EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, the Prime Minister has given notice that we want to invoke Article 48 of the treaty, and change the treaty which everybody sees as their treaty. Therefore, other Governments will now be trying to work out precisely what we might want.

On the five principles set out in the speech and listed by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, nothing that the Prime Minister said on competitiveness cannot be done inside the Council and inside the present treaty. The Monti report sets out what should be done and we do not need to change the treaty to do it.

On democratic accountability, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, gets it right. I would add that I personally would find it offensive if any EU treaty should purport to lay down how a Government should be held accountable by their national Parliament.

On the fairness agenda, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, got it right. The aim is to try to ensure that, when the dwindling band of euro-outs do not constitute a blocking minority, they can still block in Council. I would have thought that the Prime Minister would have learned in the middle of the night in the European Council in December 2011 that it is not possible to do that. To get all member states to agree, and to entrench in the treaty, that the UK should have a blocking veto seems completely impossible.

On the fourth principle, that we should abandon the one-size-fits-all approach, the fact is that it was abandoned 21 years ago at Maastricht. EMU, Schengen, fiscal union, banking union—flexibility exists, and there is no attempt to force everybody into the same, rigid pattern.

The last of the Prime Minister’s principles was flow-back—the return of powers. That is in the treaty already, in Article 48. But what exactly do we want to flow back? The only example given was the working time directive, which is nothing to do with the treaty. That is Council business. If we want to change it, we must raise it in the Council.

So how are Governments in other capitals interpreting all this? I guess that they think that it is more to do with party management, and they understand that. But we are asking them to change their treaty, and I very much fear that the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, will be proved wrong; I wish that he was going to be proved right, but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, is correct that the audit exercise here in Whitehall is crucially important. That is going to be the foundation of the Government’s negotiating position, and I very much fear that it will be a demand for a series of opt-outs: a bout of cherry-picking from the treaty.

That would be unprecedented. There has never been a retrospective opt-out. Opt-outs are invoked when most want to go forward and somebody does not want to go forward. An opt-out has never been invoked because somebody wants to go backward. If that is the position in which we find ourselves after 2015—arguing that we want everybody else to carry on if they want to, but we want to take bits back—then we may be in the awkward “blackmailing” scenario to which the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, referred.

I am afraid that other Governments will not agree, that it will not work, and that they will tend to say, “Make your minds up: in or out. No unravelling. Stop wasting our time. We have got work to do. Solve your domestic problem or invoke Article 50 and get out”.