Informal European Council

William Cash Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is not an EU treaty, because it does not amend EU law; it is not a treaty within all of the treaties of the EU, and that is very important, because it would have been wrong to sign up for that without the safeguards for the single market, financial services and the other things that I set out. Let me just explain how important article 2 is in this agreement of the other countries. Let me read it in full:

“The provisions of this Treaty shall apply insofar as they are compatible with the Treaties on which the Union is founded and with European Union law. They shall not encroach upon the competences of the Union to act in the area of the economic union”—

that is, this treaty is outside EU law. Why is it outside EU law? It is because I made it outside EU law.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will know that the European Scrutiny Committee is making an inquiry into the nature and lawfulness of the agreement otherwise known as this non-EU treaty. Will he accept that the problem we have in European policy making is that it is on a slippery slope towards a more coercive, more federal and less democratic Europe? Will he give us his assurance that never, while he is Prime Minister, will we fold this non-EU treaty into the treaties as a whole?

[The Prime Minister]

To answer my hon. Friend’s second question first, obviously this treaty cannot be folded back into the EU without the agreement of every EU member state. We did not sign this treaty, because we did not get the safeguards that we wanted, and that position absolutely remains. My hon. Friend is right to make the point about the danger of a slippery slope that can be created by signing EU treaties and the use of the EU institutions. The whole point is that because this is not an EU treaty—because it is outside EU law—we are not in danger of that happening.