EU Council

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The short answer is that the 2020 strategy needs to have a future and we must encourage European Union countries to spend more time focusing on what really drives growth, which is completing the single market, rather than some of these initiatives on medium-term fiscal austerity and big transfers of sovereignty. I know that they are important—and particularly important for some in the EU—but real growth will be driven through the single market.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

May I remind the Prime Minister that we on these Benches and the vast majority of the British people support what he did last week and are very glad that it was this party leader and this party leader alone who was speaking up for Britain at this summit? Does he agree with one of his predecessors? She said:

“Europe is strongest when it grows through willing co-operation and practical measures, not compulsion or bureaucratic dreams.”—[Official Report, 22 November 1990; Vol. 181, c. 451.]

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. The point I made in my statement about Europe being a network, not a bloc, is completely consistent with that. We should not be shy about its developing as a network, with some networks we want to be in and others we do not.