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BRUSSELS BRIEFING No. 63 - APRIL 2004
STRUAN STEVENSON - (MEP for Scotland)
www.scottishtorymeps.org.uk
SCOTLAND'S PLACE IN THE NEW EUROPE
One of the most demanding parts of an MEPs job
is to explain to the voters how much of their
everyday life is already governed from Europe.
It can be one of the most frustrating parts of
the job too, because voters do not readily accept
the argument. In Britain, after all, we have grown
up with parliamentary democracy. Our institutions
have evolved over the centuries. They may wear
out a little from time to time. But our people
agree as a matter of principle that they can be
repaired in a pragmatic fashion to adjust to new
problems.
Our national institutions have always proved
capable of reform in this way. That is why the
people's identification with them remains so strong.
A great majority supports the monarchy. Nobody
but a shrinking minority of left wing Nationalists
wants to rid us of the Parliament at Westminster,
though some of its powers have now been devolved
to the Scottish Parliament.
Such is the tried, trusted and successful way
we do things in Britain. The one problem that
comes over to me as an MEP is that we then find
it hard to grasp how some of our European neighbours
want to do things in a far different way. The
difference is natural enough. They do not have
the same long tradition of peaceful change.
Their histories have been interrupted by revolutions
and wars, by invasions and conquests, by civil
strife and dictatorships. They have developed
into modern democracies, not through a gradual
process of trial and error, through learning what
is best by trying to do it.
Instead, every so often they have broken down
as nation states and had to start again. Then
they tend to impose on themselves some fashionable
political idea, some neat answer to all the world's
problems. They appeal not to experience but to
theory.
That was what happened during the two decades
following the Second World War, with the foundation
of what was to become the European Union. Tired
of knocking seven kinds of hell out of each other,
France & Germany decided to join forces. They
realised that their repeated attempts to dominate
Europe individually always ended in conflict and
slaughter on a vast scale. They therefore concluded
that the best way to achieve their geo-political
objectives was to create a Franco-German alliance.
That is why the Strasbourg Parliament straddles
the Rhine on the border between France and Germany,
and that is why Franco-German policy has driven
the integrationist agenda ever since.
Whatever else the EU may be, it is not a parliamentary
democracy. We the people have little say in the
process of making policy in Brussels, except at
one remove in electing the governments represented
in the Council of Ministers, and except in the
opinions expressed by our MEPs, who in some areas
have co-decision or legislative powers.
Yet the powers of the bureaucracy in Brussels
have grown. The Commission is now responsible
for 60 per cent of the laws and regulations we
live under in Britain. Most voters do not yet
understand how powerful that bureaucracy has become.
I make it my job to tell them, yet the natural
assumptions of people who have grown up under
a parliamentary democracy are hard to overcome.
The danger is that we sleepwalk into a nightmare
from which there will be no escape.
I say so because no voter who can be persuaded
to look at the issues - even for a moment - will
be able to miss the fact that we may be standing
at the threshold of a new era in Europe. It could
pose a greater threat than ever to the tried and
trusted British way of doing things.
Europe, once again, has to be reformed. Yet the
theory behind the reforms now being proposed to
us is that the European bureaucracy should become
even more powerful. To wield its power to greater
effect, it is being suggested that new executive
offices should be created. This is offensive to
our traditions of parliamentary democracy. It
is also destructive to the desire of the Scottish
people to take more decisions for themselves.
Scotland is in Europe and Scotland should stay
in Europe, but not at that price. With our votes
at the coming election, we can defeat this threat
to our way of life as a parliamentary democracy.
The first thing for which we can win Conservative
votes at the election in June is by stating our
outright opposition to the proposed European Constitution
in a future referendum and our belief that Blair
should not sign this wretched document at any
forthcoming summit.
The new Socialist regime in Madrid wants to be
loved by Paris and Berlin and has withdrawn any
objections to the Constitution, leaving Poland
isolated. They too have now capitulated. So we
can expect the IGC to be re-convened in June and
the signatures of all 25 Prime Ministers appended
to the European Constitution. Tony Blair is prepared
to commit Britain to this new Constitution, which
will, for the first time, enshrine the primacy
of EU law. Article 10 of the draft Constitution
specifically states that European law "shall
have primacy over the law of the Member States".
The proposed Constitution would even incorporate
a deeply Socialist 'Charter of Fundamental Rights',
giving every citizen of Europe the constitutional
right to strike and to bargain collectively. Frighteningly,
it also contains an Energy Chapter, which passes
control of energy resources to Brussels. 75% of
European oil is in UK waters, so this would constitute
a major coup for the EU, effectively seizing control
of our rich oil fields in the same way as they
seized our fishing grounds.
The key problem of this Constitution is that,
contrary to what the Government claims, it does
not clearly define the powers of the EU institutions
as distinct from the powers of the Member States.
In fact, the Convention, which drew up this unwieldy
document under the chairmanship of Giscard d'Estaing,
has deliberately obscured this through the use
of 'shared competencies' and similar devices.
As someone once commented, the skill of diplomacy
is to take something obnoxious and turn it into
something incomprehensible and that, it seems
to me, is what Giscard achieved. The proposed
Constitution will lead to the inexorable growth
of power in the centre, because it is the Constitution
that proposes the expansion of bureaucracy and
the new executive posts to wield that expanded
bureaucratic power.
More of our own laws will be overridden by European
rules and regulations. We will have to give up
no fewer than 32 vetoes. New rules, regulations
and red tape will be extended into areas that
have been free of European interference up to
now. Parliamentary democracy itself will be in
danger. These are attacks on the British way of
doing things, which the British people have never
asked for, never voted for and do not want.
Tony Blair's spectacular u-turn on the question
of a referendum, bowing to pressure from the British
public, will now give the people of Britain, not
for the first time in history, the chance to determine
the future shape of Europe.
I have no doubt that Mr Blair will delay any
such referendum until after Ireland, Denmark and
several other Member States have held theirs,
praying that one of them will vote no and thus
consign the Constitution to the dustbin of history.
However, we cannot rely on such an outcome. The
Irish would once have been the best bet to vote
no, but the fact that the Constitution will be
signed by all 25 Prime Ministers, with great pomp
and fanfare, in Dublin at the end of the Irish
EU Presidency, will probably persuade a majority
to vote yes, while basking in the European spotlight.
Britain, therefore, may be alone in having the
task of saving Europe from itself. Our best way
to do that will be to kick Blair out of No.10
at the next general election, install a Tory Government
under Michael Howard, and put the resources of
the State behind a no vote. Having defeated the
Constitution, we would then be well placed to
debate a different vision for Europe based on
Conservative principles.
The alternative is too awful to contemplate.
Were Blair to win a third term in office, he would
throw all his weight into winning a referendum
on the Constitution, using the British Presidency
of the EU in the second half of 2005 to shop-window
the perceived benefits of Community membership.
A victory in the referendum on the Constitution
would almost certainly hand Blair the crown of
the new EU Council Presidency. He would hand Gordon
Brown the keys to No.10 and move to Brussels where
he would strut the world stage for the next 5
years.
The second thing we have to do at this coming
European election is save the £. That cannot
happen unless we win a resounding vote of confidence
in the Conservative Party. No other party stands
on the principle of the £. The Liberal Democrats
and the Nationalists have adopted the opposite
principle of getting rid of the £, come
what may. The Labour Government says it has already
decided in principle to get rid of the £
and is only waiting for the right moment. The
question is when, not if.
Strange how that moment never seems to arrive.
On the contrary, it appears for now to be moving
further away from us. There is a good reason for
this. During the last few years, the British economy
has been getting not more like the European economy
but less like the European economy. There has
been divergence, not convergence. This is because
Gordon Brown inherited the strongest economy in
Europe from the last Tory Government and, despite
his best efforts to wreck it, we have nevertheless
stuck to our liberal free-trading policies and
continued to prosper, even when our European partners
have fallen into recession. Their answer has been
to impose more rules and regulations, so making
their industries less able to recover.
The independence of the £ has made a crucial
difference to our performance. When we have troubles
we can let the exchange rate take the strain,
instead of putting people out of work. As a matter
of fact we have seen the opposite trend. A strong
economy has made for a strong currency too. Who
wants to throw that achievement away for the dubious
argument that we will have more political influence
if we join the euro? Political influence has not
done the Germans much good, with their four million
unemployed. It has not done the French much good,
with their crises in pensions and social security.
We shall follow them into economic decline if
we do not keep the £.
Mind you, Gordon Brown's borrowing is getting
completely out of hand. We're not even in the
Eurozone and yet we've just been issued with a
written warning by the European Commission. Our
economy is in breach of the Growth & Stability
Pact and the Maastricht criteria. Brown's "borrow
now, tax later" philosophy is starting to
undermine the strong British economy he inherited
from us, to the point where he is even upsetting
the Brussels bureaucrats.
And of course there is no better example of what
happens when we extend European powers just for
the sake of it, into areas where the European
bureaucrats have no experience and no competence,
than the catastrophe, which has steadily overtaken
the British fishing industry. Every day in my
job as chairman of the fisheries committee of
the European Parliament I see the evidence of
this.
More than 30 years ago, when we were negotiating
Britain's entry into Europe, the best thing would
have been for us to keep fishing out of the hands
of the European Commission and under our own control.
With misplaced confidence in the good faith of
our partners, we agreed to let our fisheries become
a common asset in which all our European partners
had a share. Not even the most profound pessimist
forecast that this would lead to the ruin of fishing
communities right round Scotland, often where
there is no other means of earning a living.
It would be easy to tear to pieces the many detailed
regulations, which have brought this about. But
the basic flaw lies deeper. It lies in the method
of making policy at several removes from the fishing
communities, by bureaucrats who only ever read
official documents or scientific reports and never
go near a fishing port or a fishing boat or a
fisherman. It is the opposite to what Europe calls
subsidiarity - of taking decisions as close as
possible to those affected by them. Instead we
take decisions as far as possible away from those
affected by them.
That is why the Conservatives have promised that
when we next form a government we will repatriate
control of our fisheries sector to the UK. We
will have nothing more to do with any common policy
but will bring back control of the fishing industry
to our own Parliaments at Westminster and in Edinburgh,
and to politicians who know the needs of fishermen
because they represent them.
At present the Scottish Executive is opposed
to scrapping the CFP and repatriating control
of our fisheries to the UK. If they maintain that
position, then I hope that while we are negotiating
our withdrawal from the CFP, it will be the Conservative
Secretary of State for Scotland who will represent
Scottish fishermen in the Council of Ministers
in Brussels.
I say that because sadly, Lib/Lab Scottish Executive
Ministers have shown themselves unable and unwilling
to stand up for the interests of our fishermen
at repeated Council meetings.
What has happened to the fishing industry is
only an extreme example of the European way of
doing things, of following not practice but theory.
This results in red tape, in rules and regulations
aimed at an ideal which nobody in their right
minds can seriously expect the people of Europe
to fulfil. All they do is make bureaucrats feel
more virtuous, while the small elitist clique
who run the show, bask in the knowledge that they
are making everyone dance to their tune.
Or at least, there is only one country, which
makes a genuine effort to enforce the rules and
regulations passed in Brussels. That country is
Britain. The rest ignore them when they feel like
it. A fine example is the so-called growth and
stability pact, which is supposed to underpin
the euro. It ought to be labelled the slump and
instability pact, after the problems it has caused
in Germany especially.
The pact requires members of the euro running
high budget deficits to cut them even in times
of recession while more is being paid out by way
of benefits and less is coming in by way of taxes.
When France and Germany found themselves in this
bind last year, they decided to ignore the growth
and stability pact. In other words, they refused
to follow rules which, from the outset of the
euro, they had imposed on others.
A report published by the European Commission
in January shows that France and Germany each
have failed to implement 200 European Directives
into their national laws. So the two great nations
who always claim to be in the European fast lane,
blazing a trail for the rest of us to follow,
have blatantly thumbed their noses at the very
laws their own politicians have voted for in the
Council of Ministers.
Meanwhile, predictably, the UK has implemented
over 98.5% of all EU directives into British law.....no
doubt gold-plated by our ever enthusiastic army
of civil servants. Red tape has added £30
billion costs to British business since Labour
came to power, £9 billion in the last year
alone!
Since I became an MEP in 1999, the EU has decided
how long we are allowed to work, how long we can
spend at our lunch-break, how many vitamins we
can swallow, how long we can sit on a tractor,
what kind of ladders we can climb and now, unbelievably,
they are looking at a regulation to standardise
rocking horses and even a standardised European
yoghurt - pasteurised, sanitised, homogenised
and no doubt lactically correct! Under new health
& safety regulations we must now place a sign
at the top of mountains in Britain warning people
of the danger of heights!
That is why, when the next Conservative government
comes in, we shall make a bonfire of European
controls and we shall cut away the red tape. We
shall argue the case that the British economy
flourishes from its lack of regulation, despite
Gordon Brown's best efforts to wreck it, and the
European economy would do well to copy us. At
any rate, we shall not be bound by rules sure
to damage us as they have damaged others before.
The only way to get the kind of Europe we want,
a Europe where the people come first and the bureaucrats
last, is to stand up for the principle that it
has to be a Europe of nation states, not a nation
called Europe. It has to be a Europe of independent
states, which agree to work together. It must
not be a centralised superstate, a European Union
where the central bureaucracy can override the
rights of the member countries.
Our aim with this will not be to cut ourselves
off from our European partners, still less to
prepare the way for our possible exit from the
Union. Our aim will in fact be precisely the opposite,
to change it into a Union which will receive the
wholehearted endorsement of the British people,
something it has never really had. We want also
to make it into a Union which will receive the
wholehearted endorsement of the people in all
the member countries, some with a very different
political experience from our own.
The best way to do this is create a dynamic European
economy, capable of outdoing the American economy
and in future, no doubt, the Chinese economy.
At the moment we can certainly outdo the American
and Chinese economies in red tape and bureaucracy.
We have to outdo them in the opposite sense, in
the sense of pulling down the barriers to trade
in the single market to create a prosperous society,
which will maintain and create jobs.
We want a Europe of enterprise, affluence and
open government. That is the way to win the loyalty
and commitment of the European peoples. If we
stand up for that principle, we shall find there
are others who agree with us.
The progress towards a superstate has only been
prompted by a few bumptious politicians who want
to find a place in the history books, together
with their willing allies among the bureaucrats
in Brussels. But if we look to the people of Europe
we shall find our own natural allies who will
welcome it if we stand up for that principle.
For example, it is by no means clear that the
people of Denmark and Sweden, with their own long
and proud history, want to find themselves submerged
in a superstate. Recently the Italians have started
supporting us in Europe rather than consenting
to be bamboozled by the French and Germans. I
am not even convinced that the ordinary citizens
of France and Germany want more centralised integration
and more red tape. They are being driven into
it by a powerful and dangerous political elite,
hellbent on the creation of a European superstate.
It is certainly hard to imagine that the ten
new member countries, most of which won their
freedom from Communism only a few years ago, want
to lose it again to another form of supranational
oppression in the European Union.
That means we must seek every opportunity to
maintain our way of doing things, to defend our
freedom and independence. These opportunities
are not always easy to recognise. The EU, like
Gordon Brown's taxation, advances by stealth,
by deals struck behind the scenes in the dead
of night, out of sight of the ordinary people
of Europe.
When we say this, we cannot be accused of rejecting
Europe. Conservatives do not reject the Europe
we have played a large part in building over the
last 30 years. What we do say is that we can build
a better Europe of self-governing nation states
based on free trade and co-operation. If some
other countries wish to go down a different, integrationist
route, then they should be free to do so. Let's
have the flexible Europe that Michael Howard called
for in his speech in Berlin in February.
Tony Blair thinks he can get us to the heart
of Europe by bamboozling the British people and
hiding from them the true nature of the choices
he wants them to make. The Conservatives in this
campaign are going to be open and honest about
their aims and aspirations, because we want to
call forth from the British people a genuine and
not a phoney commitment to Europe.
One big opportunity we do have comes every five
years when we elect the European Parliament. European
elections have sometimes been lacklustre affairs
for that reason. But that need not be so, and
this time it ought not to be so, because the election
in June happens to coincide with what may be a
real turning point in European affairs. If we
miss this chance to make our views known, then
a new era is likely to dawn in Europe, which will
not be to our liking. It would herald the centralised
European superstate, where power will be transferred
forever from the people to the bureaucrats and
mark the end of our parliamentary democracy.
It can be stopped, though. And it can best be
stopped by sending a message from Scotland and
from Britain that we reject the centralised, integrated
superstate model of Europe and will not allow
it to be constructed against our will and over
our heads.
That message will best be carried by the Conservative
Party, by a victory of the Conservative party
in the European election. Let us work together
for that victory, and get every vote possible
cast for British freedom and British independence
inside a flexible Europe of free and independent
nation states.
STRUAN STEVENSON is a Conservative
MEP for Scotland and President of the Fisheries
Committee in the European Parliament.
For further information please
contact
Elaine McKean
Indigo
Tel 0131 554 1230
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