EU Council

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with my right hon. Friend on the balance of effort that has been given, on the one hand, to new treaty powers and changes, and, on the other, to actually looking at what needs to be done, particularly in the short term, in terms of the firewall, bank recapitalisation and action by the ECB. More needs to be focused on those things rather than on the medium-term power changes in the EU, which I do not think are being hovered over by the markets, which are working out whether countries can pay their debts. In that regard, my right hon. Friend is right.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

There was no draft treaty before the European Council last Thursday and Friday; there was a set of draft conclusions. Will the Prime Minister set out the paragraph numbers that he thinks would have damaged Britain’s interests had we agreed to them? Will he also confirm that we had a veto on a financial transactions tax before the Council and that we still have one; and that financial services regulation was subject to qualified majority voting before last Thursday and still is?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said in my statement, the eurozone members wanted to create a new treaty within the EU, which has all sorts of dangers. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the letter that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy sent, he will see that they specifically wanted the 17 to look at issues such as financial services and the market within that treaty. Without safeguards, a treaty within a treaty would have been far more dangerous than a treaty outside the EU.

Let me repeat this point: a treaty outside the EU cannot do anything that cuts across European treaties or European legislation. Of course, that is not without its dangers, but my judgment was that without safeguards, an EU treaty was more dangerous.