Lord Stoddart of Swindon
Main Page: Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Independent Labour - Life peer)European Union Bill
Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts“( ) the accession of a new member State”
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
I thank the noble Baroness. It may be convenient for the House if I speak also to Amendment 23A.
It is extraordinary that the Bill should explicitly exclude a referendum on new accessions to the European Union. So far, many contributions to the debate have been concerned with minor changes, and that of course is correct. However, the issue of new countries joining the EU is surely a major matter of constitutional importance, as well as having policy implications.
The amendments would require a referendum to be held before the accession of any new country or group of new countries. Noble Lords will recall that in 1973 the United Kingdom joined a European Economic Community—it was then described as a common market—of six member countries. The electorate was told at that time that there would be no essential loss of sovereignty. At the subsequent referendum on whether the country would remain in the community it was told the same thing. The then Government of Harold Wilson assured the people that the veto protected Britain’s sovereignty, and that economic and monetary union had been specifically ruled out. We now know, of course, that it was not specifically ruled out, because it has since been ruled in.
The electorate certainly were not warned at that time that the EEC would grow into the European Union, with a threefold increase in membership, but there it is—the original six countries increased to nine and then to 12, and by increments the membership has now reached 27 members. The British electorate have had no say in these increases, and there has been only cursory examination, if I may say so, by Parliament. Yet the implications for Britain—financial, economic, social and political—have been profound. Many of the newly admitted countries have been poor and often backward, causing transfers of finance to be made between richer and poorer countries, to which the United Kingdom has had to make a very large contribution which the taxpayer has to meet. This year, that contribution will amount to £9.3 billion, and it will go on increasing over future years.
Then, of course, Britain’s influence in the EU is diluted as the number of member states and the total population grows due to the system of qualified majority voting, as well as social stresses and additional social costs arising from increased immigration. Noble Lords will also recall that during the most recent accessions, the Government gave assurances that immigration would be limited to about 12,000, but in the event it turned out to be hundreds of thousands.
Furthermore, experience has shown that as the EU has grown larger, additional significant new powers are demanded for the institutions of the Union on the basis that these are needed to cope with the additional size and complexity of the enlarged Union. Indeed, every new treaty has extended the power and influence of the European Union, especially the Single European Act, the TEU—the Maastricht treaty—Nice and Amsterdam, culminating, of course, in the Lisbon treaty which, according to Monsieur Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, incorporated everything, except for a few minor items, that was in the European constitution, which he masterminded.
So the issue of new accessions is of vital importance, and it is ongoing. There are at present four candidate countries—Croatia, the former republic of Macedonia, Turkey and Iceland. There are also five potential candidate countries—Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. They are all poorer countries; one of them is near-bankrupt and in danger of defaulting on its debts. Their combined population is nearly 100 million. Ninety per cent of Turkey, by far the largest of the applicants by population, is geographically in Asia, so the European Union would in my view—and in anyone else’s view, I imagine—be transformed by Turkey’s admission into a Eurasian union.