[Sylvia Heal in the Chair] — New Clause 4 — Political parties at European level (No. 1)

Part of Orders of the Day — European Communities (Amendment) Bill — [3rd Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 4:39 pm on 18 July 2001.

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Photo of Richard Spring Richard Spring Conservative, West Suffolk 4:39, 18 July 2001

New clauses 4 and 5 relate to an issue of fundamental importance to the House and to the future development of the European Union—the funding and regulation of pan-European political parties. The treaty of Nice allows the Council of Ministers to lay down regulations governing political parties at a European level and, in particular, rules on their funding. I am aware that Ministers may point to the statement in declaration 11 claiming that there is no transfer of competence to the European Community. Currently, however, article 191 makes no mention whatever of the funding or regulation of parties.

The treaty of Nice amends article 191 on political parties. It adds:

"The Council, acting in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 251"— which deals with co-decision making—

"shall lay down the regulations governing political parties at European level and in particular the rules regarding their funding."

The existence of a treaty base under article 308 for the proposed draft party statute is by no means universally accepted. Indeed, the House's European Scrutiny Committee declined to clear the document for precisely that reason.

Therefore, Ministers signed up at Nice to placing in the treaties for the first time the power to regulate and fund political parties. They then went a step further and agreed that relevant measures would be decided by qualified majority voting. The Opposition believe that those decisions were wrong and that they merit a serious discussion in Committee and a detailed explanation from the Minister for Europe.

Our new clause 5 provides that specific parliamentary approval is needed before party political regulations can take effect in British law. New clause 4 provides for openness concerning the amount that different parties are receiving. If Labour Members intend to vote against our new clauses, the Committee should be told why they regard the proposals as unacceptable.

The Committee may be aware of the background to the developments. Currently, groups in the European Parliament receive funding from the Parliament. The Court of Auditors, however, has criticised the so-called leakage of those funds, which are intended for Members of the European Parliament but go instead into the hands of the European political parties themselves. Of course, we all support calls for more transparency in funding, but we believe that it is possible to achieve that objective by ensuring that such leakage stops.

All too typically, the European Union institutions intend to tackle the problem by becoming involved in an entirely new sphere. The idea is not only that groups in the European Parliament would receive funding, but that pan-European parties themselves would be funded directly by the EU taxpayer, and that with that funding would come the power for the EU to regulate. We believe that that is totally unacceptable.

First, it is wrong in principle for the EU to regulate political parties such as the European People's party, the party of European Socialists and the European Liberals, Democrats and Reformers.

Secondly, it is wrong for the EU taxpayer to be told that he or she has to pay for those political parties. To reiterate, we are talking not about contributing to the cost of the parties' work in the European Parliament, which is provided for separately, but about subsidising the parties themselves.

Thirdly, those provisions have the potential to discriminate systematically against non-integrationist political parties both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Fourthly, the ability to decide the regulations and funding not by unanimity but by QMV further increases the chances of the measures being used in a harmful and negative manner.

We are concerned about the draft statute for pan-European parties, which is proposed under current treaty bases and has been subject to lengthy discussion. Initially, 7 million euros are to be made available for party funding, divided between the five existing European political parties. It may be said that that is not a huge sum, but 7 million euros is 7 million too many in our view. There is potential for the amount to rise in future—that may even be inevitable—and its distribution may be discriminatory.

In advancing its proposal earlier this year, the Commission said:

"holding political views favourable to European integration is not a precondition to obtaining the status of a European political party, nor for receiving Community financing."

I am sure that we are grateful for that. However, our concern is that giving the money to pan-European political parties means that, in Britain and elsewhere, the effect is exactly the same in practice.

Unlike Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative party is not a member of a pan-European political party. That is the distinction. Prior to the Nice Council, the former Foreign Secretary seemed to think, when he appeared in front of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, that we were members of the European People's party. We are not. Conservative MEPs are allied to the European People's party-European Democrats group in the European Parliament, but that is not a political party. Our party is not a member of the EPP itself, which is such a transnational party. We are not the UK branch of the EPP in the way that the Labour party is the UK branch of the party of European Socialists or the Liberal Democrat party is of the ELDR.

It is true that declaration 11 states that funding provisions shall apply on the same basis to all the political forces represented in the European Parliament. But if the second-largest national force in the European Parliament—namely the United Kingdom Conservative party—is not a member of any of the organisations receiving the funding, how can that principle be honoured?

It is also true that the draft party statute states that a union of European political parties may register a statute of a European political party for these purposes. The Conservative party is a member of the European Democrat Union, which is a centre-right grouping, encompassing a range of parties across the European continent. But as far as I understand it, the EDU wishes to remain as a union, and does not intend to register as a political party. And why should it?