Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
THURSDAY 13 DECEMBER 2007
Sir Stephen Wall GCMG LVO
Q200 Lord Plumb:
Chairman, Sir Stephen made a very interesting comment. Would you
agree that some of that agricultural expenditure might be shifted
to rural expenditure rather than just agriculture? That is happening
now in pillar one and pillar two.
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes.
Q201 Lord Plumb:
Do you think that is the way it will go for rural development?
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes, I think it is, as you
say, largely because that has been the trend for the last several
years, I see no reason why that, under this system, would not
continue.
Q202 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:
Sticking with institutions, the European Council. How do you think
the relationship between the President of the European Council
and the Presidency arrangements for the Council of Ministers will
work out?
Sir Stephen Wall: I think this whole area, both
that relationship, the relationship between the President of the
European Council and the High Representative, and indeed between
both those people and the President of the Commission, is obviously
very critical. We do not yet know, at least I do not know how
those jobs will be divvied up, although people talk about a grand
deal whereby, both in terms of geographical spread and no doubt
political spread, they might be decided in some kind of package.
I mean, different people have different views about what the role
of the European Council President should be. All I can say is
that when I was involved in these matters inside 10 Downing Street,
and we were thinking about these things, we saw the President
of the European Council less in terms of the external role, although
clearly there is the external role, in representing the European
Union, along with the President of the Commission, at EU summits
with third countries, but more the rationale in our minds was
here you have a European Union with 25 or 27 now Member States,
and the old days in which the European Commission could simply
plonk a proposal on the table in the confident knowledge that
sooner or later it would find a qualified majority, or occasionally
not, that those have gone. Therefore, you do need much more the
setting of a strategy, the attempt to build a consensus around
what that strategy is, and how it translates into policy, and
therefore that you needed somebody, ie the President of the European
Council, who much more than a politician in office doing it for
six months, could spend time going round the capitals of the European
Union, working with heads of government, working with the Commission,
to devise that strategy and then bring it to fruition in the European
Council; in other words, that the job was more internal than external,
in terms of its substance. Because the issue was controversial,
it has not been possible to define it quite as closely as, I think,
the British Government would have liked, and therefore, it will
be much more to be worked out in practice, but if it is that kind
of a role, then it obviously does require the President of the
European Council to work closely with Team Presidencies under
the new system, because obviously it is those governments who
will have the responsibility of chairing the individual Councils,
with the exception of the General Affairs Council, to try and
make sure that that kind of strategy is carried through. At the
end of the day, the structures will not deliver the result, the
result does depend critically on choosing the right men or women
to do those key jobs: President of the European Council, President
of the Commission and the High Representative.
Q203 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:
Some at the federalist wing of opinion argued against the creation
of a single Presidency of the European Council, on the grounds
that it might provide a dangerous threat to the authority of the
President of the Commission. Do you agree with Jacques Delors
who said no strong President of the Commission need fear a strong
President of the Council?
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes, I do. I think that we
have had a variety of Commission Presidents of different kinds.
I think the President of the Commission, José Manuel Durão
Barroso, has demonstrated that it is possible to be a strong President
of the Commission without actually challenging the governments
in any kind of systematic way, although he has had to challenge
some of them, particularly on issues of the single market and
competition policy. It seems to me, and again you cannot make
predictions about the future, but if you take somebody of the
character of Durão Barroso, someone like him would see
the sense of working in close collaboration, simply because I
just think within the larger European Union, the job is too big
to do. Occasionally, as things happen in Brussels, if you pick
the wrong people, you could get squabbles, but I think that in
the way I have described the job, hopefully, you would get mutually
beneficial co-operation. I mean, this Commission, as you know,
is very different from, say, the European Commission under Jacques
Delors of the 1980s, insofar as it does not have a driving legislative
agenda, not least because that is simply not practical politics.
It does have much more of an agenda of implementation and action
to see agreed policies put into effect, and that, it seems to
me, is where close co-operation between the two people, the President
of the Commission and the President of the European Council, could
really work well.
Q204 Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
Listening to you, it sounds very much as though it depends more
on personality than on structure. What is it in the structure
that will ensure that the personalities of these two people will
not affect the workings of the structure?
Sir Stephen Wall: I think you cannot guarantee
that, except that the role of the President of the European Council
as set out in the Treaties is a fairly limited role. That was
the view of a large number of Member States, and equally, the
role of the European Commission is very clearly set out in the
Treaties, and they retain the powers that they have always had,
including the power to initiate legislation and the power to ensure
implementation, and by and large to be the principal authority
taking Member States to the European Court as necessary. None
of that disappears. Again, it is not laid down in the Treaties,
but there is a change in the political climate, which I think
is the one I described, in other words that this European Commission,
and it is hard to foresee any very different European Commission
in present circumstances, they are not in the business of sitting
there thinking, you know, what new legislation do we need. They
are in the business of what Durão Barroso calls the Europe
of results. I think they will have to be careful not to trample
on each other, and it will therefore depend upon their ability
to work together. That seems to me to apply in almost any circumstances.
I do not think it would have been feasible to define the roles
so clearly that they were bound to get on, if you follow
me, and bound to work in harmony.
Q205 Chairman:
But on the whole, you are optimistic that this sort of cohabitation
will work in a friendly way?
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes, I am. Again, in some
ways, this is why the choice of the person to be President of
the European Council is critical, because obviously, you could
get a situation in which that person saw their role as being principally
a role on the international stage, which risks the potential of
them competing for space with the High Representative, which would
be a mistake, and equally, might mean that they devoted less time
to the kind of internal job of managing the business of the European
Union, which I think is what we most need.
Chairman: Shall we move on to explore
a little further the question of the High Representative; Baroness
Cohen?
Q206 Baroness Cohen of Pimlico:
There is this new post of High Representative; will his or her
status as a Member of the Commission be difficult, and how do
you see the relationship between the High Representative and the
President of the European Council?
Sir Stephen Wall: Well, on the second of those
things, I think it does very much come back to having two people
who do not compete for the same space. The job of the High Representative
is both to chair the General Affairs Council and to take instruction
from the General Affairs Council. He or she is at the orders of
the General Affairs Council, and clearly, therefore ought to be
the person who on a day-to-day basis is, on the orders of the
Council, conducting the European Union's common policy where there
is agreement on a common policy. The role of the President of
the European Council is to kind of supplement that, not substitute
for it or compete on it. I do not think in practice that the role
of the High Representative, answerable to the Council, as well
as a member of the Commission, would be a problem. It was quite
difficult to draft it in the terms in which it appears in the
Treaty, but I do not see it in practice being a difficulty. What
might happen, you could in theory get a situation in which the
instructions of foreign ministers and the Council differed from
where a majority in the Commission thought that policy should
go. It seems to me to be not, again, in today's climate, intrinsically
very likely; equally, it seems to me if you get somebody, which
by definition almost you will, who knows their stuff, it is something
that the High Representative ought to be able to manage so you
do not get into that kind of situation. What you will avoid is
the situation we have had up until now, where the High Representative
and the relevant Commission member have kind of rubbed along,
but they have, in a sense, been covering the same area of policy
while having control over different aspects of it. Having that
control vested in one person, I think, should make for greater
coherence in the way that we manifest our common policy, and,
as you know, by and large, the greatest means by which the European
Union exercises influence are through the instruments at our disposal,
which include trade and aid matters.
Q207 Chairman:
Is it your understanding that trade and aid would fall within
the High Representative's mandate?
Sir Stephen Wall: No, we do not know how the
portfolios will divvy up once the Commission moves to a smaller
size. My understanding is there would still be Commissioners for
those areas, but in terms of having the coherence of policy, so
that when you have decided on, let us say, your aid policy to
the countries of North Africa, which is an instrument of foreign
policy, you then have one person who can deliver the coherent
message, and have it at his disposal, as it were, in terms of
the case that he makes in those countries, that hopefully united
approach.
Q208 Chairman:
That does not devalue the importance of the Trade Commissioner?
Sir Stephen Wall: No, the whole area of trade
negotiations as such will continue, and continue, I am sure, under
a separate Commissioner.
Q209 Lord Wade of Chorlton:
You have answered it a little bit just at the end, but my comment
was going to be really on the answers to the last two questions,
which seemed to indicate that your view was, "All being well,
it will work", but what is the advantage of doing it then?
You seem to be more concerned that there may be disadvantages
than explaining what you think are the advantages of these various
new offices.
Sir Stephen Wall: If I gave that impression,
I did not mean to give that impression. All I was saying is there
is no guarantee in the structures that they will work, you have
to have the personalities who are willing to make the system work,
but that applies to almost everything. I think the advantage,
in terms of the President of the European Council, is that the
job of being President of the European Council is now too big
a job for one person who is also trying to run a government to
do in a six-month period, for the reason I gave really, that you
cannot have really coherent legislation unless it is part of a
strategy in which the heads of government have agreed what are
the things they really want to do. To get that agreement, it does
seem to me to require two people, the President of the Commission
and the President of the Council, to put together the policy by
intensive consultation with the Member States, which means having
somebody who has time to go around the capitals of 27 countries
and put it together. That is something that no serving head of
government has the time to do. There have been one or two cases,
for example the former Prime Minister of Portugal, Anto«nio
Guterres, who suffered domestically, because the people of Portugal
said, "You have been spending too much time on the Presidency,
how about us?" So it avoids all of that. Similarly, as you
know, we have the High Representative post already, and I think
Javier Solana has done an exceptional job in bringing coherence
to European Union policy, on the back of agreement by Member States.
That is a crucial point: that person can only operate on the basis
of instructions from foreign ministers, but we do have a more
coherent presentation of policy in the Middle East than we had
in the days when individual foreign ministers from individual
European countries were going and singing each to a slightly different
hymn sheet. I think the fact that that person will also be a member
of the Commission, where much of the nut and bolts of implementation
of policy will have to be put together, will again bring greater
coherence.
Q210 Lord Wright of Richmond:
Sir Stephen, you and I have spent about half our lives in the
British Diplomatic Service. This is really a follow-on question
from the last point: can you speculate a bit on the impact on
our unilateral conduct of foreign policy and defence policy? What
impact will these changes have on our, as I say, unilateral foreign
policy, and particularly on the work of British missions, both
in bilateral missions and multilateral missions?
Sir Stephen Wall: I do not see this Treaty as
marking a significant change from what has been an evolution.
It seems to me that our own attitude in Britain, among successive
British Governments, has evolved over the years in terms of on
most issues, our seeing the advantage of having a common policy
with our partners, and that being expressed primarily through
the High Representative. There is nothing in this Treaty which
as I read it removes the ability of Member States to make their
own foreign policy if they wish to do so. The provision whereby
it is governments who have the responsibility, unanimity is required
for the strategy in foreign policy that is set by the European
Council or by the General Affairs Council, none of that changes.
So there will not be a situation, it seems to me, where a British
government, if it wanted to take a decision to put its troops
somewhere, or indeed to support the United States, even though
a majority of its partners did not want to, all of those things
a British government or any other government would still be able
to do. As regards the kind of role of our own missions overseas,
I think when we see the evolution of the European External Action
Service, again, there is nothing in that which of itself prevents
us—we could have both European missions and bilateral missions
in every single country of the world if we wanted to and could
afford to do so. I think in fact there will be countries where
for the majority of our kind of political representation, that
actually, we will probably have more effect operating as the European
Union than operating as the UK. There is the whole question of
how we manage our trade relations, which obviously will remain
competitive in terms of exports and so on as between Member States,
but I would guess, for example, plucked out of the air, if you
were the Government of Morocco, on most issues that concern you,
you would have more interest in talking to a European Union mission
than to 27, or however many it is, individual embassies.
Q211 Lord Sewel:
I think we ought to confront head-on the tabloid type challenge,
which is basically: do these changes seriously impact upon Britain's
ability to develop an independent foreign policy? It is a tabloid
type of point, but I think it needs to be answered.
Sir Stephen Wall: My very firm view is that
they do not. There is nothing that I read in these Treaty provisions,
which as I say affect the ability of a British government to make
national policy, indeed it is specifically protected in terms
of the Treaty. Quite apart from the declarations and so on that
were secured, the actual formulations in the Treaty protect that
position. Whether in practice having a national policy as opposed
to a common policy on a lot of issues makes sense is another issue.
If you get somewhere like Kosovo, to give a current example, the
notion that we, Britain, would have a policy on Kosovo separate
from the rest of the European Union is not something that we would
probably entertain.
Q212 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:
That is about the making of policies. The other tabloid accusation
is that we lose our right to speak in various places; for example,
in the United Nations, we lose our seat in the Security Council
to the High Representative. Is that the case, is that what the
Treaty says?
Sir Stephen Wall: No, and the notion that any
British government or any French government would agree to that
seems to be very far-fetched; we do not. We will continue to vote
in the Security Council as the United Kingdom. On occasions where,
including with the agreement of the United Kingdom, there is a
common European policy, the High Representative can speak to that
policy in the UN Security Council, but when it comes to voting,
the British Government will have its complete freedom as to how
it votes. And when, as you know better than me, the Security Council
members meet behind closed doors to actually do much of the negotiation
that leads then to the public sessions, that will then be in particular
the Permanent Representatives of France and Britain, and not the
High Representative.
Q213 Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
Back to these role relationships that we were discussing a little
earlier, and the effect the Treaty will have, if you like, on
the different power bases which you were describing very clearly;
even if you have what sounds like a more rational structure, how
you make it really work. I really wanted to ask you about how
that will affect the role of the Council of Ministers, and whether
or not the new system of qualified majority voting is likely to
be significant in practice, and of course what will be the effect
of the declaration on blocking minorities?
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes, I think that the system
that has been devised in this Treaty is better than the Nice system,
which was cobbled together frankly on the basis of every man or
woman for themselves, in terms of the Member States. It was all
done at 3.00 in the morning on the fourth day, and it was a pretty
unseemly process. This is a logical, balanced and fair system.
The question is asked: what does this do to British voting weight?
I gather that lots of academic research is going into this issue;
in other words, what does it do to Britain's power to block? I
am one of those who agrees with the argument made by the then
Minister of Europe, Malcolm Rifkind, back in the 1980s, that what
we need actually to think about is what is the overall advantage
to the UK, and the conclusion that was then reached was that actually
yes, occasionally you might lose a vote, but actually the British
interest was better served by having more majority voting in most
of the areas where it applies, and I think that is still the case.
It is true that under this Treaty, compared with the Nice Treaty,
it requires a minimum of four Member States not three Member States
to block. But I think we made a mistake at Nice, and we kind of
realised it, I think, when it was almost too late, because we
had this magic formula, that three large Member States had to
be able to block, but when you actually think about it, it is
not very often that we are in league with two other large Member
States in wanting to block something. We find our allies in different
places on different issues, and the liberalisers, of whom we are
one, are not necessarily—with exceptions, obviously—among
the other large Member States. So I do not think that that aspect
of it is going to be significant in terms of undermining British
interest to block. On the other hand, insofar as majority voting
is extended, it seems to me it is extended in areas where it is
in our interest. On the sort of Polish formula, which is a variant
of the Ioannina compromise, again, it is quite difficult to know
at this juncture. It is written in a way that leaves it pretty
vague, if it is invoked, how much time then has to be allowed
to try and reach agreement. My experience with the Ioannina formula
itself, when I was in Brussels, it was never, as I recall, formally
invoked, but there were occasions when a Member State whose interests
were affected would say, "Mr President, we are in Ioannina
territory", and then there would be a bit of a huddled consultation,
and usually, one Member State would switch sides so that after
about three minutes, the measure went through. So insofar as the
Ioannina formula applied, it lasted about three minutes. The way
this is formulated, it may be more significant, but my sense is
it was more—
Q214 Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
You said the way this is formulated, in a sort of what?
Sir Stephen Wall: Because it is rather more
precisely set out, it might be more—it has kind of two stages
over time, it might potentially have more impact, but I think
a bit like Ioannina, it serves a political purpose here and now,
and will not actually be invoked very much in practice.
Q215 Chairman:
We have received some rather interesting written evidence from
Professor Simon Hix, who I am sure you know well, in particular
on QMV. He seems to be very unhappy with what has happened. If
I could just quote a couple of sentences that he sent to us, and
see what your reaction is. He said: "The population-based
part of the new voting formula overrepresents the four largest
states relative to the power that they should have in a truly
equitable system, while the state-based part of the formula overrepresents
the six smallest states. Put another way, citizens in these ten
states are far more likely to be on the winning side in the EU
than citizens in any of the 18 other states." Does that seem
to you to be a problem of equity or not?
Sir Stephen Wall: Well, I would have to kind
of wrap a towel round my head, I think, to be able to give a very
informed answer, but there has always been a balance in the voting
power in the Member States between on the one hand their existence
as states and on the other the size of their populations. The
fact is that Luxembourg, under the old system, even before Nice,
had more votes than a strict population formula would allow, so
in other words, that kind of balance is not new. I do not feel,
off the top of my head, able to comment on the precise problem
which Professor Hix identifies, but my recollection is that when
we were looking at these various possible combinations inside
Government, that we were satisfied that the formula we now have
came as close under a simplified system to preserving the kind
of voting weight that we had certainly in Nice, and therefore,
that we felt that our interests, both positive and negative, if
you like, were satisfied. But I would, Chairman, need to study
Professor Hix a bit more closely, I think.
Q216 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard:
Can I follow up on that question? Professor Hix's views on equity
I too read with interest, and it seems to me, I would like to
ask Sir Stephen, that he is comparing the new system with an ideal
system. If one instead compares with the present system, the Nice
system, where it takes only 100,000 Luxembourgers to rate a vote
in the Council, and it takes three million Germans to rate a vote
in the Council, the inequities surely are far, far greater in
the present system than in the proposed system? I would like to
ask Sir Stephen if he agrees with that, and if he also agrees
that while you can make very complicated constructions depending
on plausible alliance-forming situations, what basically matters
is national voting weight, and that the Reform Treaty would see
the UK's voting weight go up from about 8% in the Council to about
12.5% in the Council.
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes, I think both things are
true. Certainly, the first is true, and the second also, that
the UK voting weight does increase under this formula.
Q217 Lord Wade of Chorlton:
Mr Chairman, may I just do a bit of a follow-up? It would seem
to me that what you are talking about is important if countries'
representatives are there as representatives of their country
to gain each country as much advantage as possible, but surely
to make a success of Europe, people should think in terms of what
is right for Europe. Is this Treaty going to help people to think
in that way, rather than see it as merely something that they
can take advantage of by having a different voting system, or
a stronger voice, or a more powerful point of view, or are we
actually going to create a Europe where people think, "What
is the best in the interests of Europe as a whole?"
Sir Stephen Wall: It seems to me that part of
what the Treaty is doing is basically saying, here are certain
things where there is a European interest which is kind of greater
than the individual interests of the Member States, and in particular,
that is true in the area of justice and home affairs, hence the
fact that this Treaty completes a process which has taken us quite
a long way in institutional terms from where we were at the time
of the Maastricht Treaty, when the kind of pillared structure
was created. My experience as a negotiator on these things over
the years is that you have a situation in which obviously each
Member State, each Member Government, is seeking through the European
Union to promote national interests. At times, that is very competitive,
and at times, it looks pretty selfish. My sense also, certainly
as I sat round the table, day after day, in Brussels, is that
everybody there does have a sense of something bigger, of the
kind that you suggest; in other words, that there is a collective
interest, which on the one hand, in a sort of negative way, is
about the successful management of relations with countries that
could otherwise still be pretty querulous, not in the sense of
going to war together, but nonetheless, you can easily get a quarrel
breaking out of the protectionist kind; that on the one hand,
and on the other that actually yes, we are more effective collectively
in very many areas than individually. I think that is why, even
though very often these negotiations go to the brink and past
the midnight hour and so on, the sense which brings agreement
in the end is that sense of, if you like, a European ideal. So
I think that is there, and I think this Treaty is, in that sense,
consistent with the motivation behind the previous European treaties
we have had from the Single European Act onwards.
Q218 Lord Dykes:
Following up very quickly, Sir Stephen, on that, there were expectations
by some people that enlargement would mean intrinsic dilution
interinstitutional, between the countries as well, and maybe to
some extent the institutional modernisation under this Treaty
proposal does actually also produce a change in philosophy, makes
it more collective. Do you feel that is also possible or is it
just happening of its own accord anyway?
Sir Stephen Wall: I think there is a kind of
dynamic going on following enlargement which is perhaps in some
ways a bit counterintuitive. The research done by Sciences Po
in Paris shows that actually there has been quicker decision making
since the accession of the Eastern and Central European states
than before. Now obviously, at another level, the actual kind
of processes in the Council are a bit more ponderous, because
there are more people who have to have their say, but it seems
to me that the rationale behind this Treaty and the thinking behind
this Treaty is actually not to allow the kind of dilution that
might otherwise happen, but to create the structures that will
enable effective decision-making I come back to justice and home
affairs as perhaps the prime example, but also the creation of
the long-term President of the European Council, on the kind of
basis I have described, and the High Representative; all those
things, it seems to me, are about coherence of policy. I think
the fact that on JHA, the Member States actually have decided
of their own volition to use the traditional Community method,
shows that they want effective and rapid decision taking, and
as I said before, that is a very similar motivation to the one
that prevailed 20 years ago over the Single European Act.
Chairman: Lord Plumb, Sir Stephen has
answered a bit of the question about the European Parliament,
but ... .
Q219 Lord Plumb:
I think he has answered quite a bit, but of course the European
Parliament is a bigger Parliament than the one you and I remember
in the previous decade, so they have got to deal with the legislative
powers, some of which you have already dealt with or commented
on, and the impact of those powers, but what effect will that
have both on the European Union and on the UK, particularly in
the context of the codecision procedure which now I hope will
be working effectively between the three parties concerned, both
on agriculture and fisheries and also on the budgetary procedure?
Those two of course are very much connected.
Sir Stephen Wall: Yes, and as I understand it,
the changes in terms of the role of the European Parliament on
agriculture and on fisheries are about the framing of policy rather
than individual decisions on particular regimes at particular
times. As I understand it, for example, the setting of total allowable
catches will still be one for the Council, and will not be for
codecision with the European Parliament. I do think that codecision
is, as it were, a work in progress, and it works better in some
areas than in others, but I saw an article by David Lascelles
in the Financial Times yesterday which suggested that the powers
the European Parliament, which already exist, of course, largely
in this area, would be kind of detrimental to decision taking
in the area of financial services. I think our experience by and
large has not borne out that contention; indeed, on one of the
financial services directives, the British Government was able
to use the European Parliament procedures to kind of regain some
ground that it had lost in the Council, in a liberalising sense.
So it will vary, to an extent, from committee to committee, and
from subject to subject, and there will be some testing of the
ground, I think, because obviously the European Parliament is
seeking its place in the sun. I think that its power vis-a"-vis
the European Commission has grown de facto over the last
decade for all the reasons that we know connected with the Santer
Commission, but it seems to me that now, there is a more balanced
relationship between the Commission on the one hand and the Council
and Parliament than perhaps there was before the Durão
Barroso Commission came into office. I personally regret that
in this country, we treat the European Parliament as a kind of
state secret, as it were, because it does seem to me that if we
are talking about popular support for the European project, then
the more people know about their democratic representation through
the European Parliament, the better.
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