European Union: Recent Developments

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling]

My Lords, I was particularly interested in the noble Earl’s speech and will return in a few minutes to the problems of the western Balkans. First, I refer to a theme that has run through the debate: how we might change our relationship with the European Union, and how the European Union itself might change in future. I wonder sometimes if those who see little good in the European Union realise what the effect is of the continual drip of the slagging-off of the endeavour on the United Kingdom’s effectiveness within the EU. What is forgotten is that if we want changes in our relationship with the EU, it is important that as many other people within the EU as possible are sympathetic to us. Sometimes the way this is carried on has the opposite effect.

Years ago, I had experience on the Agriculture and Fisheries Council. I followed a series of Ministers including Peter Walker, Fred Peart, John Silkin and Cledwyn Hughes, most of whom were less than sympathetic to what was then the EEC. All my life I have felt that membership of the Union is in Britain’s interests, in spite of some of the daft things that it does from time to time. It is 55 years since I proposed a motion on Europe at the Conservative Party conference. That was the first time that the party discussed Europe.

On the council it took me quite a time to convince some of my colleagues that I was sympathetic to the whole enterprise. Once they realised, I found it a great deal easier to get them to listen to my problems. That is what I mean when I say that I am concerned that with the torrent of abuse of the EU from some quarters, we are shooting ourselves in the foot and making things much more difficult than they need to be. I suppose that those who say that we must come out of the Union altogether may consider what I say as grist to their mill. However, those who would like to continue to be part of the Union—but with changes—might recall my experience. I will give a further example. In the past few days I heard a report from an official connected with Brussels who said that he saw no point in answering some of our questions because the United Kingdom was so detached. The word he used was “parochial”.

I come back to the speech of the noble Earl and will speak about EU expansion. In recent years in particular, the accession of Romania and Bulgaria prompted a great many people to ask questions such as: was it too quick? Were the conditions that the European Union demanded for membership properly executed? The Minister told us, on the subject of the Croatian accession, that never had more stringent conditions been imposed. I was very glad to hear it, but the implication was that some of the earlier accessions were squeaked through without an insistence on the full meaning of the conditions.

The difficulty is, of course, that once a country has become a member state of the EU, it becomes much more difficult to demand that the standards that were originally insisted on are introduced. We heard in a speech from the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, that Croatia will shortly join the Union. I have visited Croatia twice in the past two years, and it feels like a European state. I hope that the conditions that we imposed have been enforced.

During the past year I have visited Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, where there is much instability. Progress in Bosnia is hampered by the existence and the obstruction of the Serbian enclave in Republika Srpska, based around Banja Luka, which I have visited. In Kosovo, which I visited only a few months ago, progress is likewise hampered by another Serbian enclave in the north, which is based around Mitrovica.

The various leaderships, in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Pristina, as well as those in Banja Luka and Mitrovica, are all, as we know, still capable of serious political mischief-making. The continuing disputes in that region of the western Balkans could so easily turn much worse and revert to the dreadful bloodshed of only a few years ago. However, the factor common to all those countries is that they are dead keen to join both the European Union and NATO. I hope, therefore, that there will be no fast-tracking at all of the negotiations over the entry of Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia.

We have the opportunity to use the prize of European Union membership to insist that the obstruction and hatred which surround these places are set aside by permanent commitments and settlements of their differences, quite apart from our insistence on European Union standards. I understand that some of the reasons for their differences can be seen in their recent history, which has been dreadful and bloody. However, we have the opportunity to use our strength to insist that they be settled on a permanent basis if we have the strength to broker a peaceful future in this war-torn region. We should make the best use of it.