European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Association Agreement) (Georgia) Order 2015

Lord Bach Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the measured and moderate way in which she spoke about these agreements. She will recall that, in a previous life, she appointed me as one of our delegates to the Council of Europe. Since that time, I have managed to become the chairman of the sub-committee on the application of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, where I am privileged to have a Georgian as my vice-chair. I want to take up the point that has been made about not getting too much crossover between the legitimate job of the European Court of Human Rights and that of the European Commission and its annual report.

I speak from long experience of the European Parliament, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, does. The Commission loves to stray well beyond its remit into giving its opinion on many things in the world and is likely to do so. Through the Committee of Ministers mechanism at the Council of Europe, we should be able to ensure that there is some sort of balance and that we do not get into a position where they are both looking at the same thing. There is quite a clear job to do, and I am sure that resources are scarce. I spent 10 years on the liaison committee between the European Parliament and the Council of Europe. There was constant jealousy in the Council of Europe at our budget-raising powers and the fact that the Parliament could raise its own budget, whereas the Council of Europe of course had to negotiate its. None the less, no one has doubted that the European Court of Human Rights has not only the competence but the skill to give the requisite opinions and judgments on human rights issues. We need to be careful that those two are not mixed up.

One common factor of course with all three agreements is that they relate to the scenes of frozen conflicts—Ukraine is, sadly, now in that category of frozen conflict. I think the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, made the point that areas of frozen conflict could leak into the association agreements. I have to tell your Lordships that they can. I was in Moldova, not recently but not that long ago, and it was quite clear that it is part of Moldovan policy to try and bring Transnistria back into the body and that anything that can be done to pursue that aim is done, including encouraging it to export through Moldova itself. So we have to be careful there. We also have to be careful of the integration between Moldova and Romania. There are certain people in Bucharest who see Moldova as being little different from Wales, in terms of it being a country on the fringe that has self-government but which is basically still part of us. We need to keep an eye on that.

We also have to be careful about how the agreement is implemented. The beginning of the recent crisis in Ukraine spun out of the botched way in which the European Union handled the association agreement. That is how it is to my mind, although I know that that is not a universal view. We did not handle it as cleverly as we could have. We have ended up with a president in exile, although I notice that within the past few days, former President Yanukovych has made statements to the effect that he is thinking about going back, so we need to be careful about how we implement this. I am not saying that we should not sign and implement the association agreement, but we should not use it to antagonise—that is the danger.

I do not know whether the Minister met the Georgians who were here a few days ago, but it was quite clear that part of Georgian foreign policy, not unnaturally, is to try and use favourable reflections from Britain and western Europe in its constant battle against Russia and the countries that surround it. Georgia is a rather special case because it neighbours Turkey. The others are very much more in the heart of Europe.

My final point is that if we are going to have peace on this frontier in the end, we need a comprehensive agreement and settlement with Russia. There are too many potential conflicts: look at Latvia and the Russian population there. My own priority, for what it is worth, is that the Baltic states are covered by Article 5, and we must make sure that they stay at the top of our list before we take on any other commitments that we cannot honour. That is crucial. We should not get ourselves into a position where we are giving guarantees or understandings that we know in our own heart we cannot honour. I think that, more or less, we have gone as far as we can. I agree with the President of the European Commission that the time is not right for the extension of Community membership. We have probably bitten off more than we can chew; we certainly do not have the capacity for any more.

Historically, Britain has always been in favour of extending Community membership. One group of people has said that as good members of the European movement—which I am, too—we want to extend the benefits of Europe across Europe. But there is another school of thought, among the anti-European group, which has said that the more we can get in, the nearer we can bring it to collapse. That group also has a point. We have now got to a tipping point where we need to concentrate on integrating the European Union and its near abroad, in a sensible manner, to the not-so near abroad beyond it, whose countries are certainly not candidates for membership in anyone’s cognisance at the moment. These orders are part of that process.

I welcome the orders and I hope that they will be implemented and monitored with the moderation that the Minister’s speech has indicated. I look forward to us giving them our support.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister for her clear explanation of the orders. I do not intend to say very much on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition. We support the orders and are happy to do so today. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. There is a degree of expertise in the Committee that will make this debate look important when it is considered by others outside Parliament.

My first point is one that the Minister mentioned. The countries involved in these association agreements have to have free choice as to whether to reach such agreements, but the opposite is also true. No country should be forced to enter into such an association agreement, but on the other hand, nor should any free and sovereign state be pressured into not doing so, whether by force of arms or by other forms of intimidation. We are therefore content that the countries that we are talking about today are in the position that they find themselves in with regard to these association agreements.

Of course, as the Minister said, our debate takes place against the background of the unfolding situation in Ukraine, and I thank her for keeping us up to date with the position there. The House has debated the extremely critical situation in Ukraine many times in various forms, and will undoubtedly do so again. I hope it does so soon, not least so that the report that the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned—The EU and Russia: Before and Beyond the Crisis in Ukraine, published by the European Union Committee, on which he sat and which received a lot of media publicity earlier this week—can be debated, too.

Today’s Motions are not a reason for holding another debate on Ukraine this afternoon, although the comments that have been made about Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia have been extremely helpful, for me at least, in setting the background to where we are. The other two countries, Moldova and Georgia, as has been made clear, have considerable difficulties of their own. They have parallels, but their situations are of course different from the critical one we all face in Ukraine at present.

On Ukraine, we all hope that the ceasefire agreed in Minsk a fortnight ago now on 12 February, which was due to begin on 15 February, 11 days ago, can be properly implemented. Can the Minister comment on today’s reports, which have not necessarily been confirmed, that both the pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army may be starting to withdraw heavy weapons? Apparently, as of 1 pm, Ukrainian military forces had suffered no fatalities in the previous 48 hours, although several soldiers have apparently been wounded in that time span. A buffer zone of at least 50 kilometres has to be created and monitored by the OSCE, so I was particularly interested by what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, had to say about his recent meeting at the OSCE. Can the Minister comment on those matters?

Some have claimed—the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, came close to it—that the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine has been something of a provocation, at least in part, in terms of the proxy war in eastern Ukraine. The argument goes—the noble Lord put it moderately and well—that the EU, in negotiating such an agreement, sort of poked the bear with a stick, which is one way of putting it, and that signing such an agreement was an act of recklessness by the EU. We do not agree with that analysis. When the House of Commons debated these matters last December, there was a general consensus that this was not the case. The EU association agreement with Ukraine was not rushed in any way. It was not a surprise or a provocation. As I understand it, it had been under discussion for seven years and, interestingly, had been supported by the previous pro-Russian leadership of Ukraine under the last president, to whom the noble Lord referred.

The whole point of such agreements is to give a country access to the European market in exchange for reforms that encourage a democratic, honest and legally robust framework for that country’s future. The point of these agreements is to give access to European markets in exchange for reforms. Given Ukraine’s economic and corruption problems, reforms in the direction of transparency, the rule of law and proper democratic accountability are of great importance. That is the path the present Ukrainian Government want to pursue, but they will of course need considerable help.