EU-UK Relationship (Reform) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Neil Parish
Main Page: Neil Parish (Conservative - Tiverton and Honiton)Department Debates - View all Neil Parish's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
The beauty of democracy is that it is not over until it is over. It is important to think about who is in power now and not who might be in power in the future. In June, Angela Merkel said:
“I don’t see total debt liability as long as I live.”
She also said:
“Apart from the fact that instruments like eurobonds, eurobills, debt redemption schemes and much more are not compatible with the constitution in Germany, I consider them wrong and counterproductive.”
Angela Merkel has been clear on the fact that she does not believe that debt pooling is the way forward. That does not mean that Germany is opposed to eurobonds in principle; but from Berlin’s point of view, a full fiscal union must be established first. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble put it very clearly when he said:
“We have to be sure that a common fiscal policy would be irreversible and well coordinated. There will be no jointly guaranteed bonds without a common fiscal policy.”
Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti, who is a technocratic, not a democratically elected leader, has said that his position is quite similar to that of Germany in that he believes that central oversight of national budgets is a necessary precondition to eurobonds.
In Spain, the centre-right Government are keen on introducing eurobonds in the next few years and seem to be ready to accept losses of budgetary sovereignty to achieve that. Mariano Rajoy has proposed a three-stage path towards debt pooling: in 2013-14, eurozone countries should adopt measures to meet the fiscal and economic convergence criteria imposed by the European Council; in 2015-16, a European fiscal authority should be created that would oversee national budgets; and in 2017-18, when fiscal targets would be imposed on the eurozone in its entirety, full eurobonds could be issued.
France has not made its position entirely clear. It tends to favour more solidarity immediately and fiscal union later down the track, but in the name of Franco-German solidarity, it seems to have dropped the idea of Eurobonds, at least for the moment.
Most importantly, what about the UK? At the Lord Mayor of London’s banquet, the Prime Minister called for a looser EU
“with the flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc.”
That is an important indicator of where the UK stands. It is important to recognise that the EU is already multi-layered.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
For a long time, I dealt with the common agricultural policy, which is far too prescriptive to cover 27 countries with different climates and different soils. We want a flexible approach, so that this country can deliver good agricultural and environmental policies.
Andrea Leadsom
I completely agree with my hon. Friend.
The concept of a multi-speed Europe is already a reality: some countries opt in to Schengen, the euro, defence co-operation, and co-operation on justice and home affairs, and some opt out. A multi-speed Europe is already a reality, not something we are inventing for the first time.