Posted 5:19 AM by Dil
Don't EU believe it

As the anti-Euro tabloids launch their 'battle of Britain', Nick Clegg MEP wades through the tide of misinformation and sets a few facts straight

Friday May 16, 2003

So the tabloid onslaught has begun. The big guns are wheeling into action. The Daily Mail opened hostilities last week with a gloriously over-the-top front page declaration that "the end of everything we understand by the terms Britain and Britishness" is nigh. This morning, the Sun opened a second front proclaiming that "Blair is about to sign away 1000 years of British sovereignty". The battle of Britain has begun.

I have some difficulties discussing the anti-European British tabloids. It's a real challenge to keep my cool. The barrage of wilful misinformation and prejudice is difficult to stomach. They can get nasty too. Last time I condemned the anti-European bent of many British tabloids in this column, a senior tabloid correspondent rang my constituency office and bawled at my helpless assistant over the phone. These characters love to dish it out, but are disarmingly thin-skinned themselves.

But this time I am determined to stay calm. The stakes are too high to warrant self indulgent indignation. I want to set out precisely why this great tabloid outburst is wrong in fact, and dishonest in principle.

First, the facts. The Mail and the Sun are responding to the discussions taking place in the convention on the future of Europe, a gathering of the great and good chaired by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The convention intends to present proposals for a revamped EU constitution to EU heads of government by the end of next month. But note: the discussions have not yet concluded, many of the most sensitive issues are still unresolved, and the convention's recommendations are not binding on EU governments. Instead, the EU's heads of government will examine the convention's recommendations and then decide, in a so called inter-governmental conference (ICG) which will take place in the second half of this year, which parts to adopt, amend or reject. They will, as in all previous IGCs, decide by unanimity.

The controversy, of course, surrounds the content of the work of the convention. Peter Hain, the government's representative on the convention, suggests a little too glibly that it is merely a "tidying-up exercise". Since the convention is going to propose important changes in some policy areas, and a restructuring of the EU institutions, it is a bit much to suggest that the whole exercise is just a little nip and tuck. Yet, and here Hain is surely right, the vast bulk of the convention's work reaffirms in more simple terms what we already signed up to years ago. As John Bruton, a former Irish prime minister and leading figure on the convention has said, "it's an amplification and simplification of existing treaties - it's not a revolution".

Here, I think, lies the biggest problem for the British anti-Europeans. The convention is forcing them to admit to what we have acceded to in the past. The Sun, for instance, declares today that the EU will "gain authority" over our transport and commerce policies. Yet, commercial trade and transport were adopted as common EU policies back in the 1950s, and we explicitly signed up to those policies when we joined in 1973. Indeed, the EU has done us proud in the way it has negotiated on behalf of all EU member states in the world trade organisation, successfully measuring up to the US in the trade arena. Whingeing now about a power granted to the EU almost half a century ago is bizarre. That the Sun can claim that such a power is new when it is not also suggests that the EU has been able to administer its powers in a benign and discreet manner, since they seem to have gone unnoticed for decades.

The same, in a way, is true of the neuralgic reactions to the concept of EU "federalism" or of an EU "constitution". Both already exist. The EU has long been a federal system in many crucial respects. EU law has always taken precedence over domestic legislation, and the European court of justice in Luxembourg which adjudicates on conflicts under EU law serves as the highest court in our federal European legal structure. Again, we acceded to this arrangement 30 years ago. For good reason too - an EU club without binding legal rules would be a mess. The founding treaties of the EU, revised by an incessant series of IGCs, are also clearly constitutional documents since they establish the fundamental division of labour between the EU and its constituent national parts. In declaring his new document a "constitution" Giscard is stating the obvious. If we've lived with an EU constitution for 30 years without losing our Britishness, why should we be alarmed because we are finally mustering the honesty to use the word?

The other major blind spot in the anti-European tabloid reaction is a blunt refusal to understand, yet alone publicise, the way decisions are taken in the EU. When the Daily Mail feverishly states that the convention will "hand control" of economic, defence, foreign and immigration policies, the scary implication is obvious. We will no longer have a say, we will no longer be able to steer policy, someone else will decide. Yet, the truth is infinitely more mundane. In the classic EU model, proposals are made by one body, the European commission, and then ministers and MEPs decide whether to accept, alter or block those proposals. In other words, it's a system stuffed with checks and balances. No one body or person can impose anything on anyone else. And nothing moves without the explicit say-so of British officials in the EC, British commissioners, British MEPs, British civil servants, and of course British ministers.

As it happens, in the foreign policy and defence field even this highly balanced process is not being proposed. Defence policy will remain subject to national veto, and a new post answerable to both ministers and to Brussels will be created with circumscribed powers to persuade and cajole national governments to work together on foreign policy matters.

The major policy area where the standard EU decision-making model is likely to apply where it did not apply fully before is in the area of asylum and immigration. The reasons are blindingly obvious: the UK and each national EU government will only be able to develop rational policies towards asylum seekers and legal and illegal immigrants if there is a coordinated approach across Europe. The passage of asylum seekers across Europe's borders makes it imperative that this issue should be dealt with collectively. Sangatte showed as much if nothing else. If the Sun or the Mail think that 15 uncoordinated national asylum and immigration policies in this borderless age are either logical or effective, the mind boggles.

Admit to our past. Check the facts. Use words honestly. Keep your cool. And then decide for yourselves. Don't believe everything you read in the press.

Posted 7:28 AM by Dil
May 14, 2003

Blair's euro policy: prevarication, procrastination and drivel
Chris Patten
The euro is not a private matter to be decided among Downing Street neighbours



Here we go again.
The decision on whether or not Britain should embrace the euro is much more than an economic one. It is an existential choice which will decide Britain’s geo-strategic position for years to come. Are we to remain semi-detached from the enlarged European Union, or will we be a leading member of it? Will we become as comfortable sharing some of our sovereignty within the EU as we have been for years doing the same within Nato?

Whichever side of the argument you are on, these issues are as big as they come in politics. They deserve to be openly debated, with the Government giving a clear lead. Fat chance. Once again the euro is treated as a private matter to be resolved between Downing Street’s neighbours — a wink from No 10 provokes a nod from next door. From time to time Peter Mandelson, whose career is in many respects an exotic consequence of the relationship between the Prime Minister and his Chancellor, is summoned to divine — who better? — what their real motives and purposes may be.

Does it all matter? The economic arguments are crucial, but it is easy to distort them. Opponents crowed, for example, when the euro weakened against the pound, as if this was evidence of failure. Now the euro is at an historic high, and they are curiously silent. That is wiser. I think that the pros and cons both tend to be exaggerated, but on balance — which won’t surprise anyone — the arguments in favour of entry have the edge, and become more substantial with the passage of time.

What is so insulting to everyone’s intelligence is the way this economic debate is conducted by the Treasury. First, the notion that Gordon Brown’s “five tests” represent absolute economic truth, unsullied and Olympian, is drivel. They represent merely the institutionalisation of the Chancellor’s veto over the Prime Minister’s hopes and the country’s interest. There is much talk of sovereignty. Whatever happened to the sovereignty of No 10 and of the Cabinet?

Secondly, the Treasury, true to form over almost 50 years, behaves as though the rest of Europe’s economy is not yet worthy of us. One day we may be ready to take the plunge — but only when Europe has managed to replicate our own economic miracle. And if we do deign to join their euro, we expect our poor partners to be pathetically grateful.

The truth is that, despite its superior employment policies and regulatory environment (a legacy of the Thatcher and Major years) Britain remains well down the EU economic league table. The OECD’s latest figures show that only four of the 12 euro countries are poorer than Britain in terms of GDP per head. Nine of them have higher productivity levels. There is certainly no rush to copy the British rail system nor the logic of importing nurses while exporting patients.

Even the UK’s impressive employment record does not put it in the top bracket: four eurozone countries have fewer jobless than Britain and elsewhere the picture is improving. Average eurozone unemployment has fallen substantially since the euro’s launch, from 10.2 per cent in 1998 to 8.7 per cent now. The UK is hit, like everyone else, by the global downturn — with rising borrowing and depressed business confidence. So a little modesty about the great British economic model would not go amiss. There is not much to be said for talking like Sir Alex Ferguson on speed when you’re not managing a Manchester United economy.

The decision to stay out of the euro is not cost-free. It is likely to affect competitiveness, trade and inward investment. The rest of the world is watching. Last year, I made a lengthy presentation to the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi on EU-Japan relations. His first question? “When will Britain join the euro?”

By delaying, we continue to exclude ourselves from key decisions about the eurozone’s future — reform of the European Central Bank, for example, and the regulation of Europe’s financial markets. As in the past, we will enjoy all the independence and sovereignty that goes with choosing not to take part in decisions intimately affecting our future.

This raises the question of our broader influence in Europe, a concept rather curiously rubbished by many in the sceptic and phobic camps. How is it that we make so much of securing (historically much exaggerated) influence in Washington, yet regard the notion of real influence on our own doorstep with derision?

The British Government’s vision of Europe finds many echoes among our partners. But that support — be it for more rigorous assessment of what really needs to be done at the European level and what should be decided nationally; for more democratic accountability and a larger role for national parliaments; or for more deregulation and market opening — is hollowed out by a deep suspicion of our motives. So long as we hang back from full and unequivocal EU membership, how can we convince them that, for all our patronising prevarication, deep down we are mad about Europe?

The Major Government, struggling to survive on a wafer-thin majority, was regularly attacked by Tony Blair for its alleged weakness on Europe. What then are his European friends to make of Mr Blair’s handling of this question on the back of two unassailable majorities? How can they accept his good faith when his procrastination serves only to embolden those in Britain who treat the European enterprise with contempt? What price Mr Blair’s leadership on global issues when he cannot get his own way even with his next-door neighbour?

Great damage is done to a brave and accomplished Prime Minister and to his vision of Britain’s destiny when he seems more ready to take risks to accomplish the goals of an American President than he is to secure his own.

The author is an EU Commissioner