European Council

Richard Burden Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my right hon. Friend has great experience of the business world. It is important that following my Bloomberg speech, the reaction of the business community was not to say, “This is a risk Britain shouldn’t be taking”, but to say, “We need reform and as long as we can secure good reforms then Britain should stay in that reformed European Union.” It is important that business, large and small, is behind the approach that I am taking.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

A year or so ago, one of the Prime Minister’s Back Benchers was quoted as saying that he—the Prime Minister—was in danger of coming over a bit Melchett. [Interruption.] Melchett was a character in “Blackadder”. Judging by the Prime Minister’s performance over the weekend, I think that many of us have some time for that comment. When he said that if Mr Juncker was appointed there would be “consequences”, what was he getting at?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, there are consequences from Europe adopting the principle that the head of the Commission should effectively be appointed following nominations by European political parties. If that is allowed to continue, and if it happens again, there will be real consequences, because we could end up with candidates who, as I said, have particular views that are totally against the interests of individual member states. That is a very worrying development. In the Council conclusions, we have agreed to review this process, and I hope we can make sure that it does not happen again.