EU: Recent Developments

Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts

Thursday 16th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs. In his excellent speech, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford talked about the earlier vision for Europe, and the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, mentioned his own vision for the future of Europe. Well, visions are all very well, but as what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, would call a “blinkered Europhobe”, I prefer to look at the facts. The plain fact now is that the southern states, what is referred to as the “Club Med”, have been badly failed by the political adventure of the EU and the euro. Nobody, not even the most ardent supporters of the euro—with due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Taverne—can really pretend that, so far, the euro has been a success. The Eurocentrists have had to fall back on the Merkel gambit to justify the pain it is causing to the poorer states. In one of her speeches, she said:

“Nobody should take for granted another 50 years of peace and prosperity in Europe … If the euro fails, Europe fails”.

The argument appears to be that if you are against the euro or the EU, you are in favour of war. But as the noble Lord, Lord Flight, said in his speech, by any objective measure the euro itself is stoking the fires of national antagonism.

I can well remember the triumphant fanfares when the euro was introduced in 1999. Those of us who predicted that it could never work were dismissed as swivel-eyed, foam-flecked Europhobes hopelessly out of touch with the reality of the new Europe. I just want to remind the House what my noble friend Lord Pearson said as long as 15 years ago in a debate on the European Communities (Amendment) Act, talking about European monetary union:

“Personally, I do not believe that that is a bird which will ever fly, but if it is pushed off the top of the cliff by ignorant politicians I fear that it will do much damage when it crashes to the ground … I believe that civil unrest will become a real probability”.—[Official Report, 31/1/97; col. 1332.]

That was 15 years ago, and who has been proved right? It is the foam-flecked ones who have been right and it is the “blinkered Europhiles” who have been comprehensively and spectacularly proved wrong.

The political imperative behind the euro is so strong that the Eurocrats will go to any lengths, as the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, said in his speech, to keep the political construct of the euro travelling along the road. But let us look at where this Europhile dogma has led us. Instead of the promised stability and prosperity, what do we have? We have riots in Greece, where the taramasalata has hit the fan badly; and we have demonstrations and riots in Italy, in Portugal and in Spain. Indeed, Spain has 50 per cent youth unemployment and 30 per cent total unemployment. That is the reality. Europe has turned into a weapon of mass economic destruction.

What is the remedy prescribed by the EU leeches? It is to take more blood in the form of more wage cuts, more unemployment, lower pensions. “Austerity macht frei” seems to be the remedy prescribed by the Germans, certainly to Greece and to the rest of the “Club Med” members of the eurozone when they are unable to meet the German requisites. They cannot, as one other speaker in the debate has said, turn themselves into Germans.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, can I just say that I find that remark offensive because it likens German economic policy, however wrong we may agree it is, to a camp that practised genocide? I think that that is utterly inappropriate.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

I am sorry that the noble Lord takes it like that. The fact is that the German Finance Minister, Herr Schaeuble, is recommending more and more pain to be inflicted on Greece regardless of the fact that it is going to do the Greek population and Greece’s economy no good at all. That is what austerity is leading to. That is why I used that expression. He is saying that more austerity will bring you free—austerity macht frei. I repeat that.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, asked, will it really be worse for the Greeks or any of the other countries afflicted by the euro to leave it? I agree that it is not going to be easy, but will it be any worse than the pain inflicted by 10, 15 or 20 years of austerity, low employment, no jobs and lower pensions? That cannot be a viable alternative in a democratic country.

Worse, almost, than the financial pain which the euro ideology is inflicting on Europe is the failure and erosion of democracy. Ireland, Portugal, Greece and even Italy are now wholly owned subsidiaries of the European Commission. When the European Commission says jump, all they can ask is, “How high?”. I remind your Lordships of what happened to the Greek Prime Minister when he threatened to ask his countrymen whether they wanted to submit to the harsh criteria of the bailout fund. He was immediately given a sharp lesson in Euro democracy and told that, if he had the referendum, he would be out. In fact, he was out anyway, and there was, of course, no referendum. It is ironic that what scared the pants off the bureaucracy was the prospect of a democratic vote in Greece, the country that gave the world democracy.

I do not really understand why our Government are spending quite so much political capital and time supporting what is going on in Europe now. Our membership of the EU costs us £18 billion a year; EU regulations and red tape are costing our businesses fortunes every single year. We have lost control of our immigration policy; we have lost control of our energy policy; and the emissions directives have forced us into enormously expensive wind and energy policies which are putting many people in this country into fuel poverty. On the evidence so far, if the EU is the answer, we have been asking the wrong question.

However, I want to end on a more positive note. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said in his opening speech that he supported the Commonwealth. We should stop being quite so Eurocentric and look, as he said, at our interests in the Commonwealth and beyond. After all, we have many ties with it, both legal and financial. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is not here, but I cannot resist reminding him of the words of Winston Churchill when he was challenged by De Gaulle. He said:

“If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea”.

The political construct of the EU is yesterday’s idea. The future lies with the growth economies of the Commonwealth, the USA, South America, China and the Pacific rim, not with the moribund, zero-growth EU.

I remind the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, whom I am pleased to see in his place, that the UN has 193 members. 166 of those are nation states that do not belong to the EU, yet they manage to trade perfectly well with each other and with members of the European Union without being stifled by the panoply of directives and regulations that emanate from the Commission.

To prosper in this world we do not need to belong to the EU club and its stifling rules. There is only one club in the world that we need to belong to—that is the world, and we are already a member.