European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Framework Agreement) Order 2012

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Framework Agreement) Order 2012

Relevant documents: 36th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the framework agreement itself was negotiated in parallel with the EU-Republic of Korea free trade agreement, debated in this Room yesterday, which was signed on 6 October 2010. The agreement provides a structure aimed at strengthening the co-operation of the European Union and its member states with the Republic of Korea in a number of fields. These fields include justice, freedom and security, as well as good governance and taxation. The agreement will also allow for further engagement on global issues such as climate change, security of energy supply and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The agreement gives us another tool through which to discuss and work on important issues with a key ally in the east Asia region. The Republic of Korea is the fourth largest economy in Asia, and growing fast; it will be the 10th largest driver of world growth over the next five years. The Republic of Korea is also an important international player, with troops in Afghanistan and ships in the Indian Ocean off Africa tackling piracy. It is also a fellow leader on green issues. Its partner of choice has so far been the United States, but we hope that the framework agreement will give the EU an opportunity to increase engagement in many of these fields and will therefore contribute to the better implementation of UK objectives in relation to the Republic of Korea. The EU delegation in Seoul is currently in negotiations with the Republic of Korea on what areas of co-operation to prioritise and how best to take this forward.

Her Majesty's Government fully support this agreement. We firmly believe that it will help to enhance and strengthen the relationship between the EU and the Republic of Korea. I commend the order to the Committee.

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the background to this order ready for affirmative resolution and following yesterday’s proceedings on the trade agreement with the Republic of Korea. That, too, is a very important document, with its contents at an early stage; it remains to be seen how that will work out in the build-up of trade between ourselves and the Republic of Korea. This instrument is one of the accompaniments that the EU and its allies and other countries with which we are doing deals like this rightly require. The international practice now is to have agreements along these lines: a framework agreement alongside a trade agreement dealing with all the other matters that the Minister has listed, which are extremely important from the point of view of good governance and civil society being properly looked after in the countries that are parties to this agreement. In this case, that means the member states of the EU and the Republic of Korea. Obviously, right now there is bound to be a certain amount of tension, at least in the margin, because of events in North Korea and the relationship and heightened tension between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. One hopes that will not have any deleterious effect on the trade agreement that we discussed yesterday or on this agreement.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who is a great expert on Korea. He is particularly knowledgeable about South Korea—and, indeed, North Korea—and I would presumptuously guess that he may want to say a number of things about these matters. I will listen with great interest, but with some trepidation. I apologise in advance in case we find our proceedings go on a bit because I am due at a Select Committee where a Minister is attending at 4.10 pm. Therefore, if I depart prematurely, which I would certainly not wish to do because it would be very discourteous on my part, I can none the less rely on my noble friend Lady Maddock to keep me abreast of the developments in the rest of the discussion, and I shall look very closely at Hansard.

On behalf of the other part of the coalition today and in support of the Minister, I express support for this agreement.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I express the Opposition’s support for the approval of this statutory instrument. One of the real privileges of becoming a Member of the House of Lords, which I did last year, is to listen to people such as the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, who have expertise, wisdom and judgment to offer on things that one knows very little about. I hope that the points that he has raised today, although they are tangential to the thrust of the EU framework agreement, will be taken very seriously and that we will have further opportunities to debate the position in North Korea, about which he spoke so movingly. I thank him on behalf of the Opposition for his work there.

The agreement itself is what they call in EU jargon a strategic partnership, and it is one that is directly linked to the conclusion of the free trade agreement in 2010 between the EU and the Republic of Korea, which I think Europe took about a year to ratify from when it was actually signed. That was not bad when one looks at the position in relation to the United States and its free trade agreements with Korea, which are deeply enmeshed in the problems in the US Congress. Perhaps many people in Britain forget that the EU can be effective and that it still is an important pole of attraction for a very rapidly growing country like the Republic of Korea. The deal on the free trade agreement with the accompanying strategic partnership was negotiated in two years. It arose out of the global initiative that my noble friend Lord Mandelson launched when he was trade commissioner which, given the difficulties of completing the Doha round, was a switch away to bilateral trading agreements with our major trading partners.

The Republic of Korea is extremely significant for us in economic terms. It is the most important trading partner for Europe behind the United States, Japan and China. I discovered that fact when I was Googling away before the debate, but it is a remarkable fact none the less. We on this side welcome the deepening of relations with the Republic of Korea. We think it is right that a trade agreement should have a parallel political agreement, as it were, which sets out a broad range of areas for co-operation and dialogue and we very much wish that co-operation and dialogue to be effective. I am sure that this agreement will play an important role in deepening relationships between Europe and the Republic of Korea, which I hope will assist in a solution being found to the terrible problems that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, described in North Korea. I support the approval of this statutory instrument.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I happily yield to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, as an expert in EU jargon. It is a very erudite subject with which we have both struggled for many years. I feel I am slightly in the same position as I was in last night, when being asked to defend Britain's approach to the OSCE, to which the answer is: we are not entirely sure how this works or what its potential is, but we think it is worth doing. The framework agreements are a new element in EU relations with other countries beyond the European region. They have very wide potential, including on human rights, and provide a formal structure for member states collectively to raise such issues.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his, as always, fascinating and well-informed speech. While nothing in this framework agreement specifically refers to North Korea, relations with North Korea are of course always likely to be an important part of the agenda when we discuss political and human rights issues with our Korean colleagues. All those of us who have been to Seoul know that when you are in Seoul you feel close to the border. The sense of insecurity is not that much less than it used to be when one visited Berlin during the Cold War, so one cannot get away from the North Korean dimension in this relationship. The absence of specific reference to North Korea or to human rights in the framework agreement does not imply that these are outside its structure.

The noble Lord asked a number of specific questions, including one about information on the news of a potential North Korean amnesty for political prisoners. I will inquire further within the Foreign Office and report back. Although I am fully briefed on what is happening in southern Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Iran, as one jumps from one country to another I have unfortunately not kept up with exactly what is happening in North Korea.

There are problems in developing among the EU 27 a common position on North Korea. Smaller EU member states see North Korea as a distant country, even further away from Europe than Burma. We are therefore talking about the larger EU member states attempting to reconcile their positions, which fits in with their relations with China and their position on nuclear proliferation. Finding common EU positions on distant problems with which not all the smaller member states are directly concerned is not always easy.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Can the Minister tell us about the position of France? As I recall, France does not even have diplomatic relations with North Korea and since it is not one of the smaller member states, getting a common position would be a pretty good start.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will ensure that I give the noble Lord a more expert reply on the French position than I could off the cuff. As he remarked, the British took a very balanced decision to reopen relations with North Korea. The Americans and the French did not support it at the time. I think that most of us here think that it was worth doing, in spite of the intense difficulties which our representatives have often had in North Korea since then. We therefore have an advantage over some of our EU colleagues in having a more direct understanding of what is going on in the country.

I will also need to come back to the noble Lord on questions of energy supply. I thank him for the information on the proposals for a direct pipeline and I appreciate its implications. Similarly, in the case of the industrial zone, I am tempted to say that the import into Britain of goods which are partly put together in extremely poorly paid factories and then assembled in higher wage countries is, as we all know, not unique to relations between South Korea and North Korea.

On education, I have heard some fascinating stuff before from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the university of which he spoke. We are doing our best to provide some support there. It is a very interesting experiment and is one of the things which suggest that chinks of light are possibly opening up. At this precise moment, with a change in leadership in North Korea, it is difficult for any of us to read exactly how the situation is going to develop. We have to follow what is happening, to intervene when we think that we can make a difference—as we are beginning to do on the educational front—and to see how much more we can manage. The Government share his concerns about the possibility of a local incident moving up the escalation ladder into accidental war. We are all concerned about that, and not only between North Korea and the Republic of Korea. Although not within this framework agreement, it is absolutely part of the multilateral diplomatic process on North Korea—which includes the Chinese, the Americans and others—to try to build those contacts and confidence-building measures which will prevent such an escalation happening.

The comparisons with Burma are not exact. North Korea has remained much more closed than Burma, even through the worst points of the Burmese military Government. We can hope for similar shifts with North Korea but it will take longer and it is much more difficult, precisely because North Korea has been so much more cut off from the world. This framework agreement offers us the prospect to widen the relationship with Korea. We will be pursuing this through a whole range of activities.

Perhaps I may be allowed on a personal note to remark that some noble Lords may not be aware that the Korean parliamentary choir will be coming to sing with the British parliamentary choir and has invited the British parliamentary choir to go out and sing in Seoul in exchange. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on the language point. We are singing Mendelssohn with them and the Korean parliamentary choir has insisted that we sing it in the original German and not in English. I am glad to hear that it is particularly correct in this way.

I conclude by reassuring noble Lords that the Government believe our European partners and Europe institutionally have a role to play in strengthening co-operation between Britain and the Republic of Korea. This agreement will allow for more work to be done in expanding a long-term relationship on a number of very important issues such as the promotion of human rights, international peace and security, energy and climate change, on which the Koreans are particularly active, and global economic co-operation.

Motion agreed.