European Union (Approval of Treaty Amendment Decision) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Giddens and Lord Radice

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. I am not sure how much I agree with the main body of his speech but I certainly agree with what he said at the beginning. This is a crisis of gigantic proportions. Enough of precipices, I would say, but this is the greatest social and economic crisis we have lived through and it is unfolding against the backdrop of a world economic recession which is still far from unresolved. As I argued in a speech that I gave a couple of days ago, this adds to the difficulties we are confronting in Europe, which do not simply come from within Europe itself.

I support this Bill, but, I have to say, perforce. That is because this one-page scrap of green paper is Britain’s, and especially the Government’s, ambivalence towards the European Union made manifest. I argue that it represents a position that is now disintegrating and for which there is no long-term future. I would like to sketch in the reasons why.

In a document that the Government sent round after the report that we debated on the euro crisis, they say:

“The decision not to be part of the Fiscal Treaty does not reduce our influence and has not damaged our reputation in Europe”.

That statement is absurd. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, seemed to say that it does not matter who listens to you. It surely does because if people stop listening to you, you have no influence in the circles that you want to influence.

[Lord Radice]

To act as the mouthpiece of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, as I understood it in his criticism of me, he does not think that influence is important.

[Lord Giddens]

That is what I was saying. Influence is very important because if you do not have it, how are you going to affect the course of developments in Europe? I have been around Europe talking to a range of European figures recently, as my noble friend has been as well, and it is true that virtually nobody listens to what the Prime Minister says. This is important. Britain is now marginal in Europe because we lecture Europe from the sidelines, and I have heard so much of that in the debates over the past few days. The Prime Minister wants what all other European leaders want: the stabilising of the eurozone. Yet he will have no influence over that process.

One can say that the EU is at a crossroads—except that, as has been observed, the EU is always at a crossroads. This time, however, the forks of the crossroad are far further apart than ever before. On the one side, there is the possibility of the disintegration of the eurozone. Having looked at the scenarios in detail, I cannot see any which would not be catastrophic if this course were followed. Some have argued for what has been called a velvet divorce, whereby the eurozone could be progressively uncoupled. However, as in real life, there are very few velvet divorces and I could not see a scenario in which that could be achieved. Whatever one thinks of the eurozone—I have certainly had mixed feelings about the euro from the beginning—its disintegration would be catastrophic for Europe as a whole, and certainly for the UK as well.

There is only one other path. I think the path that Europe will certainly try to follow is a move towards federalism, and in a fairly strong sense of that term. Fiscal union is being forced on the eurozone, more or less, by the markets but it would have to go along with the ECB becoming a lender of last resort. We have a good understanding of the financial apparatus that it would presume, although we do not know whether there is enough money around to back it. These moves in turn would have to be accompanied by greater political co-ordination.

From these there follows the need for a process of democratisation and a reshaping of the institutions and procedures of the EU. Therefore, in thinking of the future of the EU and in charting, as I have been doing over the past three months, the enormous number of debates going on outside this country in the member states of the European Union, we are not talking about evolution. We are talking about a sort of revolution. We are talking about the end of the Monnet method of slow accumulation. We are talking about big transitions over a short period towards a more integrated eurozone that would, in the end, drag in most of the rest of the European Union. Jörg Asmussen, who is a German board member at the ECB and, incidentally, someone who has had a lot of influence over Angela Merkel, yesterday called for just such a programme. I think he gave his speech in anticipation of the meeting today. He argued that eurozone members should join in a,

“banking union, fiscal union and political union”.

Should the eurozone survive in a reasonably robust condition—and like the Government, I cannot see anything else that one can hope for—several other countries, such as Poland, have declared their intention to join it. At that point, British policy would surely have to change. There could be no more ambivalence, no more sitting on the fence and no more wanting the advantages of the EU without the commitments. Should, God forbid, the EU descend into chaos, the UK will be affected just as much as any country that has formally signed up to the euro. If a more federal Europe emerges, and I think that is the most likely outcome, Britain will no longer have the option of semi-detached membership. I think this also applies to the single market. I do not think that the idea that Britain can concentrate on the single market when the rest of Europe has moved to a much more tightly co-ordinated economy can work.

At that point, a momentous decision will have to be made: in or out. In my contribution to the debate on the Queen’s Speech I argued that at such a point there should be a referendum. I think this is the first time ever that there have been voices from all three major parties arguing for the desirability of a referendum. We would have to have a referendum if Europe has moved down a federal path and become a different entity far away from the position it was in when the UK entered it.

If a referendum is held, the results might surprise some of our more vociferous political commentators. I quote from a recent, very interesting study that I commend to anyone interested in opinion in Europe. It is by Michael Bruter and Sarah Harrison and is called How European Do You Feel? but it goes well beyond that. It is the largest study ever carried out across the 27 EU member countries about attitudes towards the European Union, reform and the future. The reason it is so important is that its methodology is far more sophisticated than the surveys that you read in the press from day to day. If you read the results of surveys in the papers of what people think of the European Union, they are sometimes based on a sample of only 200 or 300 people. They do not give you an in-depth understanding. This study uses a range of sophisticated techniques and goes up to 2012. I think noble Lords will agree that the results are quite counterintuitive. They show that European identity is strong across all 27 EU countries, with a majority in this country endorsing the statements about Europe in the study. Far from declining, in 2012, it is getting stronger. It has gone up from just under six out of 10 in their measures to over seven out of 10.

In the United Kingdom, there are some very interesting findings in the survey. Opinion is polarised, but intriguingly so. Younger people are far more positive about the European Union than the older generation. There is, the authors say, a new, younger generation of very committed Europeans in this country. In their conclusion, they say that in the UK there are,

“two publics, one fiercely non-European, and”—

this is important—

“one of the largest proportion of highly ‘Europeanised’ people in the whole of Europe”.

I would welcome the Minister’s comments on any aspects of what I have said, particularly on what plans the Government are making to respond to what is likely to be a quite different Europe from the one in which we have existed in such an ambivalent way until now.