Examination of Witnesses (Questions 193
- 199)
THURSDAY 13 DECEMBER 2007
Sir Stephen Wall GCMG LVO
Q193 Chairman:
One small formality: I announce that you have in front of you
a list of the interests that have been declared by members of
the Committee. Sir Stephen, may I welcome you very warmly indeed.
It is very good of you to find time to come, I know it has not
been easy for you to schedule this, but we felt you were very,
very important to this inquiry. You know the background to it,
that we are carrying out an impact assessment on the Treaty to
see what difference this is going to make to the European Union
and by extension to the United Kingdom. We are a little more than
halfway through the evidence-taking and our intention is to put
together a report on which all seven Sub-Committees are working
the Select Committee is dealing with the institutional changes,
which is what we would like to ask you about. We are hoping that
we will be able to present this report to the House two weeks,
possibly three—weeks before the ratification bill comes
into the House, so that Members will have what we hope will be
a thoroughly objective study of the Treaty on which to base their
thoughts and their speeches. Would you like to make an opening
statement?
Sir Stephen Wall: No, I am very happy to go
on to questions. If at the end there are any gaps, maybe I could
say something then, but I am very happy to—
Q194 Chairman:
That is fine. We are on the record, and you will, of course, receive
a transcript as soon as possible for you to check it out. Good,
then maybe we could begin. What I would like to ask you first
is whether you think the new structure of the Treaties is important;
are there any hidden purposes in the way in which it has been
put together, both the TEU and the Treaty on the Functioning of
the European Union, and whether you feel that this structure is
helpful.
Sir Stephen Wall: Well, I think it is. It is
consistent with the direction the European Union has been taking
for the last few years. As you know, it is an attempt to go back,
in a sense, from where the Constitutional Treaty was, in terms
of those bits of what was the Constitutional Treaty that have
been removed. I mean, I think that probably, the most significant
thing in structural terms is that now, definitively, the justice
and home affairs area becomes subject to the traditional Community
procedures, so that the pillared structure as created at Maastricht
no longer exists in that form, although foreign policy remains,
in effect, a separate pillar, largely subject to intergovernmental
procedures.
Q195 Chairman:
Thank you. Some of the evidence that we have received has suggested
that it is a pity that the Treaty is simply a treaty setting out
amendments, and that there should have been an integrated comprehensive
text put together. What is your view on this?
Sir Stephen Wall: I think in one sense, that
is what was attempted in the Constitutional Treaty, certainly
in Part 1, to have something which was a fairly comprehensive,
and more importantly comprehensible, text for ordinary mortals
to read. I agree with you that in terms of trying to follow the
amendments that have been made, not having a consolidated text
is of itself a bit problematic in the short term, although I think
the Irish government may be first off the blocks in producing
one very shortly. I think in all these things, there is an issue
of time versus utility, and to do a really comprehensive job on
the entire Treaty I think would have kept everybody working for
a good deal longer than was thought desirable. There is always
a problem with European Union treaties that because they are legal
texts, they are texts of internationally binding treaties, they
are bound to have complexity, I think that is probably unavoidable.
Q196 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:
Turning to the question of competence, there are perhaps rather
few extensions of competence in this treaty, if you compare it
certainly to the Single European Act or Maastricht. How, Sir Stephen,
do you assess these extensions: what effect do you think they
might have on the workings of the European Union and the workings
of the institutions?
Sir Stephen Wall: I think if you take, first
of all, the justice and home affairs area, which is the completion
of a process, I think it is a reflection of the fact that the
vast majority of the Member States felt that the original third
pillar, intergovernmental third pillar largely, was not working
effectively. It seems to me in a way that in this Treaty, what
we have gone back to in one sense is the kind of rationale that
inspired the Single European Act; in other words, you want to
achieve certain policy ends, and you can only do it by willing
the means. That is what they have done, and Britain has, as you
know better than me, the right to participate or not subject to
certain conditions. I do not myself see the other areas where,
for example, QMV has been extended, as on the whole being very
significant. Business for New Europe, of which I am a Vice-Chair,
welcomes the provisions that have been made on a number of areas
like energy, transport policy, the European research area, provisions
affecting the self-employed, a single system for intellectual
property rights which may help us finally to get towards a European
patent; all those are useful. I do not think they are of themselves
vastly significant. I think the increase of the role of the European
Parliament, in particular the European Parliament's right to have
more of a say over agriculture and fisheries, in other words the
abolition of the old distinction between obligatory and non-obligatory
expenditure, I think that potentially could be significant, and
I think it will take probably a few years to work through exactly
how it functions. This has been an old debate, as you know, Lord
Kerr, within Whitehall, where I was always among those who thought
that actually, it would be beneficial to abolish the distinction,
because the net effect of it, it always seemed to me, was to have
a situation in which the European Parliament, because of its control
of non-obligatory expenditure—non-agricultural expenditure,
for the most part—could actually use that leverage to ratchet
up agricultural expenditure anyway, plus at the same time the
European Parliament was never obliged to make a choice. It could
push up the non-agricultural expenditure as far as it wanted,
and it had not to choose between that expenditure on the one hand
and agricultural expenditure on the other. So it seems to me that
the system will take time to kind of work its way through, but
potentially, you do now have a system where the European Parliament
will have to make those choices in its role in budget making.
I think over time that that will contribute to the ongoing shift
in the balance of the expenditure between agriculture on the one
hand and non-agriculture on the other.
Q197 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:
Because there is an urban majority in the European Parliament?
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes. Clearly, with all these
things, there will be some sort of testing of the parameters,
and I do not suppose it will be a smooth process, but as agriculture
becomes a diminishing proportion of the European Union's GNP,
it seems to me that the trend, which is already there, in terms
of wanting to spend more on other things, especially as the overall
level of EU resources is not going to rise significantly, that
that trend will continue and increase.
Q198 Chairman:
It is rather interesting that the European Parliament seems to
be getting into the business of deciding on matters of wealth
distribution for the first time, to the extent that they will
now have control over all expenditure.
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes, with the Council, obviously,
it is a process of negotiation, but what was this rather artificial
divide, designed to protect the position of the Member States—it
has not always been the case, of course, that the Member States
have been as disciplined on agricultural expenditure as they should
have been. But as I have tried to say, I do not think that it
was ever the case that the two were completely immunised from
each other, because the European Parliament could apply its pressure
anyway, without having to make a responsible choice. I think what
it does now is make the European Parliament make a responsible
choice.
Q199 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:
I was just going to ask whether it is the case that the European
Parliament's greater say over the distribution of expenditure
is unaccompanied by any increase at all in the Parliament's power,
which is zero, over the quantum of expenditure.
Sir Stephen Wall: That is my understanding,
you are correct, yes.
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