EU: Recent Developments — Motion to Take Note

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:15 pm on 16 February 2012.

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Photo of Lord Wallace of Saltaire Lord Wallace of Saltaire Lords Spokesperson (Cabinet Office), Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip) 6:15, 16 February 2012

My Lords, in the context of a global recession, the Greeks would be facing a very severe run on the drachma and quite possibly also a default. As a number of people have remarked, the Greeks defaulted on a number of occasions over the past 120 years.

People talk also about a common European foreign and defence policy. When I am in Germany, politicians there often tell me they are deeply committed to it-and to a European army. However, they cannot explain the strategy, funding, structure or command structure that it would have. In practice, the United Kingdom contributes a great deal to a European foreign policy and to European co-operation in defence. The UK/France defence relationship continues to move forward very well. We are working with others to cope with the immensely complicated problems of the Syrian crisis. In Libya, we flew missions with our French, Belgian, Danish, Swedish and Italian partners. We have been working in Helmand with Estonian troops embedded in British battalions. When I went some weeks ago to the joint command centre at Northwood, I was briefed by a Latvian naval officer on the anti-piracy patrol. In practice we are very deeply embedded in co-operative defence and foreign policy in Europe.

We will have to work hard to defend liberalism in a recession. I mean liberalism in the broader sense of liberal societies, open markets and international co-operation. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, made a wonderfully liberal and internationalist speech. Nationalism, populism and protectionism thrive when unemployment rises and incomes go down. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, mentioned the problems in Hungary. The Commission is now in active dialogue with the Hungarian Government about the extent to which some of their new laws will fit with EU rules. I was fascinated to hear from my Finnish friends that there is now a sort of Eurosceptic International across the European Union, with Eurosceptics in Britain working with their Danish, Finnish and other colleagues internationally against internationalism, so to speak.

The problem of popular opinion across Europe is very severe. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, that young people in Europe are often not immensely committed to internationalism. They take what they have for granted and they do not support the distant co-operation of elites through international organisations, which is what the European Union provides. It would be easy for us to give way to similar forces in the United Kingdom, in the belief that leaving the European Union would relieve us of international regulation. The demonisation of Germany is part of the way in which one finds easy answers to very complicated problems.

A number of noble Lords said that the fundamental underlying issue was that of Britain's place in the world. On my blog this morning, I came across references to a speech by Daniel Hannan MEP to the Conservative Political Action Committee in the United States, in which he praised Newt Gingrich and was in turn praised by Fox News. He made all the obvious references to Churchill and the Nazi threat, and suggested that Britain should leave Europe and blindly follow wherever the next American Republican Administration might lead us. Others would like us to become Switzerland with nuclear missiles or Norway without having to pay the very substantial sums that Norway contributes on a "voluntary basis" to the European Union. Our political leadership over the past 25 years, including the previous Labour Government, has failed to make the case for active engagement in Europe.