Europe has changed beyond recognition from the organisation that Britain signed up to
At arms length: David Cameron wants to renegotiate Britain's relationship with Europe
There is a Yes Minister episode called The Writing on the Wall that brilliantly encapsulates Britain’s ambivalence towards Continental Europe. With barely suppressed exasperation, Sir Humphrey Appleby explains to Jim Hacker the purpose of the UK’s policy. “Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. We tried to break the EEC up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside we can make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing.”
But surely we are now committed to the European ideal, Hacker avers. After all, Britain was particularly keen to bring lots of new countries into the “club”. Why did we do that? “For the same reason,” says Sir Humphrey. “It’s just like the United Nations – the more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent it becomes. We call it diplomacy, Minister.”
With this exchange, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn captured Britain’s historic dilemma – how to be in Europe but not run by Europe. We continue to exhibit a lukewarm, half-hearted commitment that not only irritates our EU partners but perplexes them, too. The self-regarding farewell tour of José Manuel Barroso, the outgoing president of the European Commission, exemplifies this perfectly. He is astonished that 40 years after joining, the British still decline to embrace Europe’s Grand Design; and yet despite being an unelected official, Mr Barroso feels no compunction in lecturing the UK and its leaders about what is best for their country. It never seems to occur to him, or the others in the Brussels secretariat, that the two are connected. Moreover, because they enthusiastically subscribe to the concept of “ever closer union” as set out in the Treaty of Rome, they cannot understand why we get so worked up when the ratchet effect of membership leads us into areas we never wanted to go.
Let’s take the two issues that are giving David Cameron if not exactly sleepless nights, then serious pause for thought: EU immigration and Britain’s judicial independence. Many in Brussels do not regard the free movement of people around Europe as “immigration” in its usual sense since they are all considered citizens of the EU under the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty.
But back when the UK joined the Common Market, it was far smaller and people did find it harder to get about. Millions in eastern Europe couldn’t travel at all, except within the old Soviet bloc. After the collapse of communism dismantled those barriers, the rules on free movement remained, albeit with temporary restrictions imposed on new members (which Labour declined to use in 2004 when Poland and other ex-Warsaw Pact countries joined). We keep being told this is a “fundamental principle” of the EU and yet the circumstances in which it was enshrined have changed beyond all recognition. Why, then, should it be so outrageous to propose revisiting it as Mr Cameron has done. “Illegal, irresponsible, impossible”, blusters Mr Barroso. Actually, most people would consider it to be perfectly reasonable to look at this again.
Furthermore, it was envisaged that free movement should benefit the nationals of EU member states. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of people from outside Europe who have used its flexible migration controls and generous citizenship rules to settle in Britain. For instance, many of the Somalis who live here came from Holland and Denmark where they were first granted EU status on compassionate grounds. Nigerians have arrived through Germany, Russians through the Baltic states, South Americans through Spain and Portugal. A few years ago, Oxford University’s Migration Observatory found that 141,000 people who came to the UK under EU rules were born outside the continent. Between a third and a half of the entire Dutch Somali community has moved to the UK. There are an estimated 600,000 Russian speakers in Britain, many of whom will be from the Baltic states but also from Russia, which the last time I looked was not in the EU.
Some may argue that the overall numbers are small, but that is not the point. If this is a “fundamental principle” of EU membership, it is one that has been seriously eroded.
The same is true of our control over the justice system, which in many ways is the essence of nationhood. When we joined it was accepted that the administration of the criminal law was outside the competence of the EU. The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 specifically put such matters into what was known in the jargon as the Third Pillar – so beyond the Commission’s ability to interfere and outside the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. However, the Lisbon Treaty changed this and justice and home affairs matters are now to be brought within the ambit of the EU’s institutions for the first time by the end of this year.
Britain negotiated an opt-out from 135 measures that had previously been agreed by mutual consent and the Government is now proposing to opt back into 35 of them. They include the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and other protocols considered important for fighting crime. Britain has until the end of next month to decide whether to keep these, and the Government has promised a vote, hence Mr Cameron’s current quandary. Ministers, especially Theresa May, the Home Secretary, are adamant that we must sign up to the EAW. Not to do so would give succour to criminals, they say.
But again this misses the central point. Once we have opted back in, the European Court of Justice will have full powers of jurisdiction over these areas of law for the first time. A more stark transfer of sovereignty can hardly be imagined – something Mr Cameron and the other party leaders insisted would not happen. Indeed, such a head of steam is building on the Tory back benches against this that it is impossible to see how the Prime Minister can proceed with his planned vote. Not only will he face a significant rebellion – some say up to 100 Conservatives will oppose the move – but Labour may take the chance to defeat the Government. For this to happen just before an election and with Ukip rampant would be a fiasco.
A way out is currently being canvassed on the back benches. Instead of opting in, the UK would negotiate a bilateral agreement with the EU to continue co-operating with measures such as the EAW without ceding sovereignty over our judicial system. That would meet the concerns of the police that we risk watering down extradition arrangements while retaining what we always thought we would keep: power over our own criminal law. This is not just a bee in the bonnet of a few superannuated Eurosceptics. It goes to the heart of the age-old conundrum set out by Sir Humphrey Appleby – how to be part of Europe while remaining at one remove from it. Mr Barroso might find such an attitude hard to understand, but it is bred in the bone. Unless he and his colleagues make an effort to see that, then a parting of the ways is inevitable.
No comments:
Post a Comment