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European Union (Accessions) Bill

The Minister was good enough to acknowledge not only that the Conservative party was a long-standing supporter of the European Union’s enlargement, but that it was among its first supporters. The House will remember Lady Thatcher’s famous speech in Bruges in 1988, in which she insisted that the European Community, as it then was, should stand not only for the small Europe of the rich west but for the whole of Europe, including those nations then in chains behind the iron curtain. It is therefore with real pleasure that we receive the Bill, and, when the time is right, we shall look forward to extending a warm welcome to the new accession countries. It should be a source of pride that there has always been cross-party consensus in Britain on the enlargement of the European Union. Some members of the EU have been afraid of a wider Europe and have, from time to time, sought to hinder that objective.