions continue to be relevant to our conclusions on the pace and scope of future enlargements. I shall refer to these developments again.
I thank most sincerely all members of the committee at the time for the immense energy and expertise they dedicated to this long and comprehensive inquiry. We were aided admirably by our specialist adviser, Dr Katinka Barysch, an internationally recognised expert on this subject, and we are indebted also to Professor Anand Menon for his input. I also thank warmly Simon Burton, the Clerk, and Sarah Price, at that time the second Clerk to the Committee, who managed the inquiry with great skill and produced a draft of the typically high standard that we associate with our Clerks. I also take this opportunity to thank the Government for their comprehensive and thoughtful response.
Enlargement has been an integral part of the EU’s development over the past 50 years, and widening and deepening have always proceeded in parallel. The accession of Denmark, Ireland and the UK heralded the introduction of structural funding; that of Greece, Portugal and Spain, the building of the single market and the planning of monetary union; and that of Austria, Finland and Sweden, serious efforts towards a common foreign and security policy. Then in 2004, eight central and eastern European countries
9 May 2007 : Column 1490
Our inquiry aimed to establish whether, to quote the title of the report, further enlargement would thus pose greater threats than opportunities. To do that we first assessed past enlargements, especially of 2004, to illuminate current attitudes towards further enlargement. That in turn meant looking at what we call integration capacity and the debate concerning the future borders of the European Union. This involved a detailed look at candidates and potential candidates for membership, which then led us to consider the possible alternatives to enlargement and, crucially, the probable costs of not enlarging.
What evidence did we find? On balance, the Union has coped well with growing membership. The 2004 enlargement in particular—the biggest in the EU’s history—has brought benefits to all members because the prospect and process of accession, exporting the EU’s brand values of democracy, human rights, openness and accountability, helped to transform so many former communist states into pluralist democracies and liberal economies. As Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn reminded us,
- “the process of accession triggered a major democratic and economic transformation without a single bullet being fired”.
Yet future enlargement faces a major obstacle: lack of public support in western Europe, combined with a hostile or ambiguous stance by many political leaders in member states. Why, for example, did France change its constitution to make any accession after Croatia subject to a national referendum, with all the chances of negative results? We found that attitudes towards enlargement remain fluid, influenced as they are by unrelated developments such as economic growth as well as lack of information. Little attempt has been made to explain the benefits that enlargement has brought. Misunderstandings about the impact of past enlargements, especially that of 2004, have stimulated public opposition to future enlargements.
Member states’ Governments, parliamentarians and other opinion-formers, and the European Commission, must do much more to explain the impact of enlargement to Europe’s citizens, including issues such as migration, the link between enlargement and globalisation, and the need to find a way of living harmoniously with different religious communities. They must recognise that economic insecurity and employment are uppermost in citizens’ minds when evaluating EU policies, and that a full 40 per cent feel that enlargement has been bad economically for their countries and for the EU as a whole.
Our expert evidence almost unequivocally states that enlargement, acting as a catalyst of economic dynamism and modernisation, has helped the economies of both old and new member states to better face the challenges of globalisation. Much of the economic impact had begun to be felt in the early 1990s as the
9 May 2007 : Column 1491
There is also little disagreement among the economists that higher immigration levels boost the aggregate performance of the economy, raising the supply of labour, filling jobs that are difficult to fill, lifting demand as migrants spend money and boosting output. More than half a million nationals from the latest new member states have registered for work in the United Kingdom. While this has of course put some strain on public services in some areas, there is no statistical evidence that migrant workers from new EU member states mean increased benefit applications.
Many of the post-enlargement flows have been temporary. More than half of those registering for work in the UK intend to stay for less than three months—a proportion that has been climbing since the early days of enlargement. According to the Institute of Public Policy Research, there are signs that the early movers are starting to return home, having saved money and learnt new skills and languages. Meanwhile, arrivals from the three Baltic states—together the second largest group of migrants after the Poles—have fallen dramatically as economic conditions in their countries have steadily improved. This is the kind of message that member states’ Governments need to get out to citizens, to counteract lack of information and misinformation.
On the impact of the 2004 enlargement on the EU’s institutions, the increased number of member states and the concomitant wider spread of interests and positions have made aspects of EU decision-making more laborious and time-consuming. That said, most witnesses felt that the EU was working rather smoothly. Earlier suggestions that enlargement could lead to institutional gridlock are not borne out by the evidence.
Yet it may be too early to come to any hard and fast conclusions about impact on the institutions. The larger states may see the institutions as working mainly in the interests of the smaller members and would thus prefer informal decision-making outside them. The larger members already co-ordinate their positions before Council meetings, especially on foreign policy. That inevitably reinforces the broader trend towards more variable geometry, towards the use of enhanced co-operation. Voting weight in the three institutions also clearly needs to be sorted out before any further enlargement to take in, for example, the western Balkan states after Croatia.
What further lessons did we draw for future enlargement? First, an official date for accession announced too early in the process does not sustain momentum for reform and the EU’s leverage is diminished. A day should be set only when the negotiations are almost complete and the EU is satisfied that the candidate can assume the
9 May 2007 : Column 1492
A second lesson is that new members must not bring disputes into the EU. Countries with outstanding questions of border delineation, separatism or integration of ethnic minorities must settle them before membership. For example, the final status of Kosovo must be resolved before Serbia can expect to enter the EU, as do Bosnia and Herzegovina’s statehood and governance.
In that respect, one is bound to ask whether it was wise that Cyprus, still a divided island, following the Government’s rejection of the Annan plan for reunification, should have been admitted. I should mention that the high commission of Cyprus expressed to me its concern that what were intended as geographical references in our report had proved capable of interpretation in a more political sense. I replied that I regretted that.
A third lesson is that conditionality needs to be used in a consistent and credible way. The 2004 big bang enlargement rather undermined the credibility of conditionality because not all were at the same level of preparedness. A country must join only when the conditions have been met. The fourth lesson is that in monitoring accession preparations, the emphasis needs to be shifted from mere adoption of EU-conforming laws to implementation and enforcement. That lesson appears to have been learned with the recent introduction of benchmarking. In certain areas, Croatia has to provide evidence that it is applying EU law before negotiations on the relevant chapter can be opened or closed.
Our report addresses the difficult question of absorption capacity, which we now call integration capacity, and the question of whether a final boundary needs soon to be drawn around the Union. As the Maastricht treaty gives any European country the right to apply for membership, any attempt to draw a final boundary that excludes European countries would not be consistent with the treaty. Moreover, it will be politically undesirable for the EU to attempt to define its final boundaries, as that would weaken its ability to encourage positive change by potential candidates.
What of the political context for future enlargement? First, a larger EU will need institutional change and more efficient decision-making procedures, together with a rebalancing of the respective representation of large and small countries. Without those changes, the EU will not be able to grow and continue to function effectively. Sensible and functionally oriented improvements to the working practices of the Union, as set out in our report, could be dealt with in a new intergovernmental conference, as also recommended in our report, which we hope will now take place in time for changes to be made before the European Parliament elections and the formation of the new Commission in 2009.
We next looked at the options for achieving more flexible ways of making policy in a Union of 27 or more members. We rejected the idea of a “core Europe”, as proposed by Chirac, Sarkozy and Verhofstadt, and we are happy that Germany is
9 May 2007 : Column 1493
The financial cost of future enlargement is not easy to forecast. The current 80 per cent of the budget for the common agricultural policy and structural funds will not change fundamentally during the 2007-13 financial perspective, but the budget review of 2008-09, intended to point the way to, inter alia, a radical restructuring of spending, must take into account the possible impact of future accessions. The western Balkan aspirant states are already receiving a great deal of EU aid, so the extra cost of accession should be modest, and there is reason to hope that Turkey’s continuing rapid expansion of its economy will diminish any demand for regional aid if and when it accedes.
If the countries of the western Balkans are to be able to address their many challenges in terms of economic reform, statehood and the integration of minorities, they must be offered a credible EU perspective. We made commitments to their eventual accession at Thessaloniki and we must keep them, however long the road may be for some, if not all of them. I invite noble Lords to read the convincing evidence of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, on that perspective. I add that in the western Balkans, the EU is dealing with more fragile and fractious countries than any that came in in 2004. The EU therefore needs a more proactive approach, devoting sufficient expertise and money and finding ways to maintain momentum for positive change over the extended accession process.
Since our report was published, the Commission has decreed that, as we had urged, negotiations with Croatia and Turkey no longer be linked. Croatia has made good progress but there are still areas needing more, such as public administration, the judicial system and some branches of industry, and more needs to be done to implement the anti-corruption programme. That said, the European Parliament has specified 2009 as the date by which it should give its assent to Croatia's accession, even though the Commission stands by the Council's decision not to set any target dates.
We examined objectively and extensively the pros and cons of Turkish membership. Our findings are in paragraphs 205 to 225. We concluded that it is in both Turkey's and the EU's best interests that the accession negotiations, whatever the hesitation and hostility hanging over them, be pursued in good faith and with a will to bring them to a successful conclusion.
9 May 2007 : Column 1494
Noble Lords will recall that last December's General Affairs and External Relations Council agreed that eight of the 35 chapters of the acquis will not be opened until Turkey implements the Ankara protocol extending its customs union to the 10 new members of the EU, including Cyprus. Our report also insists that the economic isolation of the Turkish community in Northern Cyprus be ended. Turkey's accession, we argue, is of such strategic importance to the long-term development of the wider Europe that the Cyprus question must not be allowed to derail the accession talks.
Turkey has made significant progress on reforms—another good example of the power that the prospect of EU accession can have. But much remains to be done, not least on human rights and freedom of expression. The current crisis over the election of a new president, which we hope may soon be resolved, reminds us once again of the propensity of the army to intervene in politics, a practice wholly incompatible with EU membership. In Turkey, there has been a sharp fall in public support for EU membership, and the efforts of those who want membership are frustrated not just by Turkey’s internal problems, but also by negative views from many European players. As one pro-EU Turkish commentator put it over the weekend:
Yet Commission President Barroso has just said that the Commission's position is that negotiations should continue. In my view, so they should.
Last, we looked at possible alternatives to enlargement and at the cost of not enlarging. The EU needs to work with countries that have no immediate or even medium-term prospect of membership, and its European neighbourhood policy is a promising start, although it has had little impact so far. For the purposes of bringing about positive change in participating countries, its incentives are not attractive enough, its conditionality is not tough enough, and its policies not tailor-made enough for the different countries.
The EU rightly aims to integrate non-members into its single market and let them take part in selected EU policies. The combination of variable geometry among members and growing association and integration with non-members could blur the boundaries of membership. That would be no bad thing. A “fortress Europe” would be.
Some European politicians advocate a “privileged partnership” for EU neighbours as an alternative to further enlargement. Turkey, for one, would never accept that. With its customs union, it already has a privileged partnership. In the western Balkans, a privileged partnership would be seen, according to the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, as,
We agree. EU Governments should stop talking about privileged partnerships. It can only demotivate candidate countries.
When thinking about the costs of not enlarging, we had to distinguish between countries that have been told that they qualify for membership and those that
9 May 2007 : Column 1495
Our witnesses—policy-makers present and past, economists, diplomats, commentators and many other experts—almost unanimously agree that the 2004 enlargement was a success on which the EU now has to build to make it more manageable. Governments have to explain better to their citizens what the real benefits have been and can continue to be; to show, for example, that migration, if properly managed, has been a plus can remove many unfounded fears. In the interests of peace, stability and prosperity in Europe, we must keep the door open to further enlargement and welcome the candidacy of any European state that shows itself capable of meeting the conditions. That is the essential message of our report.
The gains of enlargement have so far measurably outweighed the pains and we believe that they will continue to do so. I beg to move.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |