Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
THURSDAY 6 DECEMBER 2007
Professor Alan Dashwood and Mr Charles Grant
Q60 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
So to re-run the Iraq decision, there would not have been unanimity
not to go in because we would have vetoed it and so it would never
have got airborne at all?
Professor Dashwood: No.
Mr Grant: I would like to add something to that.
My own view is that the most significant new elements in the Treaty
are actually on the foreign policy side of things rather than
defence policy. There are of course provisions on defence on so-called
structured co-operation and they have changed the list of the
so-called Petersburg's Tasks, the tasks that the EU may wish to
undertake but these are not really going to change very much because
the interesting thing about the Treaty on foreign policy is that
it does try to bring together to some extent the Commission and
the Council of Ministers and their respective machines. Defence
remains essentially a purely inter-governmental sort of co-operation
with the Commission not being involved at all, and that is not
changed by the Treaty. I do not think what is in the Treaty will
significantly, or even in minor ways, change the way European
defence policy is organised, which is of course a very inter-governmental
system with the national veto paramount.
Q61 Lord Swinfen:
Iraq was not really a defence of the Union. It was what one might
describe as an extremely "active" foreign policy. Does
this change your answer in any way?
Mr Grant: No it does not because the EU did
not have a position on Iraq because the Member States disagreed
and nobody could suggest a majority vote on it and outvote the
British or outvote the French because everybody had a veto, so
if the new Treaty had applied at the time of the decision to invade
Iraq, it would not have made any difference because on a question
like "Should we support the Americans in invading Iraq?"
it is a matter of unanimity and the EU States were very, very
divided on that.
Q62 Lord Crickhowell:
I look with interest to Professor Dashwood saying that inevitably
if you had a more effective co-ordination of European foreign
policy it would have an impact on the freedom of individual countries
to act. I have in front of me the Government's document on the
Reform Treaty and basically its comment on the fact that there
has to be unanimity and therefore the veto. It then goes on to
say that the provisions on CFSP—and this is in heavy type—"...
will not affect the responsibilities of Member States as they
currently exist for the formation and conduct of their foreign
policy." Did your remarks earlier not at least produce a
qualification of that unequivocal statement? The situation clearly
is going to be different if the European Union forms an effective
foreign policy-making system. There may be an initial veto situation
but the fact that there is a foreign policy will then surely limit
the freedom of individual states, including Britain?
Professor Dashwood: I think that what I said
was consistent with the Government's position because of the point
that Charles Grant made: if it seems good to the governments of
the Member States, including the United Kingdom, that they should
act collectively in a certain situation, then that is a decision
which they have taken as an element of their foreign policies.
They would have to follow through the decision, but it seems to
me that all the Member States retain control of their foreign
policy because they can decide what should be done collectively
by the Union and what they would prefer to do individually.
Q63 Lord Crickhowell:
Yes, there is an initial step and that is absolutely true, but
the further you develop the policy and that European policy is
carried into practice, surely, it follows from your initial remarks,
and even what you have said then, there is a growing restraint
in a changing world—and the world does move on and circumstances
change—when governments will find themselves constrained
by the initial commitment? That may be a good thing or a bad thing.
I am merely challenging the very unequivocal statement of the
Government on the issue which you do seem to me to have put a
perfectly reasonable qualification on. I am not challenging your
qualification, it seems to be inevitable to me.
Professor Dashwood: Yes, there are certain procedural
constraints. The Member States have a duty to consult. Already
under the existing Treaties there is quite a muscular duty of
loyal co-operation under the present Article 11(2) which will
be carried over. I am certain that as each step of a policy is
taken—and of course all this will be done under the guidance
of the European Council which will be decided by consensus between
the heads of state of government—at any stage where a policy
decision has to be taken, that will have to be taken by unanimity,
and it seems to me that that really does preserve the concern
for the freedom of the Member States except when they choose to
act together.
Q64 Chairman:
But is not the problem, which I think Lord Crickhowell is hinting
at, that there could be some sort of ratchet mechanism and that
there would be almost an acquis of foreign policy being developed
with a number of decisions being made, and once they had been
made would there or would there not be a restraint on the independence
of a Member State in exercising its national sovereignty in that
area?
Mr Grant: Perhaps I could have a go at that.
I genuinely do not see any evidence to support that supposition
either in the way EU foreign policy has worked up to now in practice
or in the provisions of the new Treaty. Whatever ratchet effect
people may believe or fear is there, today, despite 20 or 30 years
of trying to build up EU foreign policy, if the British Government
does not like policy on Burma or the EU arms embargo on China,
it can just wield a veto, and that is the key thing for me, so
I do not see any reason to believe in such a ratchet effect.
Q65 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Continuing this theme, do you see these policies having a shelf
life? If a policy, going back to the ratchet, is decided upon
on a rather blanket approach covering a particular area of the
world, we do not want to be seen to be non-communautaire (we have
seen this before) and so we sign up to that and say we want to
be good Europeans, and then suddenly five years later our interests
change completely so that suddenly this blanket does not suit
us at all and we want to do something entirely different and then
we are told, "No, come on, you have signed up to this ...
" God knows how many years ago?
Mr Grant: That is not how it works.
Q66 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
It is how everything else works in Europe.
Mr Grant: Suppose we did sign up to something
just to keep other people happy that we did not actually agree
with—
Q67 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
No, what I am saying is we agreed with it at the time and then
five years later our interests have changed.
Mr Grant: Foreign policy is not about law. I
would differentiate between legal instruments agreed in the first
pillar where I accept that if you sign up to a law and support
it and then the world changes that you are stuck with law, and
you then need to amend the law, that is perhaps a fair point for
the first pillar of the EU, but foreign policy is not about law,
it is just about declarations and decisions on embargoes or whatever,
and therefore if the world changes and you think the policy should
change, you can stop the policy. Just let me take an example of
the arms embargo imposed on China imposed after Tiananmen Square
in 1989. It was a decision in the Council of Ministers not to
sell weapons to China. At some point governments may believe that
the world has changed and that decision should no longer apply
but unanimity is required to change it.
Q68 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
I think this is very much the ground that you have just covered
in your answer and it is the question: is there anything irreversible
about a unanimous decision to have a common policy towards a particular
country or part of the world? I think I am right in saying—but
perhaps you would confirm—that there is nothing irreversible
about that, but that is something from which, at some cost perhaps,
a country could break out if that was its decision? It would be
very damaging for EU solidarity but if there was not a legal instrument
involved then there is nothing here that says that you cannot
reverse the position that you agreed to five or ten years before?
I think myself the whole of this discussion shows how almost impossible
it is to talk about those matters in abstract terms. You have
to think about them in practical and precise terms in the context
of a particular set of events like the events in Kosovo or the
events in Burma or whatever it is. I do not think there is anything
that says under CFSP there is no reversibility.
Mr Grant: My earlier answer was not correct
in the example about the China arms embargo because if you have
an embargo agreed unanimously then you cannot actually change
that without everybody agreeing to change it. That would tend
to support your question, except that this embargo is a decision
which has no legal force, so in fact if a country really did not
like it, it could just pull out and say we are going to sell weapons
to China. There is more merit in your question than I first acknowledged
but because this is talking about CFSP where the European Court
of Justice has no jurisdiction, if one country did not like the
embargo to China, it could sell weapons. In fact some countries
have been selling weapons to China.
Professor Dashwood: There is a perhaps rather
detailed point which is that that kind of decision is in practice
always time-limited.
Q69 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
There is a sunset clause?
Professor Dashwood: Yes.
Q70 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Really?
Professor Dashwood: I do not know whether the
China decision did, but certainly if the Council was getting the
right legal advice it would have; and such decisions normally
do.
Q71 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
Could we move on to the External Action Service and perhaps either
or both of you could say what the rationale for creating this
service is and to what extent it is indeed a new creation or simply
a rebadging of what already exists and how this service is likely
to be structured and whether it will work closely and effectively
with the diplomatic services of the Member States?
Mr Grant: I think in a way we have covered some
of the background for that question of Lord Hannay's. As I have
already said, the current system where you have two separate bureaucratic
machines in the Council and the Commission does not work at all
well and I think it is highly desirable to create a single service
that contains, as is the plan, relevant officials from the Council,
the Commission and the Member States. It will not solve, as we
have already said, all the problems of co-ordination because I
think it is highly unlikely it will include development policy
and trade policy, so there will still be the question of how you
co-ordinate those bits of policy with the External Action Service,
but it is certainly a step in the right direction. I do hope that
what it will do when it is up and running is provide good analysis
to the foreign ministers and to the various EU institutions. I
think common analysis is quite important because one of the reasons
why we have not had very effective foreign policy with regard
to many parts of the world is because we do not agree on what
is happening. One has to differentiate between the big countries
and the small countries. The big countries have quite clever foreign
ministries but a lot of small countries do not, and I think that
if the ministers meeting in the Foreign Ministers Council are
serviced by good and effective analysis, in addition to their
own national foreign ministries, it will help us to help the ministers
to develop a common analysis which would help them to develop
common policies, and that is one of the benefits that I see coming
out of the External Action Service.
Q72 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
And overseas?
Mr Grant: Yes and overseas, and I would make
two points there. I forget how many overseas delegations of the
Commission there are, there are 120 or something, so there are
a lot of them, but a lot of smaller Member States of course do
not have 120 embassies in different parts of the world, so I think
particularly for the smaller Member States it would be useful
having the External Action Service giving them some consular help
and giving them eyes and ears in parts of the world where they
simply are unrepresented. I guess the commonly held view of current
Commission delegations is that they are very good at things like
trade policy, that is what Commission officials are trained to
do, but they are not so good on the diplomatic side of foreign
policy. If you get an infusion of good officials from Member States
working together with the existing Commission officials in these
delegations, I think that is important. There is one problem,
and I do not know whether it is relevant to some of these questions,
which is what happens in parts of the world where the EU is involved
in nation-building or state-building. A lot of the discussion
on the External Action Service is focused on Brussels and the
Brussels institutions but as big a problem, or possibly more important
problem as far as I am concerned, is the lack of co-ordination
of the different EU bodies in a place like Bosnia. I had a striking
conversation with General David Leakey, who was the first commander
of the EU peace-keeping forces in Bosnia. He went there reporting
to Solana with a military task. When he was there he tried to
deal with the problem of organised crime, but he found that the
EU police mission was not co-operative, as they had a different
mandate. Paddy Ashdown's office was not always as co-operative
as it might have been, according to General Leakey, and the Commission
thought it had other things to do anyway, so the different bits
of the EU machinery in Bosnia were unco-ordinated, and therefore
his ability to do the right thing in Bosnia was greatly impaired.
I do not know to what extent setting up this External Action Service
will help improve co-ordination in places such as Bosnia and also
in other parts of the world where the EU is involved such as Kosovo
and to some extent Afghanistan. I hope it helps but I think the
role of the EU special representatives will be very important.
These are the individuals who report to Solana and they have been
double-hatted, meaning that they also have a Commission function,
as they do in a couple of places like Macedonia and I think they
will be double-hatted in Addis Ababa at the African Union office.
Double-hatting is important and I hope if double-hatting becomes
a more regular procedure, which the British Government has generally
resisted until now, it may be easier to ensure that there is co-ordination,
and I guess the EU SRs will play a quite important role in the
External Action Service reporting up to the High Representative.
Q73 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
That was the view expressed by this Committee by the way?
Mr Grant: Good.
Q74 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
And your view, but not the British Government's view.
Professor Dashwood: I suppose the fundamental
rationale of the External Action Service is to provide the High
Representative with an administrative infrastructure. The big
question is how the different elements are going to meld together
because some are going to come from the Commission and some from
the Council and some from the Member States. The High Representative
will need a cabinet which is strong enough to knock heads together.
I am very concerned about the links—and this is something
which I do not think has been properly thought through—with
activities such as trade and development co-operation, because
one of the problems which EU External Relations has recently been
encountering is competition between aspects of foreign policy
and development co-operation, with the Commission taking a very
broad view of what constitutes development. It is my hope that
the High Representative will be able to resolve or to avoid this
kind of turf war, so that action will be taken within the framework
which, in a particular situation, from a practical point of view
seems the most appropriate.
Q75 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
On a wider issue, do you sometimes wonder if the EU is getting
rather ambitious in terms of trying to get common goals in foreign
policy? We have a very different history and different countries
have gone down different colonial paths and I often wonder whether
we are trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. You talk about
the External Action Service taking over the consulate services
of small countries but actually more and more our embassies are
commercial organisations where they are advising companies on
how they can win contracts, normally in competition with other
Europeans. I do not quite see how this can work.
Mr Grant: Well, I do not think Britain is a
very small country and—
Q76 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
I am not saying we are.
Mr Grant: I know you are not but I do not think
the purpose of the External Action Service is to replace national
foreign offices or overseas representations. My point about small
countries is that some small countries will find it particularly
useful to have representations in other parts of the world where
they do not have people. You may then say why does Britain need
the External Action Service? Britain may not need it as much as
some small countries would need it, but I do think that it is
part of a bigger question which you asked which is do we need
sometimes to work through the EU in matters of foreign policy
given that we have different traditions, as you say. My answer
is to look at it issue-by-issue. There are many issues where we
have probably achieved more. In dealing with Russia for example,
which is an area which I have done some work on, I think often
it would be useful if the EU speaks with one voice because we
have more leverage. When the Litvinenko affair erupted last summer,
I was very glad to see the statement of solidarity from 26 Member
States backing Britain on that. If our relationship with Russia
was entirely bilateral, without any element of working through
the EU, I think we would be in a weaker position. It depends on
the particular issue. I do not think Britain is better off working
through the EU on every issue. On Iraq, whatever the rights and
wrongs of Iraq were, we were quite right to have our own view.
However, on Iran I would say that the British Government had decided,
in my view rightly, that we would have more chance of getting
the Iranians to do what we want them to do if we work through
the EU3 and Solana, which is what we have done, I would say it
is a matter for case-by-case analysis and in those subjects where
the British Government does decide it is in the national interest
to work through the EU—Iran being one of them and I would
say it should do more in Russia than it has, although it has been
the case largely in the Balkans—then you need effective
institutions to represent that EU position. The External Action
Service would replace the current institutions we have today in
Brussels; it would not replace national foreign offices or national
embassies.
Q77 Lord Chidgey:
Staying if I may with the European External Action Service and
the overseas aspect of its role rather than Brussels, you mentioned
in an earlier comment, Mr Grant, that the EU would benefit from
improved analysis which this Service would provide. That brings
me to the point that one of the major concerns of our Foreign
Service is defence and intelligence. The UK is a major power and
therefore attracts major threats, you might argue, more so than
some of the smaller countries within the EU, particularly of course
in intelligence and military analysis which features high in our
overseas service. Many of the smaller EU members probably do not
place much significance on that. I think I am right of saying
that of the 27 Member States in the EU some nine have intelligence
services and consequently for the other 18 it is a lesser priority
in their overseas offices than our own. Is there a problem here
in mutual exclusivity in interests and priorities if we are pursuing
through the European External Action Service the interests of
the EU generally rather than the interests of the major powers
specifically, who have a different set of priorities for very
good reasons in terms of the benefit to and welfare and protection
of their own citizens?
Mr Grant: I would not expect the External Action
Service to play any role in intelligence co-operation. At the
moment there is of course co-operation amongst the intelligence
services, mainly the larger ones but also some other European
countries because we help each other catch terrorists (and that
is rather useful) but it is informal, it tends to be bilateral,
and I do not see any role for a big European institution to do
that. There is something call the Situation Centre sitting in
Brussels. It is a unit reporting to Solana headed by William Shapcott,
a British official, and the job of that unit is to gather together
intelligence from those Members States who are willing and able
to provide it to help feed into the Council of Ministers Secretariat
in Brussels views on particular problems. Of course the intelligence
services do not give their most sensitive information to this
Situation Centre but I am told it is rather useful. Some countries,
like Britain, take a very active role in supplying it with quite
useful information and others do not, but it probably helps the
people in Brussels to know what is going on in the world. If they
are planning a military mission to the Congo or a police mission
to Kosovo, or whatever, it can be quite useful. At the level of
providing information the Situation Centre is quite important.
There is a question as to whether it should be part of the new
External Action Service. Different people have different views
on that. What I do not think the EAS will do is play any serious
role in establishing a big bureaucracy for co-ordinating intelligence.
I have not heard anybody suggest that.
Chairman: The Situation Centre is also
very useful in the functioning that you referred to earlier in
that it does provide a common analysis available to all 27 Member
States. When members of the Committee were in Brussels recently,
we did have a chance to learn from Mr Shapcott the work it was
doing, which is of some importance. Lord Jones?
Q78 Lord Jones:
Just to follow on, Mr Grant, you answered Lord Hamilton and said
how beneficial it was in terms of Britain over the Litvinenko
affair to have the full backing of the EU States. You also said
you were looking at Russia yourself in some of your work. Do you
see Russia as a growing and more authoritative power in relation
to the EU? Do you see Russia changing and getting stronger?
Mr Grant: As a Russia watcher I do worry about
developments within Russia. There is a good thing and a less good
thing. The worry is that I see no reason to believe that the Russian
political system will evolve in a more liberal direction in the
foreseeable future. I think it is becoming a stronger country
diplomatically. I believe the economy is not just doing well because
of the oil price but is quite successful and Russia is very self-confident
and more assertive and sometimes more nationalistic. The reason
why I am not entirely depressed in the very long run is that I
think the Russians need us as indeed we need them. On energy we
are mutually dependent. I think Russian companies want to behave
like other Western companies. They want to buy enterprises in
other parts of the world, they want to hire the best talent, they
want to raise money on the London Stock Exchange, they want to
invest all over the world, and frankly, they have to abide by
our rules to do that, and if they behave too badly by Western
standards they will not be allowed to do those sorts of things.
Thus I think we have some cards and some levers we can play against
Russia but only if we learn to speak with one voice. We have a
pretty poor record in doing that and although there have been
some improvements and some steps in the right direction, not as
much as I would like to see.
Chairman: Returning to the External Action
Service, Lord Swinfen?
Q79 Lord Swinfen:
Do you have any legal or political concerns about the European
External Action Service from the United Kingdom's perspective?
Professor Dashwood: I do not have any legal
concerns.
Mr Grant: I have a political concern which is
that the British Government will not seize the opportunity that
the establishment of the EAS offers to play a leading role in
building it. I am extremely worried about this. I have spoken
to some British officials recently and I think the British are
going to foot-drag and they will try and deny it a decent budget,
they will not send their best personnel to it, they will see it
as a problem to be swept aside. I think that is a great shame
because the reality of the way EU foreign policy works—and
I can say this and British government officials cannot—is
that it is dominated by the big countries. Small countries know
this perfectly well, which is why they never liked the idea of
a High Representative to begin with. They feel they are better
represented in Community institutions. The reality of the machinery
around Solana is that the larger countries dominate it because
they supply some of the best officials to it and have some of
the best networks into his machinery. This EAS, frankly, from
a patriotic point of view is a great opportunity. If we give it
some of our best people and make sure it has good systems and
a decent budget, it will be a vehicle for Britain and France to
lead in EU foreign policy. However, from some of the conversations
I have had recently in the Foreign Office, I am worried that that
is exactly not what the British will do. The Foreign Office does
see it institutionally as a rival, which is a mistake in my view.
To be fair to the Foreign Office, they are under budget as well
as personnel pressure to keep the Treasury happy, they are cutting
back right, left and centre and they do not therefore think it
is a good idea to send their best and their brightest off to this
institution, and I regret that very much.
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