EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report)

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I hate to intrude on the love fest between the noble Lords, Lord Balfe and Lord Judd, but I very much agree with the former on British officials in EU institutions and with the latter that we are locked into the global community and cannot solve our problems by running away.

I, too, am very grateful to the External Affairs Sub-Committee and its outgoing chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, for a very interesting and useful report. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, on taking over the chairmanship and look forward to future reports.

Like others, I start from the position that Brexit would weaken both Britain and the European Union and thus agree strongly with the paragraph in the report which states:

“The UK is an important player in international affairs, and the EU has the potential to enhance UK influence. A UK exit would significantly limit the UK’s international reach, not least by removing the UK’s influence over, and access to, the Commission’s instruments of foreign policy. It would also diminish the foreign policy of the EU”.

To borrow a phrase from the Prime Minister, Brexit would “put a bomb” underneath what Professor Richard Whitman, of Kent University and Chatham House, described as the,

“50 year-old strategy, pursued by successive British Governments, to structure its political and economic engagement with Europe through the politics, policies and institutions of the European Union”.

I emphasise: “through” the EU. Watching and trying to influence the EU from the outside would absorb a lot of the attention of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, instead of using the EU framework as a springboard for and magnifier of our influence in tackling substantive neighbourhood and global problems. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, mentioned the effect of being on the outside.

My second opening thought is that the best platform the EU and its member states can create for making a success internationally is to be a success domestically, and in particular economically—reversing what the high representative, Mrs Mogherini, called the EU’s “declining economic dynamism”. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said, our foreign influence needs the restoration of our economic vigour. It is much harder to have a coherent and effective refugee and migration policy if it is contested at home by people who resent migrants as they see them taking their jobs. So let us create more jobs. It makes the EU less credible in negotiating trade deals if its market is not as enticing to potential trade partners as it could be.

I agree with the report’s recommendations that a large part of the EU’s focus should be on enlargement and the eastern neighbourhood. I share the regret that the review of the European neighbourhood policy has, apparently, not been co-ordinated with this exercise. I also agree that the EU needs to be clearer about what the end game is. We have seen in the referendum campaign the mischief that can be made out of the fact that Turkey is a “candidate country”. This has allowed Boris Johnson and Vote Leave to assert that “Turkey is joining the EU” when everyone, including Mr Johnson—who very recently expressed firm support for Turkish accession—knows that Turkey is not joining for a very long time, if at all.

On Russia, I have listened to various noble Lords who are far more expert than me and I find I agree with every one of them in turn. My conclusion is that, whatever the EU decides on its long-term policy, there must be agreement and coherence in its position. My noble friend Lord Oxford made a suggestion for a longer-term policy of engagement with Russia. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that we need to be realistic about what we are up against. I find a curious contrast between the UK taking a lead in the policy of sanctions—which is starting to be questioned by the German Foreign Minister—and our inexplicable absence from the process of the Minsk agreement. Perhaps the noble Baroness will explain why we were not involved in that process.

On Ukraine, I was a little surprised at the comment in the report that Russian opposition to the deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with Ukraine was,

“a salutary lesson on the need for caution in the use of these tools”.

Personally, I do not accept that Russia should have any kind of veto over an EU association agreement with Ukraine. Maybe the remark was more about the way it was handled on both the EU and Ukraine sides. Of course, extraordinarily we have recently had a Dutch referendum which rejected the Ukraine agreement. I have a feeling that they were voting not actually on the Ukraine agreement but just to give a kick to politicians and the EU.

I will spend some time on the comment:

“The EU is a weak military actor”.

Of course it is—I do not think that anyone ever sees it as a major purveyor of hard military power—but the important comment was that,

“EU-NATO co-operation was not functioning”.

During the referendum campaign we have heard the assertion that the EU is irrelevant to security. NATO leaders have countered that assertion by saying that the EU is an essential partner in delivering European security. The weakness is that member states are seen to be unable to underpin their own and EU foreign policy with an ability to use legitimate force, which undermines the EU, so the EU and NATO must “work together more effectively”.

We have heard ludicrous assertions about the creation of a European army, including a recent article in the Times by one of Boris Johnson’s successors in Brussels, but what the EU leaders are talking about is co-operation and co-ordination. That is made very clear in the conclusions of the Foreign Affairs Committee in May last year and the conclusions of the European Council in June last year. I rather liked the comment by Sir Robert Cooper, the former head of foreign policy at the European Council, that,

“while he was not in favour of a European army, he was in ‘favour of a European rifle’”,

and that the EU ought to do more to harmonise specifications and joint military procurement because there are huge inefficiencies, with outdated equipment and facilities that cannot be used in tandem.

There are also operational inefficiencies. The report stated:

“A NATO exercise to bring one brigade from Portugal to the Baltics took 21 days in order to facilitate all the customs and regulations and a further 10 days to find the trains to transport the tanks”.

Thanks to Twitter, during the debate I came across a new article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the American Council on Foreign Relations, talking about how in some new member states,

“bridges and railroads are simply not suitable for large troop movements”,

and that getting permission for those movements for exercises is very frustrating. It calls for a military Schengen for NATO. Apparently, Poland requires 15 days’ notice to give clearance for troop movements. Presumably it would not do so if—God forbid—there was actually a war. But it seems to me that the EU can surely help by supporting NATO in the construction of the infrastructure and in trying to iron out the red tape. That is a good example of the possibility for convergence.

We also know that the European arms industry is very fragmented and subject to national procurement priorities and markets. Not so long ago we had the failure of the merger between Airbus and BAE. Each country wants its national champion but that does not bode well for obtaining best value for defence budgets and structuring our procurement and defence industry collaboration to deliver more efficiencies through joint capabilities.

The report rightly states that the EU has limited ability to act as a “global security provider” but it does have the ability to support NATO. Mrs Mogherini, in her response, also legitimately points out that the EU must take some responsibility for managing “global commons”, and particularly for delivering and supporting rules-based global governance. That is all part of security as well.

In finishing, I want to mention some things which the EU has as tools, including its values and its promotion of the European Convention on Human Rights in respect of Russia, even though that is obviously not an EU instrument. There are also all the anti-trust, trade development and humanitarian aid policies. I do not think that the report mentioned the US trade and investment partnership, TTIP, but it ought to be a priority for the European Union to stand up to some of the demonisation of that. Building our economy through science, research and innovation could also help restore Europe’s global influence. There are so many areas where European policies—not classic diplomatic policies—can strengthen the potential of the EU on the international stage.

I agree with the report that the high representative should be involved with ad hoc groups and it is disappointing that the Government do not agree. As the report brings out, even if the EU works through ad hoc groups, the key is to bring together the varied ways and means without being too tidy or precious about how it all works, as long as there is co-ordination and not contradiction. We are never going to have a very neat expression of the EU’s common foreign and security policy—but a lot can be done to make sure that it all pulls in the same direction.