European Council

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s remarks. In other European countries, many people want the approach that we are taking—greater flexibility, greater competition and powers flowing back to nation states, not just towards Brussels—and support our views.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister agree with the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans), who has great experience of Europe, who said on Radio Wales yesterday that had the Government still been in the EPP, they could effectively have exercised a veto on the decision to elevate Mr Juncker? Is it not true that the worthwhile reforms in Europe will come from the moderate parties and not from the headbangers with whom the Prime Minister is associated at the moment?

[The Prime Minister]

The question I would ask back to the hon. Gentleman is, if it is so easy to veto the Spitzenkandidat process, why did Labour not do it in the Party of European Socialists? The idea that we would have been able to do so if we had been in the EPP is nonsense. There were other Prime Ministers in the EPP who did not stop the process. I am proud that we have our own political grouping in Europe and that it was the one group that decided not to take part in the process.